Shattered Nation

by Jeffrey Brooks

  He pulled out his pocket watch. “It’s getting on to one o’clock. Do you think you can get East Point by five?”

  McPherson considered. “Another half hour of marching. An hour to deploy the divisions and arrange the lines. A few hours of fighting. Yes, I think so.”

  Grant nodded. “Then do so. No holding back, James. You have an overwhelming numerical advantage. Smash through those trenches and get that town. Understood?”

  “Completely, sir.”

  “Very well. I am going to speak with Howard up north. Please keep me informed.”

  The two men saluted. Grant turned Cincinnati off to the left and headed north.

  *****

  September 24, Afternoon

  Davis looked up sharply. The pounding on the door sounded much louder than usual, meaning that the news had to be important. Perhaps the battle near Lafayette had finally begun.

  “Come in!”

  The door opened and Seddon quickly walked in. He shoved a paper toward the President. “Read this immediately, sir.”

  President Davis,

  The Army of the Cumberland and Army of the Tennessee, with a combined force estimated at sixty thousand men at the least, have crossed the Chattahoochee River to the southwest of Atlanta, undetected until now. They are advancing rapidly toward the city. The telegraph line to Lafayette has been cut but we are attempting to notify General Johnston via a different route. We urgently request any reinforcements that can be spared to be sent to Atlanta at once. The situation is critical. This is the great crisis.

  General Hardee, commanding at Atlanta

  As he read the telegram, Davis felt his heart began pounding. His breath quickened and a layer of sweat formed instantly on his forehead. He lowered the paper down on the desk.

  “I do not understand,” he said. “The Army of the Tennessee is supposed to be with Grant in Alabama, marching on Montgomery.”

  “It would seem that Grant has fooled Johnston, Mr. President. The movement into Alabama now appears to have been a feint, designed to draw our forces away from Atlanta, which has remained the main Union objective all along.”

  Davis looked sternly into Seddon’s eyes. “So you’re telling me that General Johnston rushed two-thirds of the Army of Tennessee into Alabama, without authorization, to confront an enemy that was not even there? To protect cities that are not actually under threat?”

  “That’s about the size of it, Mr. President.”

  Davis slammed a clenched fist down onto the desk. “Damn that Johnston!” he shouted with all his might. He looked up at the door. “Mr. Harrison! Get General Bragg! And Secretary Benjamin! I must meet with them at once!”

  “It’s a disaster, sir,” Seddon noted somberly. “Hardee has less than twenty thousand men in and around Atlanta. The Yankee force outnumbers them by more than three-to-one.”

  Davis felt he was living in a nightmare. Only twenty-four hours previously, all had appeared well. There had been nothing but good news from the military fronts in Virginia and the Trans-Mississippi for weeks and it had appeared that Johnston was on the verge of catching Grant in a trap in eastern Alabama. Lincoln’s reelection prospects had been as dim as ever. The hue and cry caused by the revelation of Cleburne’s emancipation proposal was bothersome, but being dealt with.

  In a flash, everything had changed. First, Benjamin had told him about the Manton Marble affair, which had been bad enough. Indeed, he had been unable to sleep the night before on account of it. What Seddon was telling him now was infinitely worse.

  If Atlanta fell now, at the height of the fury generated by the Marble scandal and with the election only forty-five days away, Lincoln would almost certainly be reelected President. With Lincoln in the White House for another four years, the Confederacy would inevitably be ground into dust.

  The door opened and Bragg and Benjamin walked in. While Davis sat silently, Seddon passed around Hardee’s telegram and briefed them on what they knew about the situation in Atlanta. As he heard the summary once again, Davis sadly shook his head.

  “I should never have appointed Johnston commander of the Army of Tennessee. I should have refused your resignation, Braxton. I should have kept you in command of the army. Barring that, I should have given the post to Beauregard, or Kirby Smith, or Longstreet. Perhaps I should have ordered Lee west to take command. But I certainly should never have appointed Johnston. His incompetence and lack of vision will be the death of the Confederacy.”

