Chapter Twenty-Two   

I WANT A BOLD PUSH FOR ATLANTA

On June 3, Sherman’s forces began entering Acworth, a Western & Atlantic town located a number of miles south of the Allatoona Pass, where the General decided to establish his headquarters. It was the same day that General Grant launched a grim and costly frontal assault against Lee’s army east of Richmond, at a place called Cold Harbor. The Army of the Potomac suffered 7,000 casualties during the attack, most of them in less than thirty minutes, and “Cold Harbor” became a Civil War byword for senseless slaughter. Grant later said that he regretted the attack more than any he ever ordered. Although Grant had driven the Rebel army to the outskirts of the Confederate capital, the Union forces had suffered an average of nearly 2,000 casualties per day since the inception of the campaign. The thirty-day total of well over 50,000 men was several times the losses of Sherman’s command during the same period.¹

Sherman defended his friend, whom some critics characterized as “Butcher” Grant, telling Ellen that “Grant’s Battles in Virginia are ‘fearful but necessary.’” He said “immense slaughter” was required to prove that “our Northern armies can & will fight.” Yet Sherman was not about to risk his own forces on such a scale, because “at this distance from home we can not afford the losses of such terrible assaults as Grant has made.” Sherman was far deeper into enemy territory than Grant, and in the event of defeat or crippling losses, he would face correspondingly greater difficulties in extricating his army. This fact surely weighed on Sherman’s mind as the campaign progressed. It limited his offensive flexibility, and largely dictated a campaign of maneuver—with all maneuvers governed, to some degree, by the parameter of the railroad.2

Sherman was not going up against Robert E. Lee. But otherwise, his campaign was the more challenging endeavor in Grant’s two-pronged strategy for crushing the Rebels with unrelenting, simultaneous pressure against their two major armies. Being so much farther into enemy territory than Grant—who could rely on short and secure communications—Sherman depended on a single-track railroad, some 350 miles long, for many essential supplies; and those rails grew longer with every advance. He knew that if his railroad communications failed, the campaign would fail, and Grant’s strategy for winning the war would fail.

“There was great danger, always in my mind,” Sherman later recalled, “that [Nathan Bedford] Forrest would collect a heavy cavalry command in Mississippi . . . and break up our railroad below Nashville.” Sherman expressed this critical concern to his brother, saying that “my long and single line of railroad to my rear, of limited capacity, is the delicate point of my game.” He told Ellen: “Thus far we have been well supplied, and I hope it will continue, though I expect to hear every day of Forrest breaking into Tennessee.” He had ordered an expedition against Forrest from Memphis, hoping to “give him full employment.”³

Forrest did find full employment. In northeast Mississippi at Brice’s Cross Roads, he clashed with the Union forces from Memphis, but the result was not at all what Sherman had sought. News came from Secretary of War Stanton on June 14: “We have just received from General [Cadwallader] Washburn a report of battle between [Samuel] Sturgis and Forrest, in which our forces were defeated with great loss.” Stanton added that Washburn claimed, “Forrest is in pursuit.” The report was not exaggerated. Brilliantly handling his smaller command, the Confederate cavalry leader utterly routed the superior Union forces. Sherman replied that he could not understand how Forrest, with only his cavalry, could have defeated 8,000 Federal troops, of which a substantial portion were infantry.⁴

Sherman told Stanton that he would have the Sturgis expedition critically examined, and if Sturgis was at fault, “he shall have no mercy at my hands.” Perplexed, he said of Sturgis’s defeat: “I can not but believe he had troops enough. I know I would have been willing to attempt the same task with that force; but Forrest is the very devil, and I think he has got some of our troops under cower.” He assured Stanton that he had two officers at Memphis, Andrew Jackson Smith and Joseph A. Mower, who “will fight all the time.” Sherman concluded that keeping Forrest off his vital rail line required spending some serious money, and probably taking heavy casualties. The redheaded commander believed he had no alternative.5

Determined to deal with Forrest decisively, Sherman declared to Stanton: “I will order them [Smith and Mower] to make up a force and go out and follow Forrest to the death, if it cost 10,000 lives and breaks the treasury.” While Sherman never succeeded in killing Forrest, his expeditions from Memphis accomplished the Union objective. He kept the Rebel commander so busy in Mississippi that he was not able to attack the Yankee rail communications in Tennessee. Strategically, Sherman would continue to win “the delicate point” of his game.⁶

The Federal commander also got an assist from the enemy. Joe Johnston, Jefferson Davis and Braxton Bragg, military advisor to the Confederate president, all knew that striking hard at Sherman’s railroad and inflicting major destruction should be a high priority. There the agreement ended. Davis and Bragg thought that Johnston’s own cavalry forces were strong enough both to cover the Army of Tennessee’s flanks and break Sherman’s railroad. Johnston firmly demurred, believing that he should keep all of his cavalry close at hand, and convinced that the Southern cavalry in Mississippi and Alabama, under the overall command of Stephen D. Lee, was better positioned for such work anyway. However, Johnston had no authority over Lee’s forces, and Jefferson Davis, the only power who might have intervened, did not. Lee was not inclined to send his cavalry elsewhere while Northern expeditions from Memphis were sallying forth into the region where he commanded. Consequently, while Confederate raiders did break Sherman’s rail lines occasionally and briefly, they never launched a truly strong effort with the potential of dealing out severe, long-term destruction upon the Federal rails.7

While Sherman at Acworth mulled over his next move, the Union armies enjoyed a short respite from the hard marching and fighting of late May. Andrew McCornack told his family, “The boys are all in good spirits.” The general opinion of the troops was that “this campaign will end the war.” McCornack hoped it would, but added, “I have not got that idea yet.” He believed “old Billy T.,” as he fondly referred to Sherman, was more than a match for the Rebels. Seeing Sherman on May 30, he declared, “He is along the lines all the time.” McCornack closed his June 8 letter with “I must clean up my shoot[ing] stick [rifled musket] and stew some green apples.”⁸

If McCornack and “the boys” were all in good spirits, it was in spite of the nasty weather, which soured the attitude of some men, both Yank and Reb. June had brought rain, “continuously for seventeen days,” according to General Howard, turning the roads into quagmires. Sherman told Ellen that the rain not only came down hard but sometimes cold, and one day he wrote Grant that the rain was pouring “as though it had no intention ever to stop.”⁹

Still, by June 11, the hardworking Union repair crews had the rails open to Big Shanty, a little town south of Acworth. Sergeant McCornack noted that “we get full rations of everything now,” and again declared his faith in “old Billy T., who is a bit too sharp” for Johnston. “He always flanks him,” appreciatively observed McCornack. Another heartening development was the arrival of Frank Blair’s corps, 10,000 strong, which made up for the casualties suffered during the May campaigning. “My army is stronger today than when I first sallied forth from Chattanooga,” Cump assured Ellen. He declared, “Every man in America should be aroused, and all who will not help should now be put in petticoats & deprived of the Right to vote.”¹⁰

Sherman relished another piece of good news. Upon learning that a son, Charles Celestine Sherman, had arrived, he told Ellen: “I am glad that you are over the terrible labor,” and hoped “it is the last you will have to Endure.” He was “pleased to know the Sex of the child, as he must succeed to the place left vacant by Willy, though I fear we will never again be able to lavish on any one the love we bore for him.” Once more Sherman repeated what he had already said several times: “I agree with you that we should retain Willy’s name vacant for his memory, and that though dead to the world, he yet lives fresh in our memories.”11

Sherman’s mind often ran to thoughts of Willy. Only a few days later, writing Ellen again, he fervently expressed his hopes for the newborn: “May the child grow up and possess the courage, confidence and kindness of heart of our poor Willy.” Sherman declared that “I would gladly surrender all the honors & fame of this life if I could see him once more in his loving confidence & faith in us, but we must now think of the living & prepare them for our Exodus.” He closed with a striking acknowledgment of the hatred with which Southerners regarded him: “I know the country swarms with thousands who would shoot me & thank their God they had slain a monster.” Yet he asserted, and perhaps truthfully, that he had been “more kindly disposed to the People of the South than any general officer of the whole army.”¹²

Meanwhile, on the night of June 4, Joe Johnston had fallen back to a new line, which ran from Brush Mountain, east of the Western & Atlantic, to Lost Mountain on the west, with Pine Mountain standing out in a salient near the center. Hood’s corps held the Rebel right, Hardee’s corps the left, and Polk’s corps was in the middle. From atop Pine Mountain, Confederate officers had a good view of Sherman’s forces, which had advanced beyond Big Shanty and pressed close to the Southern lines. By June 14, recalled Sherman, “the rain slackened, and we occupied a continuous line of ten miles, entrenched, conforming to the irregular position of the enemy, when I reconnoitered with a view to make a break in their line.” Passing Pine Mountain, he spotted a group of Grayclads on the height, brazenly viewing the Union position. Because of the distance, Sherman could not tell who they were, not even, he wrote in his memoirs, if they were officers. “How saucy they are,” he remarked, and ordered artillery fire placed on the summit to compel the enemy to take cover.¹³

Not only were the men atop the mountain Confederate officers, they were the commander of the army, and two of his three corps commanders, along with several staff officers. They had been cautioned that Federal artillery was zeroed in on the height. Sherman’s order to open fire was quickly obeyed, and the first shot was a near miss—which sent Johnston, Hardee and indeed everyone except Leonidas Polk scrambling for cover. Polk moved more slowly, and either the second or third shot struck the bishop-general in the mid-to-upper body. He died instantly. Polk’s mangled remains were carried down the hill, and Johnston’s forces mourned the loss of the corps commander whom many Confederates respected as a strong moral force in the army.

Polk’s military competence is another matter. Steven Woodworth wrote that the shot which killed Polk “was one of the worst shots fired for the Union cause during the entire course of the war.” Polk was worth more to the Federals while ineptly commanding Rebel troops than he was dead. I largely agree with Woodworth’s assessment: “Polk’s incompetence . . . had consistently hamstrung Confederate operations west of the Appalachians, while his special relationship with the president made the bishop-general untouchable.”14

Both during and after the war, Southerners who damned Sherman as if he were the devil personified spread the story that the Union commander himself had sighted the gun and pulled the lanyard to fire the shot that killed Polk. This accusation is ridiculous. Yet the death of Polk seemed not to trouble Sherman in the least. He seldom related well to men of the cloth, regardless of their denomination. He wrote General Halleck: “We killed Bishop Polk yesterday, and have made good progress today.” It was the kind of statement that unreconstructed Rebels would later relish as evidence of Sherman’s cruelty.¹⁵

General Hardee had advised Johnston to abandon Pine Mountain, pointing out that Union artillery commanded the height. This was the reason the Confederate generals were examining the area when Polk was killed. Within a short time Johnston pulled the Rebel army back another two or three miles, contracting his line into a ragged semicircle centered on Kennesaw Mountain and covering the Western & Atlantic north and west of Marietta. William Wing Loring, who was temporarily leading Polk’s corps, occupied the center, with Hood on the right astride the railroad while Hardee’s corps held the left flank. The new position appeared stronger than the one just abandoned—probably as strong as any Johnston had held since the campaign began.16

Sherman contemplated his next move with some frustration. He stretched out his lines, probing to see if he might turn the Southern flanks, particularly the left flank, the better to threaten the Rebel rail line at Marietta. With the application of sufficient Yankee pressure, Joe Johnston might yet retreat to the Chattahoochee. While McPherson extended his lines eastward and Thomas held the center, Sherman sent Schofield, reinforced by Hooker’s corps, feeling for the enemy’s western flank. The movement by Schofield and Hooker got Johnston’s attention.

