by Shelby Foote
His plan, he said, was to cross the Tennessee River at Guntersville, which would place him within reach of Sherman’s single-strand rail supply line in the delicate Stevenson-Bridgeport area, and move promptly on Nashville, smashing Thomas’s scattered detachments on the way. Possessed of the Tennessee capital, he would resupply his army from its stores, thicken his ranks with volunteers drawn to his banner, and move on through Kentucky to the Ohio, where he would be in a position to threaten Cincinnati and receive still more recruits from the Bluegrass. If Sherman followed, as expected, Hood would then be strong enough to whip him; after which he would either send reinforcements to beleaguered Richmond or else take his whole command across the Cumberlands to come up in rear of the blue host outside Petersburg. Or if Sherman did not follow, but instead took off southward for the Gulf or eastward for the Atlantic, Hood explained that he would move by the interior lines for an attack on Grant “at least two weeks before he, Sherman, could render him assistance.” Such a shift, he said, winding up in a blaze of glory, “would defeat Grant and allow General Lee, in command of our combined armies, to march upon Washington or turn upon and annihilate Sherman.”
Old Bory was amazed, partly by the bold sweep of the plan, which seemed to him as practicable as it was entrancing, and partly by the shock of recognition, occasioned by its resemblance to the half-dozen or so which he himself had submitted to friends and superiors over the course of the past three years, invariably without their being adopted. One difference was that he had always insisted on heavy reinforcement at the outset, whereas Hood proposed to strike with what he had. If this seemed rash, Beauregard could see that it might well be a virtue in the present crisis, not only because no reinforcements were available, but also because it would save time, and time was of the essence in a situation depending largely on how rapidly the invaders moved — especially against Thomas, who must not be given a chance to pull his scattered forces together for the protection of the capital in his care. In any case, approval was little more than a formality; Hood had informed the government two days ago that he intended to cross the Tennessee, and only yesterday had wired ahead to Richard Taylor, whose department he had entered for the crossing: “I will move tomorrow for Guntersville.” Beauregard did not withhold his blessing, though after much discussion he insisted that Wheeler’s cavalry, which had rejoined the army near Rome ten days ago, be left behind to operate against Sherman’s communications and attack his rear if he set out south or east, through otherwise undefended regions between Atlanta and the Gulf or the Atlantic. Hood readily agreed to this subtraction when the Creole added that Forrest would join him on the march, replacing Wheeler, as soon as he and his troopers returned from their current raid on Johnsonville; which, incidentally, would add to the Federal confusion Hood hoped to provoke when he moved on Nashville.
Word went out to the camps that the shift northward would begin at daylight, and their commander later recalled that the news was greeted with “that genuine Confederate shout so familiar to every Southern soldier.” By this he meant the rebel yell, the loudest of which no doubt came from the bivouacs of the Tennesseans. Davis had told them four weeks ago that their feet would soon be pressing native soil, and now they whooped with delight at finding the promise about to be kept.
It was kept, although by no means as promptly as they and Beauregard expected when they parted at Gadsden next morning. Guntersville, thirty-odd miles northwest, turned out to be crowded with bluecoats, and Hood decided to veer west for a crossing at Decatur, just over forty miles downriver. However, when he drew close to there on October 26, after four days on the march, he found that it, like Guntersville, was too stoutly garrisoned to be stormed without heavier losses than he felt he could afford; so he pressed on for Courtland, twenty miles beyond Decatur, which he bypassed the following day. It was not until then that Beauregard, who had been off making supply arrangements and was miffed at not having been informed of the change in route, caught up with the column some fifty miles west of its original objective. He was aggrieved not only because the detour had ruled out the disruptive strike at Stevenson, now clearly beyond range of the butternut marchers, but also because of the loss of time, which Sherman and Thomas would surely use to their advantage. He had said from the start that celerity was Hood’s best hope for success in this long-odds undertaking; yet five whole days had already been spent in search of a crossing that still had not been reached. Nor was that the worst of it. Informed by his engineers that they did not have enough pontoons to bridge the rain-swollen Tennessee at Courtland, Hood decided to push on and use the partly demolished railway span at Tuscumbia, another twenty-five miles downstream and well over eighty from Guntersville, where he had intended to ford the river a week ago. At Tuscumbia on the last day of October, he further alarmed his superior by announcing that he lacked sufficient provisions for the march that would follow the crossing, as well as shoes for his men and the horses in Jackson’s two slim brigades, which were all the cavalry he would have until Forrest returned from Johnsonville, more than a hundred miles downriver to the north.