  “We should not think of the past now, Mr. President,” Bragg said.

  “What of Atlanta’s defenses?” Benjamin asked, uncharacteristic concern in his voice.

  “They are among the most formidable fortifications in North America,” Seddon answered. “Our engineers have had literally thousands of slaves working on them for months. But fortifications require troops. The defenses of Atlanta were designed with the assumption that the entire Army of Tennessee, with fifty thousand men, would be manning the trenches. Hardee has less than twenty thousand at his command.”

  “Dear God,” Davis said. “What help can we send them?”

  “None, I’m afraid. We stripped the defenses of Charleston and Savannah of all the regiments we dared spare in order to send a brigade’s worth of reinforcements to Johnston last month.”

  “A brigade that is now sitting uselessly in Alabama!” Davis spat.

  Seddon nodded. “Besides which, even if troops from the coast boarded trains this very hour and the transfer to Atlanta went perfectly, they still would not arrive for at least a few days.”

  “And if troops from Charleston cannot arrive in time, there is no way for troops dispatched from Virginia to arrive in time,” Bragg said.

  “Quite so,” Seddon agreed. “We don’t have weeks. The fate of Atlanta will likely be decided within the next few days.”

  “How long will it take for Johnston to get any of Stewart’s or Cheatham’s divisions back to Atlanta?” Davis asked.

  Bragg leaned forward. “When I commanded the Army of Tennessee, I was able to move most of the army from Corinth in northern Mississippi to Chattanooga in southeast Tennessee in about a week. But that’s not the problem. I would imagine that Grant’s main objective right now is to secure the Western and East Point Railroad in order to prevent Johnston from sending any aid.”

  Seddon nodded. “If Grant is marching toward Atlanta from the west, I would expect some of his forces to veer southeast in order to gain possession of the railroad. If we can keep it in our hands, then reinforcements from Johnston could start arriving within a few days. But if Grant manages to seize the railroad, all may be lost.”

  “Get a message to Johnston immediately and order him to get as many of his troops back to Atlanta with all speed,” Davis said. “For once, I doubt it will be necessary to explain to the man just how serious the situation is.”

  “I would explain it anyway,” Benjamin said dryly. “What else can we do?”

  Davis laughed bitterly. “I suppose I shall send a circular to all the clergymen in every church in Richmond, asking them to pray for divine intervention. After all, if Joe Johnston is no help, at least we can always appeal to God.”

  *****

  McFadden glanced nervously up and down the line. The 7th Texas was stretched thin, with six or seven feet between each man. Even with such extreme measures, the weakened regiment could only cover about a hundred and fifty yards of the line. There was no denying how strong the fortifications were, but McFadden thought ruefully that even the best defenses were only formidable if they had an adequate number of troops in them.

  Looking out from under the head-log set on top of the parapet, McFadden saw what looked like a solid wall of blue infantrymen advancing toward them, less than half a mile away. He could see more than a dozen battle flags, which meant that the force was at least a division in size. Already, off to the right, Confederate cannon were thumping out explosive shells that burst in the Union ranks, killing and wounding several men each time. The
enemy continued moving forward doggedly, seeming to shrug off the artillery fire as though it were not a concern.

  McFadden’s return to the 7th Texas had come as a great surprise to his men and particularly to Major Collett. As he had threatened, Collett had indeed reported him as a deserter when he had failed to return within five days. All that was quickly forgotten when McFadden had arrived bearing a note from Cleburne that he was to be instantly reinstated without penalty. Moreover, the shock of the news McFadden had brought and the realization that their brigade was almost all that stood between the Union army and Atlanta quickly thrust all thought of McFadden’s actions out of mind.