The Rebel commander pulled Hood’s corps from his eastern flank, temporarily manning the position with dismounted cavalry, and sent Hood’s infantry hurrying westward along the rear base of Kennesaw Mountain in an effort to block the Union turning movement. Perhaps assuming that he had outflanked the flankers, Hood, without any reconnaissance, impetuously decided to attack. The Yankees enjoyed superior numbers, and Schofield had his Blueclads defending a ridge behind quickly improvised breastworks. The resulting clash, known as Kolb’s Farm (also called Culp’s Farm), cost the Confederates approximately 1,000 casualties.¹⁷

Private Noah G. Hill, 123rd New York, penned a letter to his father describing the battle, in which his regiment had been posted as skirmishers, well in advance of the main Union line. About 5:30 p.m., according to Hill, all hell broke loose, “and they came near getting me.” He gave an interesting account of the Rebel attack, writing, “We were so close to them [when on the skirmish line] that we could hear them talk. They were in the bushes, and we were in front of them about six rods, when [their officers] gave the order to go forward. We all jumped up and fired, and then fell back fast. We laid some of them low you can bet.” Hill said the Confederates then mounted three, maybe four charges, and he was thankful when at last they “gave it up” after having suffered “a great slaughter.” Southern casualties were about three times as many as the Northern. Hill’s letter is stamped: “God Save the Union.”¹⁸

The Battle of Kolb’s Farm further fueled the bad blood between Sherman and Hooker. Late in the afternoon of June 22, Hooker sent a brief message to Sherman: “We have repulsed two heavy attacks and feel confident, our only apprehension being from our extreme right flank. Three entire corps are in front of us.” Sherman knew there were only three corps in Johnston’s entire army. Beyond a doubt, all three were not in front of Hooker, and Hooker’s concern about the right flank (whatever precisely Fighting Joe may have had in mind) seemed to Sherman an unwarranted insinuation, directed at Schofield, that he was not doing his job.19

The following morning Schofield was with Hooker, near the point where their commands joined, when Sherman rode up in the pouring rain. All three men stepped inside a little church close at hand, where Sherman handed Schofield Hooker’s message of the previous afternoon. According to Sherman’s account in his memoirs, Schofield “was very angry, and pretty sharp words” passed between him and Hooker. Sherman said Schofield claimed that the Confederate attack struck his troops before Hooker’s, and “offered to go out and show me that the dead men of his advance division ([Milo S.] Hascall’s) were lying farther out than any of Hooker’s.” After Sherman was dead, Schofield wrote in his memoirs that he “did not remember” being particularly angry, although he said Sherman was.²⁰

Sherman rode away from the church with Hooker, telling him “that such a thing must not occur again,” in a reprimand “more gentle than the occasion demanded.” From that time, claimed Sherman, Hooker “began to sulk.” Sherman said that Hooker came “from the East with great fame as a ‘fighter,’ and at Chattanooga he was glorified by his ‘battle above the clouds,’ which I fear turned his head.” Hooker was “jealous of all the army commanders, because in years, former rank, and experience, he thought he was our superior.”²¹

DESPITE HIS IMPRESSIVE successes in forcing Johnston to give ground, Sherman grew increasingly impatient. For a few days following the engagement at Kolb’s Farm, the two armies faced each other in what progressively seemed like a stalemate, while their artillery, as if symbolizing a deadlock, roared all along the lines day and night. One Union soldier thought the sound similar to “a continual long roll,” and said that Kennesaw presented “a magnificent spectacle” at night, as “sheets of white flame” poured forth from the Southerners’ guns on the mountain, while shells rose from the Federal batteries, “like so many rockets,” and arched toward the enemy on the heights. Above the scene were “weird, unearthly reflections on the clouds.”22

A few days earlier, Sherman had written General Halleck that he was studying the Confederate position “and am now inclined to feign on both flanks and assault the center. It may cost us dear, but in results would surpass an attempt to pass around. . . . If by assaulting, I can break his line,” Sherman concluded, “I see no reason why it would not produce a decisive effect.” By June 24, Sherman had made his decision, and issued an attack order for the twenty-seventh.²³

It was the first time in the campaign that Sherman ordered a frontal assault against a position that he knew was fortified—a thing that, as he previously stated several times, he was not going to attempt, because the casualties would be too heavy. On June 5, for example, he had written Halleck, “I will not run head on [against the enemy] . . . fortifications.” A week later he told Halleck, “We cannot risk the heavy losses of an assault at this distance from our base.” His change of mind came only after days of mulling over several tormenting factors. He worried, as from the onset of the campaign, that if he did not press Johnston strongly enough, the Confederate commander might send reinforcements to Lee’s army. A lengthy standoff along the Kennesaw Mountain line just might prompt Johnston to dispatch aid to the hard-pressed Army of Northern Virginia. A stalemate, whether from the perspective of Sherman’s own campaign or the possible impact on Grant’s, was simply unacceptable.²⁴

Sherman also seemed concerned that flanking maneuvers might be undermining the combat effectiveness of his forces. Confiding to Grant that McPherson had been “a little over cautious” at Snake Creek Gap, he said his “chief source of trouble” lay with the Army of the Cumberland. “A fresh furrow in a plowed field,” he claimed, would cause them to entrench. Again and again he had tried to make the point that “we must assail . . . we are on the offensive.” He closed by assuring Grant, “You may go on with full assurance that I will continue to press Johnston as fast as I can . . . inspire motion into a large . . . and slow (by habit) army.”25

Still another factor heavily weighing on Sherman’s mind was the difficulty he had been experiencing in trying to get around the Rebel flanks. Making his point with exaggeration, Sherman told Halleck that “Johnston must have full fifty miles of connected trenches, with abatis and finished batteries.” Stymied in his effort to turn the enemy’s western flank at Kennesaw, he was not willing to again cut loose from the railroad for a wide-ranging turning movement, like he did in getting around the Allatoona Pass—especially with the roads, many of which were poor under the best of conditions, in even worse shape from days and days of rain.²⁶

Sherman also learned, thanks to McPherson’s probing efforts, that when Hood marched westward to check the flanking threat of Schofield and Hooker, Loring’s Rebel corps had then shifted eastward to cover a portion of the entrenchments vacated by Hood. Overall, the Confederate line was stretched thin, extending for a distance of some eight miles. Sherman believed it must be relatively weak somewhere. If he suddenly struck at Johnston’s apparent strength, aggressively attacking in the center of those fortified heights—a tactic from which previously he had altogether refrained—the Southern commander might be taken aback. Surprise, one of the most important principles of generalship, sometimes achieves results far out of proportion to both the strength committed and the effort expended. Doubtless Sherman remembered the startling triumph at Missionary Ridge, when Union infantry, storming a presumably impregnable height, surprised the Rebels and thoroughly routed them. Victory on such a scale at Kennesaw might send the enemy in pell-mell retreat to the Chattahoochee.²⁷

The thought of appearing predictable to Johnston was on Sherman’s mind as well. In his campaign report, he wrote, “An army to be efficient must not settle down to a single mode of offense.” He did not want the Rebel commander believing that William Tecumseh Sherman would never attack a defensive position head-on. Possibly dovetailing with this concern, he knew that some critics described him as “not a fighting general.” A frontal attack on Kennesaw would go far in negating any criticism that he would never do anything except maneuver.28

Sherman decided that the assault would go in against the left center of the Confederate position. If he “could thrust a strong head of column through at that point, by pushing it boldly and rapidly for two and one half miles, it would reach the railroad below Marietta, [and] cut off the enemy’s right and center from its line of retreat.” Thus Sherman convinced himself that a frontal assault against the Kennesaw defenses was a sensible endeavor. The General wrote that he consulted with all three army commanders, who agreed that the Union lines could not be prudently stretched out any longer, and “therefore there was no alternative but to attack ‘fortified lines,’ a thing carefully avoided up to that time.” All may have agreed that the Federal lines were stretched to the maximum. They probably did, according to Schofield’s memoirs, but Sherman’s facile pen too readily swept onward, asserting that his lieutenants also favored a frontal assault.²⁹

The sun rose in a cloudless sky on Monday, June 27, 1864, heralding the onset of a hot and humid day. At eight o’clock the Federal artillery, more than 200 guns strong, began a roaring bombardment of the enemy mountainside, which continued for approximately a quarter hour. “Hell has broke loose in Georgia, sure enough!” yelled a Southerner as the Union barrage got under way. When the Yankee guns ceased, the Blueclad infantry moved to the attack. One corps of the Army of the Tennessee struck two-mile-long Kennesaw Mountain itself, going in primarily against Pigeon Hill, the lowest of the three peaks defining Kennesaw. Another corps, from the Army of the Cumberland, assaulted Johnston’s lines about a mile farther to the right. Simultaneously, elements of the Army of the Tennessee demonstrated against the Rebel eastern flank, and Schofield’s Army of the Ohio feigned an attack against the enemy’s left flank.³⁰

By mid-to-late morning both assaults, after suffering significant losses, had failed to break through the formidable Confederate entrenchments. Among the mortally wounded was Colonel Daniel McCook, Sherman’s former law partner. Early in the afternoon, Sherman asked General Thomas, “Do you think you can carry any part of the enemy’s line today?” Sherman said he would order another effort if Thomas thought he could succeed. Thomas replied that the Rebel works were “exceeding strong; in fact so strong that they can not be carried by assault except by immense sacrifice . . . even if they can be carried at all.” Bitingly, he concluded, “We have already lost heavily today . . . one or two more such assaults would use up this army.”31

Sherman reported that Union casualties were “nearly 3,000, while we inflicted comparatively little loss to the enemy.” McPherson reported a loss of about 500, while Thomas suffered casualties of approximately 2,000. Sherman did not ignore General Thomas’s remark that “one or two more such assaults would use up this army.” Pointedly, he replied that “our loss is small, compared with some of those [in the] East. It should not in the least discourage us. At times assaults are necessary and inevitable.” Later he sent a follow-up: “Go where we may, we will find the breast-works and abatis, unless we move more rapidly than we have heretofore.”³²

