Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (151 page)

3
. Edward Younger, ed.,
Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean
(New York, 1957), 165; Jefferson Davis to Joseph E. Johnston, July 7, 1864, in Rowland,
Davis
, VI, 283.

"I regard it as a great misfortune to our country that we failed to give battle to the enemy many miles north of our present position. Please say to the President that I shall continue to do my duty cheerfully . . . and strive to do what is best for our country." Bragg urged Davis to appoint Hood in Johnston's place. Davis had already pretty much made up his mind to do so, even though Lee advised against it on the grounds that while aggressive, Hood was too reckless. "All lion," said Lee of him, "none of the fox."
⁴
Davis decided to give Johnston one last chance: on July 16 he telegraphed the general a request for "your plan of operations." Johnston replied that his plan "must depend upon that of the enemy. . . . We are trying to put Atlanta in condition to be held by the Georgia militia, that army movements may be freer and wider."
⁵
This hint of an intention to give up Atlanta was the final straw. Next day the thirty-three-year-old Hood replaced Johnston.

This action stirred up a controversy that has echoed down the years. Like Lincoln's removal of McClellan, the removal of Johnston was supported by the cabinet and by the pro-administration faction in Congress but condemned by the opposition and deplored in the army.
⁶
For his part, Sherman professed to be "pleased at this change." He wrote after the war that "the Confederate Government rendered us a most valuable service" by replacing a cautious defensive strategist with a bold fighter. "This was just what we wanted," declared Sherman, "to fight on open

4
. Hood to Bragg, July 14, 1864, in
O.R.
, Ser. I, Vol. 38, pt. 5, pp. 879–80; Clifford Dowdey, ed.,
The Wartime Papers of
R. E. Lee (New York, 1961), 821–22; Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones,
How the North Won:
A
Military History of the Civil War
(Urbana, 1983), 607.

5
.
O.R.
, Ser. I, Vol. 38, pt. 5, pp. 882–83.

6
. Anti-administration newspapers attributed Johnston's removal to Davis's "cold snaky hate" for the general. One army veteran remembered that several soldiers deserted when they learned of Johnston's removal. But some soldiers agreed with an artillery lieutenant who wrote that no one "ever dreamed of Johnston falling back this far. . . . I don't believe Johnston ever did or ever will fight."
Richmond Whig
, quoted in Thomas L. Connelly,
Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee
, 1862–1865 (Baton Rouge, 1971), 405; Sam R. Watkins,
"Co. Aytch":
A
Side Show of the Big Show
(Collier Books ed., New York, 1962), 172; Hoehling,
Last Train from Atlanta
, 49, 77. For appraisals of the controversy by historians, see Connelly,
Autumn of Glory
, 391–426; Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood, A
Different Valor: The Story of General Joseph E. Johnston
(Indianapolis, 1956), 308–36; and Richard M. McMurry,
John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence
(Lexington, Ky., 1982), 116–24.

ground, on any thing like equal terms, instead of being forced to run up against prepared intrenchments."
⁷
So he said, with benefit of hindsight. But Davis, like Lincoln, preferred generals who would fight. To have lost Atlanta without a battle would have demoralized the South. And whatever else Hood's appointment meant, it meant fight.

Sure enough, two days after taking command Hood tried to squash the Yankees. As events turned out, however, it was the rebels who got squashed. After crossing the Chattahoochee, Sherman had again sent McPherson on a wide swing—this time to the left—to cut Atlanta's last rail link with the upper South. Schofield followed on a shorter arc, while Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, separated from Schofield by a gap of two miles, prepared to cross Peachtree Creek directly north of Atlanta. Hood saw his chance to hit Thomas separately, but the attack on July 20 started several hours too late to catch the bluecoats in the act of crossing the stream. Five Union divisions drove an equal number of rebels back after the bloodiest combat in the campaign thus far.

Not succeeding at first, Hood tried again. On July 21 he pulled the army back into elaborate defenses ringing the city. After dark Hood sent one corps on an exhausting all-night march to attack the exposed south flank of McPherson's Army of the Tennessee on July 22. They did, but found the flank less exposed than expected. After recovering from their initial surprise the bluecoats fought with ferocity and inflicted half as many casualties on Hood's army in one afternoon as it had suffered in ten weeks under Johnston. But the Confederates exacted a price in return: the death of McPherson, shot from his saddle when he refused to surrender after riding blindly into Confederate lines while trying to restore his own.

Though grieved by the loss of his favorite subordinate, Sherman wasted no time getting on with the job. He gave command of the Army of the Tennessee to Oliver O. Howard, a transplant from the Army of the Potomac. The one-armed Christian general from Maine took his profane midwesterners on another wide swing around the Confederate left and headed south to tear up the one remaining open railroad out of Atlanta. Hood sent a corps to stop them and readied another to follow up with a counterattack. But the Federals handled them so roughly at the Ezra Church crossroads two miles west of the city on July 28 that

7
. William T. Sherman, "The Grand Strategy of the Last Year of the War,"
Battles and Leaders
, IV, 253;
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman
, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (New York, 1886), II, 72.

the rebels had to entrench instead of continuing the attack. Nevertheless, they kept the bluecoats off the railroad.

In three battles during the past eight days Hood's 15,000 casualties were two and one-half times Sherman's 6,000. But southern valor did seem to have stopped the inexorable Yankee advance on Atlanta. Union infantry and artillery settled down for a siege, while Sherman sent his cavalry on raids to wreck the railroad far south of the city. One division of northern horsemen headed for Andersonville to liberate Union captives at the notorious prison, but rebel cavalry headed them off halfway. Six hundred of these Yankee troopers did reach Andersonville—as prisoners. Confederate cavalry and militia prevented other Union detachments from doing more than minimal damage to the railroad, while southern raids in turn on Sherman's supply line fared little better.