  The 7th Texas held the center of Granbury’s line. The entire brigade numbered less than a thousand men and was expected to cover nearly a thousand yards of front. From what he understood from Major Collett, Granbury had pulled the 10th Texas back behind the line to serve as an emergency reserve. Off to the left, the consolidated 6th/15th Texas Cavalry, whose men fought as infantry despite their name, held a position at a right angle to the rest of the regiment, forming the line into an “L” shape and hopefully blocking any move by the Yankees to get around their left flank.

  Just to their right, between them and another regiment, was a company of Georgia Militia, numbering about forty men. McFadden did not put much stock in their fighting abilities. Most of them were old men and young boys, but a few were also healthy and fit-looking men who had somehow managed to avoid military service up to this point. The men of the 7th Texas had nicknamed the militia “Joe Brown’s Pets.” Collett had put McFadden in charge of the militia company as well as his own men, though he couldn’t help but wonder if they were going to be more trouble than they were worth.

  “They’ve just gone to the double quick, Lieutenant!” Collett said loudly as he walked back and forth just behind the center of the regiment’s line.

  McFadden looked out toward the enemy. Sure enough, they had moved from a slow walk into a slow jog. They were now only about a quarter of a mile away. Within a matter of minutes, they would charge the line. The artillery had switched from shot to canister fire, with every blast tearing away numbers of men. Still, the Yankees came on, clearly determined to overwhelm the position through sheer force of numbers.

  “Prepare to fire!” McFadden shouted. The Texas veterans leaned forward on the parapet so that their weapons emerged from the space between the head-log and the parapet itself. He drew his sword and revolver, holding the former in his right hand and the latter in his left.

  He glanced over at the militiamen, irritated to see how long it was taking many of them to load their weapons. None of the men had more than a few hours of training, but the process did not strike McFadden as being particularly hard. Making the problem worse was the fact that the militiamen were not carrying standardized weapons. Every member of the 7th Texas was armed with an Enfield rifle brought through the blockade from England or captured from the Yankees. The militiamen, however, were armed with a variety of Enfields, Springfields captured from the Yankees, shotguns left over from before the war, and even some old flintlocks that could have been used against the British during the Revolution. McFadden thought that they looked less like a fighting unit and more like a traveling circus company.

  Observing the militia prepare to receive the enemy, he saw something else that worried him. The look on their faces and the way their hands shook as they tried to ready their weapons told him all that he needed to know. Many of them jerked sharply any time the cannon to their right were fired. Clearly, the militiamen were frightened out of their wits. As he watched, a smelly puddle of yellow liquid formed at the feet of one young militiaman, who could not have been more than sixteen-years-old.

  He wanted to turn away in disgust. Then he remembered how frightened he had been at his baptism of fire at the Battle of Valverde. He especially felt sorry for the young ones. Many of them were certain to die in the upcoming battle, when they had barely begun to live. For a moment, he wondered where their mothers were.

  The bugles within the Yankee ranks blew the signal for the charge and the drummers began pounding their instruments much more quickly. The Union infantry went from a jog to a run and from thousands of throats rose the deep, manly battle cry of the Northern soldiers.

  “Don’t fire until I give the command!” McFadden cried. He wanted to wait until the enemy soldiers were about a hundred yards away, so as to make every shot count. If he ordered his men to fire before the Yankees got within a hundred yards, his men would simply be wasting their fire with inaccurate shots. He waited as long as he dared.

  “Fire!”

  The Texas infantrymen and Georgia militia all fired their weapons at the same moment. Looking out over the parapet, McFadden saw several federal troops fall dead or wounded. However, the effect was not as devastating as a volley normally was. His men were simply spread too thinly and the attackers numbered too many for the volley to have much of an impact. It was like throwing pebbles at a locomotive. The Yankee horde kept right on coming.

  “Fire at will, boys! Let the bastards have it!”

  Blue-coated soldiers dropped every second, as the Southerners poured out as heavy a fire as they could manage. But within two minutes, the Yankees reached the trench fronting the parapet. This was edged with abatis and the Union soldiers had considerable difficulty passing between the sharpened wooden stakes. This allowed the Confederates more time to fire at them.