Regardless of such a declaration to Thomas about the usefulness of assaults, Sherman, after Kennesaw, had no intention of making another. In his message to Halleck on the night of June 27, he stated, “I can press Johnston and keep him from re-inforcing Lee, but to assault him in position will cost us more lives than we can spare.” Clearly Sherman misjudged the situation when he ordered the attack at Kennesaw—although no more than other commanders of renown have sometimes done, like Grant at Cold Harbor, or Lee at Malvern Hill or Gettysburg. Fortunately, Sherman’s casualties were not comparable to the losses in those futile attacks. Kennesaw became prominent, not because of Union casualties, which relative to Grant’s campaign were, as one historian expressed the matter, “the small change of everyday operations.” Rather, Kennesaw Mountain is strikingly conspicuous because Sherman, after an established pattern of maneuver, suddenly attempted a frontal assault—and then never tried one again.33

While the Kennesaw lines were stronger than Sherman thought they might be, his assaulting columns did carry to within a few yards of the enemy trenches at some places. He telegraphed Halleck: “The assault I made was no mistake.” If the attack “had . . . been made with one-fourth more vigor . . . I would have put the head of George Thomas’ whole army right through Johnston’s . . . lines on the best ground for go[ing] ahead, while my entire forces were well in hand on roads converging to my then object, Marietta.” Sherman markedly claimed, “Had [Brigadier General Charles] Harker and [Colonel Daniel] McCook not been struck down so early, the assault would have succeeded, and then the battle would have all been in our favor, on account of our superiority of numbers, position, and initiative.”³⁴

Just possibly the attack may have come nearer succeeding than Sherman’s critics have admitted. Thomas wrote Sherman at 6:00 p.m. on June 27: “Both General Harker and Colonel McCook were wounded on the enemy’s breast-works, and all say had they not been wounded, we would have driven the enemy from his works.” Sherman and Thomas may be dismissed by some as proverbial Monday morning quarterbacks. Yet sometimes the issue of battle, like a sporting event, actually is determined by a single, perhaps even marginal factor. Change that factor and the conclusion may be different—although probably not at Kennesaw.

General Howard observed that the Confederate position was stronger, both naturally and artificially, than Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg. Also, the narrow-fronted assault formation, in brigade columns, negated Union strength. Command leadership was significantly weakened, not only by the mortal wounding of Harker and McCook, but by incompetence and fear in some instances as well. William Farries, a combat-wise sergeant in the Army of the Cumberland, bitterly assessed the Kennesaw battle: “Our division was so poorly handled that the Rebs repulsed us with but little trouble.” Declaring that he “never saw men fall so fast in all my life,” the sergeant said the Southerners “had a cross fire on us with both artillery and musketry, and instead of being ordered forward on the ‘double quick,’ we were halted and told to lie down. What they [the officers] were waiting for I could never ascertain.” Farries said the men finally “got up and ran back to our breast-works without orders. Our loss,” he cuttingly concluded, “will show whether the men acted rightly or not.” A mile to the east, where the Army of the Tennessee attacked, Casey McWayne told of a major who, having ordered his company to advance, soon headed for the rear. A captain took command, but uncertain what to do, ordered a halt, leaving the men desperately seeking cover from the intense Confederate fire.35

Whatever Sherman, in the depths of his soul, really thought about his chances of victory at Kennesaw, he had the good sense to realize that any opportunity he may have had to break Johnston on those heights was gone forever. However tough he sometimes sounded, Sherman was genuinely concerned about sparing the lives of his soldiers to the greatest degree consistent with success, and he did not want them to pay the price of risking another attack like June 27. Writing Ellen soon afterward, he deplored “the awful amount of death & destruction that now stalks abroad,” while decrying the war’s impact on his own psyche: “I begin to regard the death & mangling of a couple thousand soldiers as a small affair, a kind of morning Dash—and it may be well that we become so hardened.”³⁶

But Sherman was not a man who easily became “so hardened” to death, whether death among the forces he commanded, or his family and friends; and this the context of his many letters clearly reveals. Writing Minnie on the same day that he penned the above to Ellen, and mentioning her new baby brother, he seized the chance to speak again of Willy: “I fear we all loved Willy too much to let another supply his place.” He confided that he thought Lizzie “is destined to be a Stay at home, whilst you and I will be gad abouts.” Then he assured Minnie that “I will keep my promise to you, if you stay another year at your present school, to take you myself to New York, and give you a year at the best Seminary I can find there.” Yet he immediately added, “I ought not to make many promises, for I daily see too many officers buried by the road side, or carried to the rear maimed and mangled to count on much of a future.”³⁷

............

SHERMAN WAS PLEASED to learn that Schofield, in making a demonstration against the Southern left at Kennesaw, had actually prepared the way for a smooth resumption of his flanking maneuvers. Taking advantage of the enemy’s preoccupation with defending against the assaults of McPherson and Thomas, Schofield had pushed forward Jacob Cox’s division for some two miles, gaining a position from which to threaten Johnston’s line of retreat. Sherman quickly made plans to exploit the opportunity. “Satisfied of the bloody cost of attacking entrenched lines,” he later wrote, “I at once thought of moving the whole army to the railroad at a point (Fulton) about ten miles below Marietta, or to the Chattahoochee River itself.” This would mean cutting loose from the railroad again, for several days, and Sherman remarked that “General Thomas, as usual, shook his head, deeming it risky to leave the railroad.”38

A confident Sherman had made his decision, however, issuing orders to bring forward provisions and forage to fill the army wagons with ten days of supplies. Prudence dictated that Schofield’s small Army of the Ohio should be reinforced immediately. Thus Sherman sent McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee swinging to the right, not only to strengthen Schofield, but also because he wanted McPherson’s hard-marching force to spearhead the turning movement. He anticipated that Johnston, once he realized that Sherman’s strong flanking arm was nearer to Atlanta than he, would fall back from the Kennesaw line, to defend the railroad and the river.³⁹

McPherson’s move got under way on July 2, and the Confederate commander, who soon detected the march, realized that he must either retreat or come out of his Kennesaw entrenchments and attack Sherman in the open field. Sherman said he would welcome the latter but did not expect it to happen. As he anticipated, and even sooner than expected, Joe Johnston once more chose to retreat. Again the Union commander had flanked the Grayclads out of a very formidable position. During McPherson’s march, a disgusted Rebel soldier, taken prisoner by the 103rd Illinois Infantry, memorably voiced his vexation at Sherman’s strategy: “Sherman’ll never go to hell,” he growled; “he will flank the devil and make heaven in spite of the guards.” Many of Sherman’s soldiers had a different take on their commander’s flanking maneuvers. Writing the “folks at home,” Sergeant McWayne remarked, “If you-ns could see we-uns, you would think we live bully. Dog-’on if we don’t. We find but few folks at home. They say (those that we see) that ‘you-ns flink our men, so they have to fall back.’ Bully for the ‘flink,’ I say! It saves a great many hard fought battles.”40

Sherman was up “by the earliest dawn of the 3rd of July,” training a large, tripod-mounted glass on Kennesaw, and watching the army’s pickets cautiously making their way up the mountainside. Once at the top, he saw the Union soldiers excitedly running along the crest. The Confederates were gone. Animated by the thought that Johnston’s forces were out in the open and possibly vulnerable to his superior numbers, Sherman acted immediately. “I roused my staff, and started them off with orders in every direction for a pursuit . . . hoping to catch Johnston in the confusion of retreat, especially at the crossing of the Chattahoochee River.”⁴¹

Not for a moment did Sherman imagine that Johnston might throw up fortifications, with the Chattahoochee at his back. The pursuit, however, was not nearly aggressive enough to satisfy the fired-up commander. Not only was the infantry advance too cautious. Worse, when Sherman rode into Marietta, soon after the enemy rear guard had moved out, and learned that most of the Blueclad cavalry, which was expected to be leading the pursuit under command of Kenner Garrard, was either stalled in the town or still coming up, he was enraged. “Where’s Gar’d?” he roared. “Where in hell’s Gar’d?” When Garrard appeared, Sherman had little interest or time for the cavalry commander’s explanations of tardiness. With strong language, he hurried Garrard forward, incensed that Johnston might already be escaping across the waterway.⁴²

To his surprise, Sherman soon learned that Johnston had simply fallen back to a formidably entrenched position on the north bank of the Chattahoochee, which covered the Western & Atlantic Railroad crossing and several pontoon bridges. From a vantage point in the second story of a house on the Federal picket line—where he admitted being very nearly shot, as the structure was “perfectly riddled with musket-balls,” and even hit by cannon shot—Sherman evaluated the enemy position. Later he pronounced it “one of the strongest pieces of field fortification I ever saw.”43

Extensive abatis, deep ditches and impressive redoubts indicated that the line had been under preparation for some time. From a slave who managed to hide for hours under a log, and at last escape into the Union lines, Sherman learned that approximately 1,000 slaves had prepared and strengthened the position. The main enemy defenses extended along the north bank of the Chattahoochee, both right and left of the railroad bridge, for about six miles. Cavalry and pickets monitored both flanks beyond the main line, while artillery, and occasionally a fort, were placed at fords and ferries. Johnston hoped that his massive bridgehead would prove both impregnable to frontal assault, and invulnerable to any flanking maneuver that Sherman might attempt. Sherman said “the case” needed to be “studied a little.”⁴⁴

Meanwhile, the strange episode of newspaper reporter DeB. Randolph Keim had been unfolding. Sherman had forbidden newsmen to accompany his armies. Surprisingly he made an exception in the instance of Keim, probably because the reporter informed him that he was a friend of James McPherson. All went well for a while, and the only information that appeared in Northern newspapers about Sherman’s campaign was very general in nature—and to the effect that success attended his every endeavor. Sherman himself, as previously noted, at times framed harmless information for public release. Then an article appeared in the New York Herald, dated June 23, 1864, which apparently came from Keim and revealed that Sherman could read the enemy’s signal code. Understandably, Sherman was infuriated, for he knew the Confederates managed to acquire Northern papers as quickly as he did. General Thomas was equally incensed, and told Sherman that he thought “Keim should at once be executed as a spy.”⁴⁵

Assured by Thomas that “Keim is not harbored in the Army of the Cumberland, and I know not where he is,” Sherman sent an order to McPherson to arrest Keim “and have him delivered to General Thomas to be tried as a spy.” Sherman instructed McPherson: “Let this be done at once, for publishing in a New York paper . . . that our signal officers can interpret the signals of the enemy.” McPherson arrested Keim and sent the man to Thomas; but also, for whatever reasons, McPherson interceded with Thomas on behalf of the reporter. Thomas concluded that because of McPherson’s “recommendation of leniency of punishment . . . I will have him sent north of the Ohio River, with orders not to return to this army during the war.”46

How much, if anything, Sherman knew about the exchanges between McPherson and Thomas, and what he thought about the banishment, seem impossible to determine. Whatever Sherman thought, he apparently did not pursue the matter. At least Keim was gone, and Sherman doubtless came away from the incident fully convinced that no reporter should be trusted. For his part, Keim revealed no animosity toward Sherman, later writing a favorable assessment of the General’s life. Perhaps Keim, after the passage of some years, held no grudge against Sherman.⁴⁷