Taylor had unwelcome news for them in that regard as well. Unmindful of the need for haste, he had waited till Hood drew near Decatur on the 26th to send a courier summoning Forrest, who had left five days ago, and even then had told him to complete his mission before heading back. Hood took this, then and later, as evidence that he had done well to shift his infantry westward in search of a crossing, since this reduced the gap between it and the cavalry he was obliged to wait for anyhow. Moreover, while he marked time at Tuscumbia, doing what he could to repair his supply deficiencies and giving his men some well-earned rest through the first fine days of November, word came back that the delay had perhaps been worth the vexation after all, adding as it did a highly colorful chapter to the legend surrounding the Wizard of the Saddle.
After reaching the Tennessee River near the Kentucky line on October 28, thirty miles north of Johnsonville, Forrest converted a portion of his 3500 troopers into literal horse marines and put them aboard two Union vessels, the gunboat Undine and the transport Venus, which he captured by posting batteries at both ends of a five-mile stretch of river to prevent their escape when he took them under fire with other guns along the bank. For three days, November 1–3, while this improvised two-boat navy molested traffic and drew attention northward, he led his horsemen south, up the west bank of the swollen Tennessee, to carry out the devastation that was the purpose of his raid. Well before midday November 4, after losing the Venus in an engagement with two gunboats and burning the eight-gun Undine to prevent her recapture, the two divisions were directly opposite Johnsonville, masked from view by trees and brush. While Morton was sneaking his guns into position, under orders to open fire at 2 o’clock, Forrest examined with his binoculars the unsuspecting target on the far side of the half-mile-wide river. Three gunboats, eleven transports, and eighteen barges were moored at the wharves, aswarm with workers unloading stores, and beyond them, spread out around a stockade fortress on high ground, warehouses bulged with supplies and acres of open storage were piled ten feet high with goods of every description, covered with tarpaulins to protect them from the weather. Two freight trains were being made up for the run to Nashville, just under eighty miles away, and neither the soldiers at work nor the officers scattered among them seemed aware that they were in any more danger now than they had been at any time since the base — named for the military governor who was Lincoln’s running mate in the election only four days off — was put in operation, six months back.
Promptly at 2 o’clock they found out better. Morton having synchronized the watches of his chiefs of section, all ten pieces went off with an enormous bang that seemed to come from a single heavy cannon. For nearly an hour, after this introductory clap of thunder out of a cloudless sky, their fire was concentrated on the gunboats, the most dangerous enemy weapon, and when these were abandoned by their crews, who left them to burn and sink with the transports and
barges they had been ordered to protect, the rebel artillerists shifted their attention to the landward installations, including the hilltop fortress whose unpracticed cannoneers replied wildly, blinded by smoke from riverside sheds and warehouses that had been set afire by sparks from the burning wharves and exploding vessels down below. Soon all those acres of high-piled stores were a mass of flames, and the exultant rebel gunners chose individual targets of opportunity, neglected until now. Perhaps the most spectacular of these was a warehouse on high ground, which, when struck and set afire, turned out to be stocked with several hundred barrels of whiskey that burst from the heat and sent a crackling blue-flame river of bourbon pouring down the hillside. Tantalized by the combined aroma of burnt liquor, roasting coffee beans, and frizzled bacon, wafted to them through a reek of gunsmoke, Morton’s hungry veterans howled with delight and regret as they kept heaving shells into the holocaust they had created across the way. Forrest himself took a hand in the fun, directing the fire of one piece. “Elevate the breech of that gun a little lower!” he shouted, and the crew had little trouble understanding this unorthodox correction of the range. Within two hours all of Johnsonville was ablaze, resulting in a scene that “beggared description,” according to one Federal who confined himself to the comment that it was “awfully sublime.”