Civilians continued to flee the city; some of those who remained were killed by northern shells that rained down on their streets. "War is war, and not popularity-seeking," wrote Sherman in pursuance of his career as Georgia's most unpopular visitor.
⁸
The defiant courage of Atlantans who stayed raised the spirits of southerners everywhere. Much of the Confederate press viewed Hood's attacks as victories. The
Atlanta Intelligencer
(published in Macon) predicted that "Sherman will suffer the greatest defeat that any Yankee General has suffered during the war. . . . The Yankee forces will disappear before Atlanta before the end of August." The "cheering" news from Georgia convinced a War Department clerk in Richmond that "Sherman's army is
doomed."
⁹
Richmond newspapers exulted that "Atlanta is now felt to be safe, and Georgia will soon be free from the foe. . . . Everything seems to have changed in that State from the deepest despondency."
¹⁰

Opinion north of the Potomac reflected the other side of this coin of southern euphoria. As Sherman closed in on Atlanta during July, northern newspapers had daily predicted the city's capture before the next edition. By early August the forecast had moderated to "a question of a few days," and one reporter confessed himself "somewhat puzzled at the

8
.
Memoirs of Sherman
, II, 111. It should be noted that factories, rail facilities, warehouses, and other military targets—including artillery emplacements—were scattered among residential areas of Atlanta.

9
.
Intelligencer
quoted in Hoehling,
Last Train from Atlanta
, 325, and in Samuel Carter III,
The Siege of Atlanta, 1864
(New York, 1973), 275; Jones, War
Clerk's
Diary(Swiggett), II, 259.

10
. Quoted in Hoehling,
Last Train from Atlanta
, 167, 251.

stubborn front presented by the enemy." By the middle of the month a Boston newspaper expressed "much apprehension" while the
New York Times
warned against "these terrible fits of despondency, into which we plunge after each of our reverses and disappointments." A Wisconsin soldier, formerly confident, wrote home on August 11 that "we make but little progress toward Atlanta, and it may be some time before we take the place." In New York a prominent member of the Sanitary Commission feared that "both Grant and Sherman are on the eve of disaster."
¹¹

II

Indeed, Grant's siege of Petersburg seemed even less successful during those dog days of summer than Sherman's operations against Atlanta. Soldiers on both sides burrowed ever deeper in the trenches at Petersburg to escape the daily toll exacted by sharpshooters and mortars. Grant did not cease his efforts to interdict Lee's supply lines and break through the defenses. During the latter half of June the rebels turned back an infantry drive and a cavalry raid that tried to cut Richmond's remaining three railroads, though the Yankees managed to break all three temporarily. In these actions many of the exhausted veterans and inexperienced new troops in the Army of the Potomac performed poorly. The vaunted 2nd Corps, bled to a shadow of its former self, made an especially bad showing. And soon afterward Grant had to send away his best remaining unit, the 6th Corps.

This happened because Jubal Early's 15,000 rebels, after driving David Hunter away from Lynchburg in June, had marched down the Shenandoah Valley and crossed the Potomac on July 6. They bowled over a scratch force of Federals at the Monocacy River east of Frederick on July 9 and marched unopposed toward Washington. This seemed a stunning reversal of the fortunes of war. Northern hopes of capturing Richmond were suddenly replaced by fears for the safety of their own capital. The rebels appeared in front of the Washington defenses five miles north of the White House on July 11. Except for convalescents, militia, and a few odds and ends of army units there were no troops to man them, for Grant had pulled the garrison out for service in Virginia. But the fortifications ringing the capital were immensely strong, and Grant, in response

11
. Northern newspapers quoted in
ibid.
, 92, 99, 107, 126, 221, 278, 330; Wisconsin soldier quoted in
ibid.
, 290; Strong,
Diary
, 474.

to frantic appeals from the War Department, quickly sent the 6th Corps to Washington. These hardened veterans filed into the works just in time to discourage Early from assaulting them.

During the skirmishing on July 12 a distinguished visitor complete with stovepipe hat appeared at Fort Stevens to witness for the first time the sort of combat into which he had sent a million men over the past three years. Despite warnings, President Lincoln repeatedly stood to peer over the parapet as sharpshooters' bullets whizzed nearby. Out of the corner of his eye a 6th Corps captain—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.—noticed this ungainly civilian popping up. Without recognizing him, Holmes shouted "get down, you damn fool, before you get shot!" Amused by this irreverent command, Lincoln got down and stayed down.
¹²
With the 6th Corps in his front and other Union troops gathering in his rear, Early wisely decided that it was time to return to Virginia. He did so with only a few scratches, much to Grant's and Lincoln's disgust, because the forces chasing him were divided among four command jurisdictions that could never quite coordinate their efforts.

During their raid some of Early's soldiers made as little distinction between military and private property as did many northern soldiers in the South. Indeed, they went the Union invaders one better, for while the latter often seized or burned whatever tangible goods they could find they rarely took Confederate money, which was almost worthless. But northern greenbacks were another matter; the rebels levied $20,000 on Hagerstown and $200,000 on Frederick, besides drinking up the contents of Francis Preston Blair's wine cellar, burning down the Silver Spring home of his son Montgomery the postmaster-general, and putting the torch to the private residence of Maryland's governor. To add further injury to insult, on July 30 two of Early's cavalry brigades rode into Pennsylvania, demanded $500,000 from the citizens of Chambers-burg as restitution for Hunter's pillaging in Virginia, and burned the town when they refused to pay.