During late June and early July, although focused on the Confederates at Kennesaw and then at the Chattahoochee, Sherman was growing increasingly concerned about Ellen’s well-being. After learning from her brother Phil about the birth of their son, as earlier noted, Sherman had received no letter from Ellen herself. Knowing her health had been fragile, he became all the more worried after receiving a letter from Phil’s wife, indicating that Ellen had been seriously ill after the delivery of the child. He wrote Phil, telling him that he had not received a letter from Ellen in more than two months, and that “she never before neglected to write as now.” He said the mails “are pretty regular,” and the telegraph “is to my tent.” Declaring that “I hear from all parts of the world daily, but can get nothing from Lancaster,” he implored his brother-in-law, “If Ellen be really too unwell to write, I wish you would see that someone tells me the truth for I have enough care & responsibility without the uneasiness . . . from absolute silence at home.”⁴⁸

Supplying and directing 100,000 men at war, while campaigning deep into enemy territory, constituted an awesome responsibility. Regardless of family concerns, Sherman knew he had to get on with the task at hand. The General was a quick study, particularly when the issue involved military maneuvering. He soon formulated a good plan to resolve the Chattahoochee problem. Rightly expecting “every possible resistance” to a crossing, he decided “to feign on the right, but actually to cross over by the left.”49

With McPherson’s army, Sherman mounted a strong and convincing demonstration downriver from the Western & Atlantic bridge. McPherson’s forces reached the Chattahoochee below Turner’s Ferry, while Major General George Stoneman’s cavalry rode several miles farther, to a point opposite Sandtown, which was nearly ten miles, as the crow flies, south of the railroad crossing. The troopers aggressively pretended to be searching the river for a place to cross over. Naturally the Confederate cavalry watched the Federal activity, both infantry and cavalry, as best they could from the Chattahoochee’s opposite bank.

Joe Johnston knew—as Sherman well knew he would know—that McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee usually led the Union flanking maneuvers. A detailed report by one of Johnston’s staff officers had identified seven potential downstream crossings, places where the north bank of the river would provide the Federals with good approaches and favorable ground for covering artillery fire. Also, the aggressiveness of Stoneman’s troopers apparently confirmed what the Confederate commander was already assuming. Furthermore, if Sherman crossed downstream in his approach to Atlanta, he would be positioned to break Johnston’s communications to the west. General Johnston was thinking exactly what Sherman wanted him to think.⁵⁰

While Stoneman and McPherson strove to hoodwink Johnston downstream, Kenner Garrard took his cavalry nearly twenty miles upriver from the Western & Atlantic, all the way to Roswell, as he searched for a suitable crossing. Sherman really wanted something closer, however, and John Schofield, making a reconnaissance of the Chattahoochee for several miles north of Pace’s Ferry, decided that the place where Soap Creek emptied into the river was favorable for a surprise. The enemy held the opposite bank with only a light force. Schofield thought he just might get across the Chattahoochee before the Rebels knew what was happening. Sherman thought so too. Schofield wanted to reconnoiter more fully, but Sherman had learned that the main body of the Confederate cavalry was a number of miles downstream on the Rebel left flank. The time for action was at hand. He ordered Schofield to cross as soon as possible, drive away the defenders, throw up entrenchments and lay a pontoon bridge.51

On July 8, at half past three in the afternoon, Schofield struck. He took the Rebels totally by surprise. By night he was on the high ground beyond, strongly entrenched, with two good pontoon bridges finished, and was prepared, if necessary, to resist an assault by a large enemy force. It was probably the best piece of work that Schofield contributed during the entire campaign, and it was accomplished “without the loss of a man.”⁵²

The totality of surprise is dramatically attested by the unfinished letter of a Confederate soldier to his wife, which was found in the enemy campsite. The Southerner wrote that he was “almost as free from peril as if he were at home on his plantation; that the solitude about them was rarely broken, even by the appearance of a single horseman on the opposite side of the river.” The letter ended in the middle of a sentence, likely broken by the sudden emergence of twenty pontoon boats from the mouth of Soap Creek, loaded with Union soldiers pulling rapidly for the Rebel side, while Federals who had silently scrambled across a submerged fish dam farther upstream began leveling flanking fire against the astonished defenders. Simultaneous musket fire, quickly enhanced by artillery fire, struck them from the north bank of the river. The entire operation came together precisely as planned, and only a few Confederates escaped.⁵³

Farther up the Chattahoochee, Garrard’s cavalry captured the town of Roswell, although not in time to prevent the Rebel cavalry from burning the bridge across the swollen stream. Roswell was an important manufacturing center where several textile mills produced cloth for the Confederacy. Garrard wasted no time in torching the buildings, “the utter destruction” of which, said Sherman, meets with “my entire approval.” The flag of France was prominent above one structure, and Garrard reported: “Over the woolen factory the French flag was flying, but seeing no Federal flag above it, I had the building burnt.”54

Sherman assured him that he had done the right thing. In fact Sherman authorized his cavalry officer specifically about the alleged French owner: “Should you, under the impulse of anger, natural at contemplating such perfidy, hang the wretch, I approve the act beforehand.” To his credit, Garrard did not hang anyone. Among the workers he took into custody were 400 women, whom Sherman sent north of the Ohio River, to be “turned loose to earn a living where they won’t do us any harm.” As for Roswell, a Union soldier penned a summary remark that the village had been “a very pleasant little town, . . . but now is a mass of ruins.”⁵⁵

Although the capture of 400 women received a great deal of attention, the really significant war news was that Sherman’s forces were across the Chattahoochee, the last of the three major river barriers separating the Yankees from Atlanta. Schofield had led the way, and more Federals soon followed. Brigadier General Edward McCook ordered a detachment of his cavalry to cross at Cochran’s Ford, not far from Schofield’s bridgehead. The endeavor proved quite remarkable and, in a sense, amusing. The water was deep and the men crossed the river “naked, with nothing but guns, cartridge-boxes, and hats,” according to McCook’s report. Once on the south bank, the nude Federals drove off the Confederates, and captured several of them. “They would have got more,” claimed McCook, “but the rebels had the advantage in running through the bushes with clothes on.” The brigadier declared the event “a very successful raid for naked men to make.” McCook also reported that “citizens say the enemy were totally unprepared for a crossing on this flank.” Sherman’s decision to cross upstream was vindicated.

With Union troops across the river in strength, and thousands more soon to follow, Johnston abandoned his extensive fortifications during the night of July 9–10. He withdrew to the south bank of the river, burning the Western & Atlantic bridge, and the wagon bridge, as well as destroying the other bridges by which his army had crossed over. Pausing briefly at the entrenchments previously prepared on the south bank, Johnston soon pulled back to a line behind Peachtree Creek, a westward-flowing tributary of the Chattahoochee. There the Confederate forces were positioned fewer than five miles from the center of Atlanta.56

By any objective analysis, the event was another triumph for an elated Sherman. “I think in crossing the Chattahoochee as I have, without the loss of a man,” he wrote Phil Ewing, “I have achieved really a creditable deed.” General Thomas had told Sherman that he dreaded crossing the Chattahoochee “more than any one thing ahead.” When Thomas learned, continued Sherman, “that I had Schofield across, fortified and with two pontoon bridges laid, he could not believe it.” Sergeant William Farries jubilantly wrote, “We have got old Johnston and his ‘Graybacks’ across the [Chattahoochee] river. . . . If Johnston intended to make a stand between here and Atlanta, he would have tried to prevent us crossing the river.” Thousands of celebrating Union soldiers soon jumped naked into the river, noisily splashing about, as they relished their first leisurely bath in a long time—and their commander plunged in with them.⁵⁷

Obviously there was no joy in Atlanta, which learned at once that Johnston’s army had been maneuvered from the Chattahoochee, falling back to the outskirts of the city. People old and young, many of them women, packed essentials onto wagons, along with whatever precious items took up minimal space, and hurried away. Many children made an exit in company with the women, as well as a few men—most too old to fight. Others escaped by train, heading for Macon, Augusta or wherever to avoid Sherman’s armies. Newspapers pulled out, except the Appeal—originally the Memphis Appeal, before fleeing the Union occupation of Memphis.⁵⁸

The fictitious Aunt Pitty Pat’s memorable exclamation in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind rings as if it might actually have been historical, and marvelously fitting: “Yankees in Georgia! How did they ever get in?” Sherman was sure enough “in,” and right on Atlanta’s doorstep. From atop a hill, he could see the roofs of the city’s buildings. What now, Southerners wondered, would Joe Johnston do? Their general had retreated all the way from northern Georgia, at Dalton’s Rocky Face Ridge, to the northern edge of Atlanta, without ever launching a major attack against Sherman’s forces. Would he now finally strike? Or would Atlanta, a city that at the beginning of 1864 was second to none as a Confederate war-production center, rail crossroads and prominent symbol of Southern resistance, be abandoned to the forces of General Sherman without an all-out fight?

The most recent performance of the Confederate commander, regardless of perspective, was neither satisfactory nor encouraging. Johnston’s formidable Chattahoochee line had been devised for defense by a relatively small force—only one or two divisions—in order to permit the Confederates in strength either to strike the Yankees as they attempted to cross the river or isolate and bludgeon any force that did reach the south bank. Johnston possessed the interior line of communication for rapidly massing against a Union crossing. But Johnston did not anticipate an upstream crossing by Sherman, and was slow to react. He was initially uncertain where the enemy was crossing, and then came the issue of whether the Blueclads were merely feigning. Doubtless Johnston was also troubled by the counsel of John Bell Hood, who thought the entire army should be withdrawn to the south bank of the Chattahoochee.59

Even after the Confederate commander withdrew to Peachtree Creek, he still might have attacked Sherman. “Here Johnston lost probably the greatest opportunity of the campaign,” declares one historian. For several days after Johnston pulled back to the Peachtree line, Sherman’s forces were divided, some north and some south of the Chattahoochee, and spread out over a front of twenty miles. An aggressive Confederate commander might have recrossed Peachtree Creek, taking advantage of the opportunity. But by this stage of the campaign, Sherman understood his opponent. He was confident that Johnston, positioned on a south side elevation overlooking Peachtree, was not about to recross that stream and attack.⁶⁰

Jefferson Davis feared that he too understood Joe Johnston, and that the general was likely to give up Atlanta without waging a decisive battle. At the direction of Davis, Braxton Bragg arrived in Atlanta by train to confer with Johnston. Before Bragg even saw Johnston, he sent Davis an ominous dispatch, saying that “indications seem to favor an entire evacuation of this place.” In another message, Bragg told Davis, “Our army is sadly depleted. . . . I find but little encouraging.” On July 15, Bragg sent the president another depressing dispatch, noting that “nearly all available stores and machinery are removed, and the people have mostly evacuated the town.” After visiting twice with Johnston, Bragg wrote Davis, “I cannot learn that he has any more plan for the future than he has had in the past.” This disturbing summation would not have been difficult for Davis to believe, and very likely it triggered his July 16 dispatch to Johnston, in which he demanded, “I wish to hear from you as to present situation, and your plan of operations so specifically as will enable me to anticipate events.”61