It was also awfully expensive. The base commander later put his loss at $2,200,000, taking the burned-out steamers and barges into account, but not the three sunken gunboats — four, including the Undine, subtracted during the naval phase of the raid, along with three more transports and three barges, mounting a total of 32 guns. Forrest’s estimate of $6,700,000 included all of these, and probably came closer to the truth. His own loss, over-all, was two men killed and nine wounded, plus two guns lost when the Venus was recaptured. Retiring southward by the glare of flames still visible when he made camp six miles away, he encountered in the course of the next few days a series of couriers from Beauregard, all bearing orders for him to report at once to Hood, who was waiting at Tuscumbia for the outriders he would need on his march north. Forrest did what he could to hurry, but the going was slow through the muddy Tennessee bottoms, especially for the artillery. Even with sixteen horses to each piece, spelled by oxen impressed from farms adjoining the worst stretches along the way, he could see that he would need more than a week to reach Hood in Northwest Alabama.
Beauregard’s distress at this development was matched by opposite reactions up the Coosa and beyond the Tennessee. Not only did the delay give Thomas added time to prepare for the blow Hood’s drawn-out march had warned him was about to land; it also prompted Sherman to send still more reinforcements to Nashville, even while putting the final touches to his plan for making Georgia howl by slogging roughshod across it to the sea.
Grant by now had assented unconditionally to the expedition, though not until he recovered from a last-minute fit of qualms brought on by the news that Hood was headed north. Sherman at Gaylesville had not known that the gray army had left Gadsden, thirty miles away, until it turned up near Decatur, ninety miles to the west, on October 26. His reaction, once Hood’s departure had ruled out a confrontation near the Alabama-Georgia line, was to send Stanley’s corps to strengthen Thomas, and when he learned that Hood was still in motion westward, apparently intending to force a crossing at Tuscumbia, he also detached Schofield’s one-corps Army of the Ohio and directed that A. J. Smith’s divisions return at once from Missouri to join in the defense of Middle Tennessee. Between them, Stanley, Schofield, and Smith had close to 40,000 men, and these, added to those already on hand — including more than half of Sherman’s cavalry, sent back earlier; sizeable garrisons at Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, Athens, and Florence; and recruits coming down from Kentucky and Ohio, in response to Forrest’s early-October penetration of the region below Nashville — would give Thomas about twice as many troops as Hood could bring against him. Surely that was ample, even though most of them were badly scattered, others were green, and some had not arrived. Best of all, however, from Sherman’s point of view, this new arrangement provided a massive antidote for dealing with Grant’s reawakened fears as to what might happen if Old Pap was left to face the invasion threat alone. “Do you not think it advisable, now that Hood has gone so far north, to entirely ruin him before starting on your proposed campaign?” Grant inquired on November 1, and added, rather more firmly: “If you see a chance of destroying Hood’s army, attend to that first, and make your other move secondary.”
This, of all things, was the one Sherman wanted least to hear, and in his reply he marshaled his previous arguments in redoubled opposition. “No single army can catch Hood,” he declared, “and I am convinced that the best results will follow from our defeating Jeff. Davis’s cherished plan of making me leave Georgia by maneuvering.” Edgy and apprehensive, fearing a negative reaction, he followed this with a second, more emphatic plea, before there was time for an answer to the first. “If I turn back, the whole effect of my campaign will be lost. By my movements I have thrown Beauregard (Hood) well to the west, and Thomas will have ample time and sufficient troops to hold him.… I am clearly of opinion that the best results will follow my contemplated movement through Georgia.”
To his great relief, Grant wired back on November 2 that he was finally persuaded that Thomas would “be able to take care of Hood and destroy him.” Moreover, he added, echoing his lieutenant’s words in closing, “I really do not see that you can withdraw from where you are to follow Hood without giving up all we have gained in territory. I say, then, go as you propose.”