  Still, numbers told. Many of the Yankees began dropping down into the five-foot gulley in front of the parapet. As McFadden’s men leaned forward to depress their weapons and continue to pour fire down upon them, Union troops to the rear began passing forward short ladders and walking planks to enable men to climb up the parapet. At the same time, a long and deep row of Union infantry paused at the edge of the trench and opened up a heavy fire, giving cover to their comrades. Others began tearing away at the abatis to make more space through which to push forward.

  It was a tense few minutes. The Southern troops could not fire at the Yankees at the base of the trench without dangerously exposing themselves to enemy fire. Unwilling to do this, most of his troops continued to blaze away at the bluecoats standing unprotected at the edge of the trench. A great many of these men were struck by musket balls and fell unceremoniously into the trench.

  Having anticipated this situation, McFadden had distributed a few live artillery shells to some of his more steady men. They now lit the fuses on these with matches and tossed them quickly over the parapet. Seconds later, they exploded, killing or wounding several Union soldiers. McFadden listened to their screams, but took no pleasure from them.

  Despite the improvised defense, more and more Yankees were filling the trench and beginning to scale up the parapet. The first men scrambled up over the head-log and onto the mound of dirt, screaming frenzied battle cries. To McFadden’s horror, many of the Georgia militiamen now threw down their weapons and ran for the rear. His disgust was increased when he saw that most of those running away were the fit middle-aged men he had observed earlier. Most of the old men and young boys remained at their posts.

  “Cowards!” McFadden shouted at the runaways. “Get back into the line and fight!”

  Few paid any attention, continuing their flight. He looked back at the Union troops. He pulled back the cock on his revolver and began firing off his six shots. He realized he was getting better with the weapon, as two Union soldiers fell. Before he knew it, his pistol clicked harmlessly. Unwilling to take the time to reload it, he shoved the weapon back into its holster and charged forward with his saber, screaming the Rebel Yell.

  His men were now engaged in hand-to-hand fighting. The advantage of their defenses was now turned against them, as the Yankees towered over the heads of the Southerners the moment they were able to scramble onto the parapet. The sound of musket fire faded quickly, replaced by dull smacking sounds as men used the butts of their muskets as clubs or sickening squelchy sounds as bayonets were thrust
deep into human bodies. Horrifying screams began to emanate from the line of defenses held by the 7th Texas. Several Yankees had had the foresight to load their rifles just before going over the top of the parapet and they fired off their single shot before attempting to run the nearest rebel through with a bayonet. The Bowie knives many of the Texans carried were doing bloody work.

  McFadden jumped onto the top of the parapet and slashed at the nearest Yankee with his saber, neatly slicing a perfect gash across the man’s neck. The bluecoat pathetically clasped his hand to his throat and fell backwards onto his comrades, who were trying to get on top of the parapet themselves. McFadden kicked the nearest one in the face, causing him to fall backwards as well. Bullets buzzed past all around him and he felt a tug at his shirt as one passed through his clothing. Miraculously, however, he remained unhurt. He now felt certain that God was protecting him for some reason and therefore felt no fear.

  Off to both the left and right, McFadden could hear the frantic booming of Southern artillery. The defensive line had been built with small redoubts thrust out from the main line, allowing cannon to fire into the flanks of any attacking force. These guns now spewed forth their deadly canister fire into the massed ranks of the attacking force. At such close range and with such a large target, the gunners couldn’t miss. Scores of Union men were literally sliced into pieces with each blast, their tormented screams lasting only a fraction of a second.

  McFadden glanced backwards to see a line of Confederate soldiers advancing at a rush. He smiled quickly. Major Collett had seen fit to commit the 10th Texas in a counter attack to drive the Union troops back. The Southern troops halted perhaps twenty yards behind the parapet, raised their rifles, and delivered a heavy volley of musketry into the mass of Union troops standing on top of the parapet. With that, they charged forward with the Rebel Yell to join their comrades in hand-to-hand fighting.