Johnston replied promptly, but the message could hardly have been more discouraging. “As the enemy has double our number, we must be on the defensive,” he stated. “My plan of operations must, therefore, depend upon that of the enemy. It is mainly to watch for an opportunity to fight to advantage. We are trying to put Atlanta in condition to be held for a day or two by the Georgia militia, that army movements may be freer and wider.” Every sentence was disturbing. Perhaps Davis had already made the decision to remove Johnston from command; perhaps he still wavered until he read the above and realized that Johnston must be replaced immediately if there were any hope of saving Atlanta.⁶²

He issued an order removing Johnston from command on Sunday morning, July 17. “As you have failed to arrest the advance of the enemy to the vicinity of Atlanta . . . and express no confidence that you can defeat or repel him, you are hereby relieved from the command of the Army and Department of Tennessee.” Johnston was to turn over command of the army immediately to John Bell Hood. Nearly a quarter century younger than Johnston, Hood had been maimed and weakened from war wounds. A limp, useless left arm had hung by his side since Gettysburg, and he had lost his right leg at Chickamauga. He hobbled with a crutch to support the stump of that amputated limb. Prior to the Atlanta campaign, he had built a reputation, and deservedly so, as a fighter, and that reputation served him well as he recuperated in Richmond, where he came to be regarded as a Confederate hero.⁶³

The crippled general’s rise to command, however, is the essence of irony. “He was not,” observed the historian Tom Connelly, “the simple man some considered him to be.” From the time Hood became a corps commander in the Army of Tennessee, he sent letters to Richmond, “all of which were damaging to Johnston,” declared Connelly. Hood’s letter of July 14 to General Bragg spoke of the army having had “several chances to strike the enemy a decisive blow.” Deploring the failure “to take advantage of such opportunities,” Hood declared that he “regard[ed] it as a great misfortune . . . that we failed to give battle to the enemy many miles north of our present position.” Astonishingly, in light of the facts, he claimed that he himself had “so often urged that we should force the enemy to give us battle as to almost be regarded [as] reckless by the officers high in rank in this army, since their views have been so directly opposite.” While acknowledging that “our present position is a very difficult one,” he strongly asserted that “we should not, under any circumstances, allow the enemy to gain possession of Atlanta.” Hood claimed he favored attacking the enemy, “even if we should have to re-cross the river to do so.”64

Hood’s letter is filled with misrepresentation. The assertion that he often urged battle is simply not true. Hood advised Johnston to retreat at Adairsville, at the Etowah River, at Kennesaw Mountain and at the Chattahoochee. Little wonder that the term “lying” was employed by Hood’s most careful biographer. Bragg evidently favored the removal of Johnston before he even arrived in Atlanta, and Bragg was no friend of William Hardee, who as the senior corps commander was the only likely successor to Johnston other than Hood. Thus Bragg accepted Hood’s version of the campaign, according to which Hood’s many attempts to give battle to the Yankees had been stymied; and Bragg’s reports to Jefferson Davis apparently proved compelling, in influencing the Confederate president’s determination to both remove Johnston and replace him with Hood. An alliance of Hood and Bragg, however unlikely it might have seemed in some respects, had gained for Hood the command for which he was angling.⁶⁵

Meanwhile, Sherman’s decision to cross the Chattahoochee above the Western & Atlantic Railroad and move on Atlanta from the north and east proved to be the best possible choice. He never intended to attack Atlanta directly. Rather, as he informed Halleck, he planned to make a circuit of the city, “destroying all its railroads.” Johnston then, with his communication lines broken, would most likely abandon Atlanta. Otherwise the Confederate commander must either accept a siege or come out of his fortifications and attack. If Sherman struck the enemy railroads by initially moving on Atlanta from the west, he would have to take his forces away from his own railroad for an indeterminate period of time. But if he advanced from the north and east, Sherman’s armies could remain between the Rebel forces and the Union communications.66

While Sherman prepared to march on Atlanta, he wanted Johnston to think that the major Union advance on the city would come from the west. Thus he had sent Major General Lovell H. Rousseau from Nashville deep into Alabama, at the head of 2,000 cavalry, to attack the Confederate rail lines connecting Georgia with Alabama and Mississippi. Simultaneously, George Stoneman rode southwest of Atlanta, charged with destroying the Atlanta & West Point Railroad in the vicinity of Newnan. Rousseau did his work well, at least for cavalry, tearing up some twenty miles of track. The damage by Stoneman was minimal, but the two raids did help focus Confederate attention on the western side of Atlanta. Also, for several days McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee, following Sherman’s instruction, kept up a demonstration downstream from the Western & Atlantic bridge, as if positioning there to cross the Chattahoochee and advance on Atlanta from the west. Actually, when fully prepared, Sherman would shift McPherson’s infantry rapidly upstream, swinging behind the Army of the Cumberland, to cross the Chattahoochee at Roswell, and march to break the railroad east of Atlanta in the vicinity of Decatur.⁶⁷

If Sherman ever had any doubt about the wisdom of striking at Atlanta from the north and east, it was dispelled by mid-July, when Grant and Halleck warned him that Robert E. Lee well might send 20,000, maybe even 25,000 reinforcements to Johnston. Lee could not feed the men he had, and did not need all of them to hold his strong fortifications anyway. If Confederate reinforcements were sent from Virginia, they surely would be coming in by rail from east of Atlanta, the only line secure from Union interdiction. Sherman should therefore, advised Grant and Halleck, destroy the railroad as far to the east as possible, prepare a good defensive position to hold if reinforcements did join the enemy at Atlanta and mass “as large an amount of supplies as possible . . . at Chattanooga.” Grant promised “a desperate effort . . . to hold the enemy without the necessity of so many men,” thus permitting him to help Sherman with reinforcements.68

Actually, Sherman was way ahead of Grant and Halleck in anticipation and preparation. An hour before midnight on July 16, he telegraphed Halleck: “I had anticipated all possible chances and am accumulating all the stores possible at Chattanooga and Allatoona.” Sherman still had 100,000 soldiers, and did “not fear Johnston with reinforcements of 20,000, if he will take the offensive; but I recognize the danger arising from my long [supply] line and the superiority of the enemy’s cavalry in numbers and audacity.” He said nothing about establishing a defensive line, but rather assured his friend that on the morrow he would be advancing “toward Decatur and Stone Mountain, east of Atlanta.” He sent a copy of the message to Grant.⁶⁹

Sherman regarded Allatoona “of the first importance,” and two days earlier he had stated that “it is a second Chattanooga; its front and rear are . . . [easily defended] and its flanks are strong.” He had directed that major supplies be accumulated there, which “would make a raid to our rear less to be feared, giving us the means of living till repairs could be made.” Sherman was also massing supplies at Marietta, another place he fortified. And he told McPherson: “I want everything done that is prudent and necessary at Roswell to make it a kind of secondary base for operations against Atlanta.” Obviously Sherman did not exaggerate when he assured General Halleck that he had been anticipating all possible contingencies.⁷⁰

Sherman never used the word “logistics,” a term that came into prominence only during World War II, but he was a master of the subject. Because of Sherman’s genius in managing logistics, he was able to supply his armies, as well as feed the thousands of animals those forces required, while seizing and maintaining the offensive against the Rebel army. The closer he drew to Atlanta, the longer grew his line of communications, and the more impressive was his achievement.71

“Your operations thus far have been the admiration of all military men,” General Halleck assured Sherman, “and they prove what energy and skill combined can accomplish, while either without the other may utterly fail.” Halleck then summarized the war situation in the eastern theater, where Grant had failed to achieve the success for which all had hoped when the spring campaigning began. Noting that “we have just escaped another formidable raid on Baltimore and Washington,” the general declared that Grant “would not believe that [Confederate Richard] Ewell’s corps had left his front till it . . . had already reached Maryland.” Consequently Grant had to dispatch a corps to drive the raiders from the vicinity of the nation’s capital.

Halleck, who never thought highly of Grant, then confided: “I fear Grant has made a fatal mistake in placing himself south of James River. He can not now reach Richmond without taking Petersburg, which is strongly fortified, crossing the Appomattox and re-crossing the James.” Grant had thus opened Washington, D.C., to Confederate raiders. “I hope,” Halleck observed darkly, “that we may yet have full success, but I find that many of Grant’s general officers think the campaign already a failure.” Never mentioning the immense casualties that Grant’s forces suffered, which had contributed hugely to a pronounced and growing national war weariness, Halleck stated, as if groping for a brighter note in conclusion: “Perseverance, however, may compensate for all errors and overcome all obstacles.”⁷²

Grant had not won the war in Virginia. The only prospect of significant military success by midsummer of 1864 seemed to rest solely with Sherman, which at this point he surely realized. On July 18, he told Thomas that McPherson—having swung behind Schofield and Thomas on a swiftly executed fifty-mile march from the Federal right to the extreme left—had reached the railroad east of Atlanta, at a place two miles from Stone Mountain. There he was busily tearing up track and telegraph lines. Sherman instructed Thomas: “I want a bold push for Atlanta and have made my orders, which, I think, will put us in Atlanta or very close to it.” He commented, not yet knowing that Hood was in command: “It is hard to realize that Johnston will give up Atlanta without a fight, but it may be so. Let us develop the truth.”73

Within a short time Sherman learned from a newspaper out of Atlanta, which was brought in by a spy, that John Bell Hood had just replaced Johnston. Thomas, McPherson and Schofield had all known Hood at West Point. Schofield and McPherson had been his classmates, and Thomas was one of Hood’s instructors, and later his commander in Texas. “What sort of a fellow is he?” Sherman asked Schofield, who replied: “He’ll hit you like hell, now, before you know it.” All three generals agreed that Hood, in Sherman’s summary words, “was bold even to rashness.” Sherman said he “inferred that the change . . . meant ‘fight.’” At once he alerted all his forces, cautioning every division commander “to be always prepared for battle in any shape.” As his three armies converged toward Atlanta on July 19, Sherman said that they met “such feeble resistance that I really thought the enemy intended to evacuate the place.” How wrong he was.⁷⁴

HOOD INDEED REALIZED that his elevation to command meant “fight”—just as Sherman and the Federal generals anticipated, and just as all Confederates looked for Hood, in the words of a Richmond paper, “to drive back Sherman and save Atlanta.” On July 20, Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland was closing down on the city from the north, while McPherson had swung wide to approach from the east. Schofield advanced on McPherson’s right flank, and a gap of nearly two miles had developed between Schofield’s right and Thomas’s left. Hood hoped to strike Thomas, whose army was overly extended along a six-mile front, as he crossed Peachtree Creek, which was not easily fordable. Union reinforcements, because of the distance between Schofield and Thomas, would not be readily available to assist the Army of the Cumberland. The situation did seem promising for the Rebels—if the attack could have been made earlier in the day.75

Hood’s plan called for an assault by two of the army’s three corps, but the new Confederate commander did not order the attack to begin until one in the afternoon. Because of confusion and defensive adjustments necessitated by the rapid advance of McPherson’s army, the Southern attack was not launched until nearly four o’clock, and then it was poorly managed. Hood primarily blamed corps commander Hardee for having “failed to push the attack as ordered.” Later praising Alexander Stewart for “carrying out his instructions to the letter,” while his corps “nobly performed their duty,” Hood claimed Hardee, although leading “the best troops in the army, virtually accomplished nothing.” Still sulking after being passed over for command of the army, Hardee did perform sluggishly. His biographer concluded that Peachtree Creek was “one of Hardee’s poorest performances.” Hood himself, however, was not without blame, and particularly must be faulted for inadequate command control.