Here at last was the go-ahead Sherman had been seeking all along, and now that he had it he moved fast, as if in fear that it might be revoked. Trains that had been shuttling between Chattanooga and Atlanta for the past two months, heavy-laden coming down and empty going back, now made their runs the other way around, returning all but the supplies he would take along in wagons when he set out for the sea with his four remaining corps, two from what was left of the Army of the Cumberland, under Slocum, and two from his old Army of the Tennessee, under Howard. They numbered better than 60,000 of all arms, including a single division of cavalry under Kilpatrick. He saw this mainly as an infantry operation, much like the one against Meridian last year, and had ordered the rest of his troopers back to Nashville for reorganization under James Wilson, who had recently been promoted to major general and sent by Grant to see what he could do about the poor showing western horsemen had been making ever since the start of the campaign. Sherman might have taken him along, a welcome addition on a march into the unknown, except that Thomas would most likely need him worse. Besides, he said, “I know that Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but I want just that sort of a man to command my cavalry on this expedition.”
In “high feather,” as he nearly always was when he was busy, he reëstablished headquarters at Kingston, the main-line railroad junction on the Etowah east of Rome, and there, with trains grinding north and rattling south at all hours of the day and night, supervised the final runs before the Western & Atlantic was closed down and its several depot garrisons withdrawn to become part of Major General J. B. Steedman’s command at Chattanooga, on call for service under Thomas against Hood. His own army seemed to Sherman in splendid condition, fattened by veterans returning from thirty-day reënlistment furloughs, yet trimmed for hard use by evacuating all who were judged by surgeons not to be in shape for the 300-mile cross-Georgia march. On Sunday, November 6, he took time out to compose a farewell letter to Grant, a general statement of his intention, as he put it, “to act in such a manner against the material resources of the South as utterly to negative Davis’ boasted threat.” While he wrote, paymasters were active in all the camps, seeing to it that the soldiers would be in an appreciative frame of mind to support the Administration in the election two days off. “If we can march a well-appointed army right through his territory, it is a demonstration to the world, foreign and domestic, that we have a power which Davis can
not resist. This may not be war, but rather statesmanship. Nevertheless it is overwhelming to my mind that there are thousands of people abroad and in the South who reason thus: If the North can march an army right through the South, it is proof positive that the North can prevail.”
He would set out, he told his chief, hard on the heels of Lincoln’s reëlection — “which is assured” — and would thereby have the advantage of the confusion, not to say consternation, that event would provoke in the breasts of secessionists whose heartland he would be despoiling. What he would do after he reached Savannah he would decide when he got there and got back in touch with City Point. Meantime, he said, “I will not attempt to send couriers back, but trust to the Richmond papers to keep you well advised.”
Grant — observing with hard-won equanimity the unusual spectacle of the two main western armies, blue and gray, already more than two hundred miles apart, about to take off in opposite directions — replied next day: “Great good luck go with you. I believe you will be eminently successful, and at worst can only make a march less fruitful than is hoped for.”
* * *
In Richmond that same day, November 7 — election eve beyond the Potomac — Congress was welcomed back into session by a message from the Chief Executive, who had continued in Virginia the efforts made on his Georgia trip to lift spirits depressed by the outcome of the Hood-Sherman contest for Atlanta. Indeed, Davis went further here today in his denial that the South could be defeated, no matter what calamities attended her resistance to the force that would deny her independence.
After speaking of “the delusion fondly cherished [by the enemy] that the capture of Atlanta and Richmond would, if effected, end the war by the overthrow of our government and the submission of our people,” he said flatly: “If the campaign against Richmond had resulted in success instead of failure, if the valor of [Lee’s] army, under the leadership of its accomplished commander, had resisted in vain the overwhelming masses which were, on the contrary, decisively repulsed — if we had been compelled to evacuate Richmond as well as Atlanta — the Confederacy would have remained as erect and defiant as ever. Nothing could have been changed in the purpose of its government, in the indomitable valor of its troops, or in the unquenchable spirit of its people. The baffled and disappointed foe would in vain have scanned the reports of your proceedings, at some new legislative seat, for any indication that progress had been made in his gigantic task of conquering a free people.” And having said as much he said still more in that regard. “There are no vital points on the preservation of which the continued existence of the Confederacy depends. There is no military success of the enemy which can accomplish its destruction. Not the fall of Richmond, nor Wilmington, nor Charleston, nor Savannah, nor Mobile, nor of all combined, can save the enemy from the constant and exhaustive drain of blood and treasure which must continue until he shall discover that no peace is attainable unless based on the recognition of our indefeasible rights.”