When the Confederates finally attacked, much of Thomas’s army was already across Peachtree, and some of the Yankees were beginning to throw up entrenchments. Although taken by surprise, the Army of the Cumberland rose to the challenge, and Thomas handled his forces well. The battle raged for the better part of three hours before Hood became convinced that the attack had failed. He withdrew into the outer line of Atlanta’s fortifications, less than 2½ miles from the city center. Confederate casualties were at least 2,500, and probably more; the Army of the Cumberland suffered a loss of 1,600.⁷⁶

Following the Peachtree clash, Sherman thought Hood likely would abandon Atlanta—as he earlier expected of Johnston. Sherman had not yet adjusted to the pronounced difference between the two generals. While the Army of the Cumberland fought north of Atlanta, McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee had continued maneuvering to turn the Confederate right flank, and close in on the city from the east. On the morning of July 21, as Sherman sought to eliminate the gaps between his advancing forces, McPherson’s troops succeeded in capturing a conspicuous bald hill, from the crest of which they gained a good view of Atlanta.

The Southerners tried to recover the height, but the Federals held on tenaciously, and a brutal fight ensued. The Grayclads “rallied and made repeated attempts to regain possession of the hill,” reported Union General Frank Blair, “in all of which they were unsuccessful and suffered considerable loss.” Confederate General Cleburne said the engagement was “the bitterest” of his life, while Rebel brigadier James Smith reported that a Yankee battery enfiladed his position from a range of about 800 yards, and delivered the most “accurate and destructive cannonading” he ever witnessed. Incredibly, a single shot killed seventeen of the eighteen men who composed one of the companies in the Eighteenth Texas.

As the battle intensified, Cleburne feared that his right flank was going to be turned. Desperately he fought, and at last reinforcements arrived. Unable to reclaim the high ground, the Rebels did maintain their front east of Atlanta. Federal guns, however, began shelling the city, which was within easy range from the bald hill. During the afternoon, Union troops observed Confederate regiments moving through Atlanta in a southern direction. Sherman concluded that Hood was pulling out of the city, as he anticipated, and he issued orders for a pursuit.77

Strongly attuned to the warnings from Halleck and Grant about Rebel reinforcements from Virginia, Sherman’s primary focus was on the Augusta railroad east of Atlanta. He wanted it “absolutely and completely destroyed, every tie burned and every rail twisted.” The cavalry was not getting the job done to his satisfaction. Thus he decided that McPherson’s Sixteenth Corps should be assigned the task. McPherson, however, was convinced that Hood meant to attack, and that the Rebels marching southward intended to strike on the morrow—most likely targeting the left flank of the Army of the Tennessee. McPherson did not believe his former classmate would simply abandon Atlanta without any further effort to defend the city.⁷⁸

On the morning of July 22, Union observers from atop the bald hill noticed, and the advance of skirmishers revealed, that the Grayclads had not relinquished Atlanta. Orders to pursue were cancelled. McPherson felt virtually certain that Hood was preparing to attack. Because Garrard’s cavalry had been sent to bust up the railroad eastward, the Army of the Tennessee’s left flank was “in the air,” and McPherson was anxious to have the Sixteenth Corps posted on that flank, a move he had recently ordered. Fortunately, Sherman agreed to allow the Sixteenth Corps to remain in place until afternoon when, if no enemy assault had occurred, McPherson would assign it to the job of wrecking the railroad. Sherman also informed McPherson that as soon as the road to Augusta was broken up, he intended to shift McPherson’s “whole army around by the rear to Thomas’ extreme right,” and destroy Hood’s communications to the south.79

McPherson, as events soon confirmed, was absolutely right about Hood’s plan. The Confederate commander had quickly realized, as Sherman maneuvered to turn his eastern flank, that he must either attack again or retreat and lose Atlanta. He chose to attack, convinced that this time he must deal with McPherson’s army, which was the most threatening of Sherman’s forces. By the afternoon of July 21, Hood believed that McPherson, having captured the bald hill from the crest of which he could shell Atlanta, was on the verge of flanking his entire line, breaking the vital Macon railroad supply route south of the city, and thus rendering Atlanta untenable. Hood also had information indicating that McPherson’s left flank was exposed, which could only have strengthened his decision about where to strike. Despite William Hardee’s less than stellar performance at Peachtree Creek, Hood had little choice but to select Hardee’s large and experienced corps to spearhead a demanding and desperate attack.⁸⁰

“With visions of [Stonewall] Jackson’s flank move at Chancellorsville,” to quote historian Tom Connelly, Hood sent Hardee’s corps on a grueling, fifteen-to-eighteen-mile night march, with the objective of attacking McPherson’s left flank and rear at daylight on July 22. As soon as Hardee’s strike “succeeded in forcing back the enemy’s left,” Hood explained, then Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham’s corps would join the battle and assail McPherson’s army in front. Hood never intended a simultaneous attack by Hardee and Cheatham. Again, however, the Southern forces were plagued by confusion, as well as weariness, not to mention the heat and humidity. Some Rebels looted the Five Points area as they passed through the city. Hardee’s march was not at all “a very simple one,” as Hood misleadingly said in his memoirs. Through no fault of Hardee, the attack could not be launched until afternoon. When at last in position, the assault was made in a disorganized, piecemeal fashion. The historian Albert Castel summarized Hood’s plan as attempting “to do too much with too little in too short a time.” But Hood did launch a terrible battle.81

HIGH NOON HAD come and gone without a Confederate attack, and James McPherson, sitting in the shade of an oak grove, where he and a number of officers had eaten lunch, prepared an order, as he had promised Sherman, directing the Sixteenth Corps to proceed with the railroad-wrecking assignment. Suddenly he heard firing break out on the army’s left flank, apparently signaling a major enemy strike at the very place he had expected. McPherson mounted up at once and rode toward his threatened lines. The Sixteenth Corps was right where it needed to be in order to meet the initial Confederate attack. Timing and chance had ruled in favor of the Union Army. McPherson’s railroad order, which he had given to a staff officer for delivery, arrived in the hands of Grenville Dodge, the Sixteenth Corps commander, just as the Rebels attacked. If the Southern assault had been launched earlier, even an hour earlier, all of the Sixteenth Corps would not have been on site, and if it had come an hour or more later, a significant number of Federals would have already marched away to work on the railroad.⁸²

The reality, which the Confederates discovered only when they attacked, was that McPherson’s flank was not “in the air.” In fact, the Federals could hardly have been better positioned to blunt the enemy’s opening assault. The fatigued Southerners, after struggling through dense woods, extensive briar patches, thick underbrush, an expansive slimy morass and other obstacles, delivered an uncoordinated attack, which the Yankees smashed with heavy musketry and artillery fire. McPherson had arrived in time to watch approvingly from high ground as the Sixteenth Corps threw back the first assaults by two of Hardee’s divisions.83

But Hardee had more infantry coming up, and the battle was far from over. McPherson soon learned that a gap, approximately a half mile long, existed between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps. He wanted that gap closed as soon as possible. Since the Sixteenth Corps was firmly holding its ground, McPherson chose to ride across the gap, reconnoitering for himself, as he headed toward the Seventeenth Corps. Some Confederates had already advanced into the gap, however, and as McPherson rode through a heavily wooded area, well ahead of most of his staff, he ran up on a number of Rebels. Ordered to halt, McPherson instead wheeled his horse around and tried to escape. Several Southerners fired and one of their shots killed him.⁸⁴

Sherman was shocked. “The suddenness of this terrible calamity would have overwhelmed me with grief,” Sherman wrote in his campaign report, “but the living demanded my whole thoughts.” Quickly Sherman dispatched a staff officer to the Army of the Tennessee’s senior corps commander, General John Logan, commanding the Fifteenth Corps, to inform him of what had happened. Known by the soldiers under his command as “Black Jack” because of his swarthy complexion, Logan could inspire his troops with his own fighting spirit. Sherman instructed him to “assume command of the Army of the Tennessee . . . hold stubbornly the ground already chosen . . . especially the [bald] hill gained . . . the night before.” The army’s left flank was to be rapidly refused, swinging it back to the southeast from the bald hill, and thereby blunting the Rebel turning movement. Sherman assured Logan, in Logan’s words, “that whatever assistance I might need would be furnished,” and one of Schofield’s brigades was dispatched toward Decatur to help protect the wagon train and the army’s rear.⁸⁵

Blazing, roaring and slaughtering, the savage clash consumed the remainder of the day and became known as the Battle of Atlanta. The most determined and vicious Southern attacks fell upon the Seventeenth Corps and the Fifteenth Corps. Brigadier General Giles Smith, recently elevated to command the Fourth Division of the Seventeenth Corps, vividly described how his troops fought off furious attacks from the front, flank and rear. “The first attack, sweeping around our left, and attacking suddenly in the rear, might have thrown any veteran troops into confusion,” reported Smith, “but at the command, they promptly took the other side of their works and fought with great coolness.” Smith stated that four times during the battle, his troops “were compelled, by attacks in their rear, to change from one side of the works to the other, and change front twice to repel assaults from the left, thus occupying seven different positions during the engagement, besides minor changes of a portion of the command.” The fighting was desperate, sometimes hand to hand. Smith testified that during one attack, which lasted about three-quarters of an hour, “men were bayoneted across the works, and officers with their swords fought hand-to-hand with men with bayonets.” After seven hours of fighting, Smith triumphantly concluded: “I consider their attack an entire failure.” 86

Sergeant Casey McWayne, fighting in the First Brigade, which General Smith had led before becoming Fourth Division commander, essentially confirmed Smith’s account of the battle. The clash on July 22 was “a hand-to-hand fight,” McWayne wrote his mother and sisters. He described how General Smith effectively handled their division, “fighting the Rebs in front of him till he drove them back, then got on the opposite side of his works, and fought the Rebs in his rear until he repulsed them. Then, getting back on the other side and fighting them again, [he battled] until he had been back and forth over his works six different times.” McWayne also testified matter-of-factly that the Confederate casualties were severe. “We buried 2,420 Rebs,” he declared, “and sent over under a flag of truce . . . 800 dead, which makes 3,220 dead Rebs that we know of, and how many they got off we do not know.”⁸⁷

About midafternoon the Fifteenth Corps, located on the right flank of the Army of the Tennessee, came under heavy attack when Hood ordered Benjamin Cheatham’s corps into the fight. General Logan reported that the Confederates launched “a most desperate assault, [which] broke our line and captured the [four-gun] battery of [Captain Francis] DeGress on the right of the Second Division.” Another Union battery at once opened fire on the horses of DeGress’s battery, killing the animals so that the Southerners could not carry off the guns. DeGress, who barely managed to escape being captured, reported that thirty-nine horses of his Battery H, First Illinois Light Artillery, were killed, testimony to the awful butchery that humans inflicted upon helpless animals when fighting their wars. Lieutenant George Echte, commanding Battery A of the First Illinois, reported fifty-five of his horses “were killed and captured, mostly killed.” Such mutilation of the big animals must have set hard with men like Sherman. Beyond a doubt, it added immensely to the horrors of a Civil War battleground.88

When the Confederate attack penetrated the Fifteenth Corps, General Logan was still with the Sixteenth Corps on the army’s left flank, where he had ridden soon after taking command. Sherman, however, was near at hand, observing the development of the battle from close to his headquarters at the Howard House (called after a Thomas C. Howard, who occupied the structure). Responding to the breakthrough, Sherman ordered division commander Charles R. Woods to change front at once and strike the Confederates in flank. He also summoned General Schofield to bring forward all his available batteries. Schofield said the batteries responded “at a full gallop,” and he gave a memorable account of “witnessing Sherman’s splendid conduct.”⁸⁹

A trained artilleryman, Sherman seized the chance to become personally involved in throwing back the Rebel assault. According to Schofield, Sherman “led the batteries in person to some high, open ground in front of our line near the Howard House, placed them in position and directed their fire, which from that advanced position enfiladed the parapets from which our troops had been driven, and which the enemy then occupied.” Schofield declared that “with the aid of that terrible raking fire . . . Union troops very quickly regained the entrenchments they had lost.” At that critical moment, the troops also received major assistance from Logan.⁹⁰

Having learned of the fierce Southern attack on the Fifteenth Corps, Black Jack Logan came galloping back to his old command, leading two brigades for a counterattack. Nearing the breakthrough point, he was “visible for half a mile in almost any direction.” The soldiers could see him coming, his long dark hair streaming as he rode. The general was waving his hat and yelling, with a strong voice that carried above the noise of battle, “McPherson and revenge boys!” Shouts of “Black Jack! Black Jack!” rose from hundreds of soldiers. They surged forward, drove the Rebels back and also recovered the artillery, to the great joy of DeGress. Sherman said DeGress had been “in tears” earlier, lamenting the loss of his favorite guns.91

While the battle continued until dark, with the Southerners renewing the attack and striving to take the bald hill, the Union forces held firmly. When the July 22 clash was over, the Federals had suffered 3,722 casualties, the most sustained in any of the battles around Atlanta. Confederate losses were considerably greater, but also more difficult to assess, having been estimated from a low of 5,500 to twice that number. Sherman reported “the enemy sustained an aggregate loss of full 8,000 men.” General Logan placed the Rebel casualties higher, “at least 10,000.” General Cox concurred, stating that “no ingenuity of figuring can reduce the enemy’s total loss below the ten thousand at which Logan put it.”⁹²

Sherman had chosen to let the Army of the Tennessee “fight this battle almost unaided.” Perhaps he wanted, as historian Shelby Foote suggested, “McPherson’s veterans [to have] the honor of avenging his fall.” Sherman also asserted in his memoirs that “if any assistance were rendered by either of the other armies, the Army of the Tennessee would be jealous.” Without question, rivalry between the armies existed, particularly involving the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Tennessee. The struggle for Chattanooga had been a major catalyst. The Army of the Tennessee, then commanded by Sherman, envisioned itself as coming to the “rescue” of the Cumberlanders after the defeat at Chickamauga. However, the Army of the Cumberland executed an illustrious, legendary charge up Missionary Ridge, which won the battle. During the Atlanta campaign, various incidents had exacerbated the rivalry. “It was unfortunate,” as Basil Liddell-Hart stated, “that a commander-in-chief should pander to it.” Unfortunate, but not particularly surprising, and certainly an understandable manifestation of human nature. Sherman clearly favored his former command, wanting it to reap the greatest honors and glory of the campaign. Also, Sherman had greater confidence in the Army of the Tennessee than in either of the other armies. He fully believed that it would win the battle.93

But Sherman’s bias was not the only reason he did not call upon the others for reinforcements. Shifting troops, particularly from the Army of the Cumberland, because of distance and terrain, would have been time-consuming. They well might not have arrived in time to be of any help. Schofield said he favored a counterattack against the left flank of the Rebel assault, with “my reserve [force] and Thomas’s,” but claimed Sherman told him that “he had asked Thomas to send some troops . . . and the latter had replied that he had none to spare.” Sherman made no mention of any counterattack proposal by Schofield, declaring that he sent orders to Schofield and Thomas to press the enemy in their front and, if possible, make a lodgment in Atlanta. The Rebels, reasoned Sherman, must have weakened their lines in order to concentrate troops for an attack. Ordering Schofield and Thomas to press the Southerners in their front was an obvious response. However, Sherman said that both generals “reported that the lines to their front, at all accessible points, were strong . . . and were fully manned.”⁹⁴

Generally considered, Sherman had handled the battle well. Hearing heavy firing on the Army of the Tennessee’s left flank, which likely signaled the onset of a full-scale engagement, Sherman sent reinforcements to that threatened sector. That they proved to be unnecessary is not indicative of a bad decision. On the contrary, Sherman knew that McPherson both expected Hood to strike that flank, and had sought to strengthen it. When severe firing erupted and intensified on the left, Sherman was reasonably certain that McPherson had surmised correctly. Sending reinforcements to the left flank and rear was an obvious move.⁹⁵

When later in the day the Southerners broke through the line of the Fifteenth Corps, Sherman acted decisively, ordering a division to attack the Confederates in flank, while he himself directed an enfilading artillery fire against them. General Jacob Cox, who observed Sherman in battle several times, thought that Sherman’s “mind seemed never so clear, his confidence never so strong, his spirit never so inspiring . . . as in the crisis of some fierce struggle like that of the day when McPherson fell in front of Atlanta.”96

ON THE DAY after the battle, Sherman and his staff rode along the lines of the Army of the Tennessee, stopping from time to time to say a few words to the soldiers, who cheered him enthusiastically. Thanking the troops for their determined stand, he expressed his grief over McPherson’s death—in a sense grieving with the soldiers, who also held McPherson in high esteem. “His death occasioned a profound sense of loss,” wrote General Oliver Howard, “a feeling that his place can never be completely filled.” Without a doubt Sherman, who wept when McPherson’s body was recovered and brought to his headquarters, experienced that “profound sense of loss,” for he knew McPherson better than did Howard—or anyone else in the army. Sherman also knew that an emotion-draining task lay before him.⁹⁷

He had to write Emily Hoffman, McPherson’s fiancée in Baltimore, a burden all the more difficult because back in the spring Sherman had refused McPherson’s request for a furlough to marry her. Due to the impending campaign, Sherman felt that he could not grant his friend’s request. He wrote Miss Hoffman a letter at that time, expressing his regret, and closed with the admonition: “Be patient and I know that when the happy day comes for him to stand by your side . . . you will regard him with a high respect & honor that will convert Simple love into something sublime & beautiful.” That “happy day” would never come, and Sherman felt compelled to write what surely was one of the most difficult letters he ever composed.⁹⁸

Delaying two weeks before framing the trying message, Sherman declared, “I yield to none on earth except yourself the right to excel me in lamentations for our Dead Hero.” He cried out, “Why oh! Why should deaths darts reach the young and brilliant instead of older men who could better have been spared.” Writing at some length of his associations with and admiration of McPherson, Sherman then recounted the circumstances of his death and closed by vowing that “while life lasts I will delight in the memory of that bright particular star which has gone before to prepare the way for us more hardened Sinners who must struggle on to the End.” Emily Hoffman’s staunchly pro-Southern family had never approved of McPherson. “I have the most wonderful news—McPherson is dead,” reportedly remarked one of the family upon learning of his death, a comment said to have been heard by the young woman. Emily Hoffman allegedly went to her bedroom, and with food and water brought to her door, spoke to no one, and did not come out for a year. She never married.99

Sherman could not delay the choice of a permanent successor to McPherson. Black Jack Logan had done a good job in the heat of battle. General Thomas, however, in the words of Sherman, “remonstrated warmly against my recommending that General Logan should be . . . assigned to the command.” Thomas supported Oliver Howard for the position, preferring a professional soldier. Also, Thomas had experienced problems with Logan, and did not have a comfortable relationship with the Illinois volunteer general. Sherman certainly was not going to elevate Joe Hooker, with whom he had been dissatisfied for some time. Forthrightly Sherman expressed his opinion of Hooker in a letter to Ellen, characterizing the man as “envious, imperious, and a braggart.” Frank Blair, also a politician of course, would have been less acceptable for the command than Logan.

Sherman decided to give the job to Howard, a West Point man who had been seasoned by hard fighting in the eastern theater. He offered an explanation in his memoirs: “I knew we would have to execute some most delicate maneuvers, requiring the utmost skill, nicety, and precision.” Sherman was about to change the direction of his advance, as he had told McPherson shortly before he was killed. Sherman intended to send the Army of the Tennessee in a wide, circular, northern sweep around Atlanta, from the east to the west side of the city—then thrusting southward in an attempt, ultimately, to cut Confederate communications. Undoubtedly, although it was a tough decision, Sherman felt better with a West Pointer directing the army’s maneuver. And because of General Thomas’s attitude, harmony in the high command eliminated Logan.100

The choice of Howard had major repercussions. Joe Hooker was furious at the appointment, unfairly blaming Howard for his own debacle at Chancellorsville. He immediately requested to be relieved as commander of the Twentieth Corps. General Thomas “heartily recommended” compliance, and Sherman approved, telling Ellen, “This ought to damn him, showing that he is selfish & not patriotic.” General Logan was deeply disappointed at being passed over, for he realized that he was more than adequate in a battle. Sherman well knew that he needed Black Jack to continue leading the Fifteenth Corps and sought to soothe his feelings with a frank letter extolling Logan’s invaluable service to the Army of the Tennessee, as well as Sherman’s own sincere recognition of, and confidence in, his combat leadership.

“No one,” said Sherman, “could have a higher appreciation of the responsibility then devolved on you so unexpectedly [when McPherson was killed] and the noble manner in which you met it.” How much influence, if indeed any, this good, diplomatic letter had upon Logan’s decision to stay in the army is impossible to determine. Black Jack did resume command of the Fifteenth Corps and continued to lead it with distinction. After all, the Illinois politician had vowed to serve until the Southern rebellion was defeated. But from that time forward, Logan nursed a resentment toward West Point officers, especially Sherman, and as a powerful figure in the U.S. House of Representatives following the war, he would present problems for Sherman.¹⁰¹

While Sherman wrestled with the issue of McPherson’s successor, he was relieved, at long last, to receive a letter from Ellen. Dated July 20, the lengthy message revealed that his wife’s health had improved and conveyed considerable family news. Relative to the death of his older brother James, Cump remarked that “he was a good fellow, but John Barleycorn was too much for him.” Succinctly he updated Ellen about the campaign: “We have Atlanta close aboard as the Sailors say, but it is a hard nut to handle. . . . I must gradually destroy the [rail] Roads which make Atlanta a place worth having. . . . Two out of three are broken and we are maneuvering for the third.” Naturally he lamented the loss of McPherson, since Ellen knew and liked the young general, who had been very kind to Willy when she visited Vicksburg.

Sherman was a bit frustrated that Ellen, after years of wangling to live near her parents in Lancaster, was contemplating moving away. “I prefer you should stay at Lancaster at whatever sacrifice of feeling or personal convenience til we can see daylight ahead in this war. But if you will go,” he advised, “better to Cincinnati than Notre Dame.” Medical attendance at Notre Dame, the Indiana town with Minnie’s school and a university, would be no better than Lancaster, and “if I get killed, which is not improbable at any moment, you will of course be compelled to live at Lancaster. . . . I daily pass death in the most familiar shape and you should base your calculations on that event.” But Ellen seemed to have her mind set. Sherman did consent to her leaving Lancaster, no doubt with reluctance, and told her, “I will not preach Economy anymore.” Despite his advice, she soon moved to Notre Dame.102

Meanwhile, in the predawn hours of July 27, the Army of the Tennessee began moving to the west side of Atlanta, intending to strike south against the Macon & Western Railroad, the last important communication route for Hood’s army. The railroad branched at East Point, about a half dozen miles down the line from Atlanta, with one set of tracks then running southwest to Montgomery, Selma and Mobile, while the other continued to Macon and southeast to Savannah. Late on the morning of the twenty-eighth, as the Fifteenth Corps trudged up a ridge where a Methodist meeting house known as Ezra Church was located, Hood attacked once more—the third time in nine days—marshaling two of his army’s three corps for the onslaught.¹⁰³

Sergeant Andrew McCornack was out on the skirmish line, and saw “the Rebs coming in heavy force . . . about noon.” He said, “We gave them the best we had in the wheelhouse, but still they came.” McCornack thought his whole company was about to be captured, for they were nearly surrounded at one point as they fell back to the Federal line of battle. “The Rebs kept hollering, ‘Halt, you son of a bitch,’ but I could not see it, and got away alright, and joined the regiment, which was pouring volleys into them the best they knew how.” Thus began for McCornack the Battle of Ezra Church, which he declared “the hardest fight I ever saw.”104

The Union troops, holding high ground, were well positioned to throw back the first assault, and when the Rebels re-formed and struck again, some of the Federals had managed to partially dig in. The determined enemy charges brought severe pressure on the Yankee line, whereupon General Logan assertively raced along the front, roaring above the din of battle, “Hold ’em! Hold ’em!” He called on the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps for reinforcements, and six additional regiments joined the fray. Thinking that Hood had weakened his Atlanta lines, Sherman ordered Schofield and Thomas “to make an attempt to break in,” but he said that “both reported they found the parapets very strong and fully manned.” Darkness brought an end to the clash. Hood had been beaten, and again suffered heavy losses.¹⁰⁵

In his family letters after the Ezra Church engagement, Sergeant Casey McWayne commented that “we have had some very hard fighting lately.” In a matter-of-fact style he said, “We kill a great many Rebs in the fights—now more than ever, because they come out from their works, and charge our men, which is useless for them. For they do not do any good, only get their men slaughtered.” McWayne presented a macabre description of the fighting’s aftermath, stating that “in burying the Rebs, [who] smelled so, [the men] got a rope and put [it] around their necks, and 4 or 5 got a hold and started with [them], drawing them up in line, just as they [do when] they lay R. R. ties.” McWayne told his father that sometimes they “set the contrabands [former slaves] at work,” dragging off the dead Southerners “to be buried by hitching a rope around their necks, and four or five start off on a trot, as they call it.”¹⁰⁶

On July 31, Sherman summarized the casualties of Peachtree Creek, Atlanta and Ezra Church in a letter to his brother John, claiming that in “each of these battles we killed as many as our entire casualties.” He calculated the total Rebel dead, buried by the Union troops, as 4,700, “and the wounded . . . make the loss over 20,000—we have taken near 3,000 prisoners.” He noted that the weather had been “dreadfully hot,” and that he did not think Hood would attack again. Of course, Sherman had not thought Hood would attack again after the Battle of Atlanta. He had difficulty grasping the Confederate commander’s willingness to see his men “slaughtered”—as Sergeant McWayne so well characterized the result of Hood’s assaults.107

Both Sherman and Howard, who were together shortly before the Ezra Church clash began, praised General Logan. Sherman’s report lauded him for “conspicuous” leadership during the battle, while Howard lavishly wrote that Logan “was indefatigable, and the success of the day is as much attributable to him as to any one man.” Unquestionably, Black Jack was continuing to lead with illustrious success, but what he really thought of Sherman is revealed in a letter to his wife, saying that at the Battle of Ezra Church “I had the hardest fight of the campaign . . . and gained a great and complete victory, but will get no credit for it. West Point must have all under Sherman, who is an infernal brute.” Logan was a smart man who, regardless of his bitterness toward Sherman, assured his wife that “the good sense of it is for me to say not a word but go on and do my duty to my country.” That he did.¹⁰⁸

During the weeks following Hood’s three failed attacks, Sherman gradually extended his well-entrenched lines for miles along the west side of Atlanta, in an attempt to reach the Confederate railroad. A veteran remarked, “If digging is the way to put down the rebellion, I guess we will have to do it.” Although the Federal entrenchments eventually stretched for about ten miles, Hood countered by extending the Rebel defensive lines farther and farther. Sherman could not reach the railroad with his infantry, writing Halleck that “I do not deem it prudent to extend more to the right.” He also made unsuccessful attempts to cut the rail line with cavalry, and George Stoneman’s command of about 600 troopers was captured. Sherman was growing impatient and frustrated that he could neither turn the Rebel flank nor, as his men skirmished daily and sometimes heavily with the Southerners, could he identify a suitably weak place to assault. What Sherman could and did do was pound Atlanta with artillery.109

On August 7, he told Halleck he would make “Atlanta too hot to be endured. . . . One thing is certain, whether we get inside Atlanta or not, it will be a used-up community by the time we are done with it.” New long-range guns were hauled down the railroad from Chattanooga, and on August 9, the General wrote Halleck that “I threw into Atlanta about 3,000 solid shot and shell today, and have got from Chattanooga four 4 and ½ inch rifled guns, and will try their effect.” He proposed to Howard, “Let us destroy Atlanta and make it a desolation.” That same day he told Grant he intended “to expend about 4,000 rifled shot into the heart of Atlanta.”¹¹⁰

The Union guns daily blasted both the enemy’s defensive works and the city proper. Some civilians were still inside Atlanta, but for all Sherman knew, Hood might have refused to order them out in the hope that their presence would deter the bombardment. A Federal soldier remarked that one Sunday he could see “women walking around on the Rebel works, dressed up in their Sunday go to meeting clothes. . . . Our cannon could have started them off. . . . But the boys . . . had more respect for the ladies [than to fire at them].” He quipped that “if they were in favor of disunion, they may be in favor of union before this month is out.”¹¹¹

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, diligently keeping abreast of Sherman’s situation and aware of the general’s frustrations, sent him a strongly reassuring message. “Do not imagine that we are impatient of your progress; instead of considering it slow [which Sherman seemed concerned about in a recent letter to Stanton], we regard it rapid, brilliant, and successful beyond our expectations. Take your time,” Stanton declared, “and do your work in your own way. This Department is only anxious to afford you every assistance within its power.” While the bombardment proceeded, Sherman conceived another plan to get at the Rebel-held railroad south of the city. On August 10, he shared his thinking with Grant: “I may have to leave a corps at the [Western & Atlantic] railroad bridge [over the Chattahoochee], well entrenched, and cut loose with the balance and make a desolating circle around Atlanta.”¹¹²

This was essentially what he did, beginning the move on the night of August 25. “It was one of Sherman’s greatest strengths as a general,” observed historian Steven Woodworth, “that when the situation in front of him required bold action, he took it.” Sherman left the Twentieth Corps, under command of Major General Henry W. Slocum, strongly entrenched on the north side of Atlanta, astride the Western & Atlantic rails at the Chattahoochee bridge. With the rest of the Army of the Cumberland, as well as his two other armies—“reduced to fighting trim”—Sherman cut loose from his supply line and struck southwest in a broad turning march to break Hood’s last, vital rail communications. “Lookout for me about St. Marks, Fla., or Savannah, Ga.,” he told Halleck, “if I should . . . be cut off from my base.”113

Sherman’s plan worked beautifully; the Army of the Tennessee reached the Atlanta & West Point rails on August 28. After a day of destructive work on that road, General Howard pushed the army eastward toward the Macon & Western at Jonesboro, approximately twenty miles south of Atlanta. Confederate cavalry fired the bridge over the Flint River, but Logan’s Fifteenth Corps, which was leading the march, arrived in time to extinguish the flames. Crossing the stream about dusk on August 30, Logan’s men dug in immediately on a low-lying ridge approximately a half mile from the railroad. Meanwhile, Thomas and Schofield were about to make lodgments on the Macon & Western several miles nearer to Atlanta.¹¹⁴

For some time General Hood remained puzzled about Sherman’s intentions—perhaps in part because of Joe Wheeler’s greatly exaggerated claims about the destruction he had wrought on Sherman’s railroad. Actually the damage Wheeler inflicted was minimal. At one point Hood seems to have thought that Sherman was withdrawing across the Chattahoochee, masking the movement by feigning an attack on the railroads. Also, he wondered whether Sherman was preparing to attack Atlanta from the west. When at last Hood discovered that some of Sherman’s forces were about to strike the Macon & Western at Jonesboro, he sent General Hardee, with two of the army’s three corps, on what proved to be a futile mission to defend those indispensable rails. About three in the afternoon on the last day of August, the Confederates attacked and were thrown back in the Battle of Jonesboro. “The Johnnies lost awful heavily,” wrote Sergeant McCornack, who said that the enemy “came within twenty steps . . . [and] I had just as good shots as ever I did at a rabbit.” His description was not magnified. Captain Samuel D. McConnell of the badly depleted Seventh Florida Infantry thought the Rebel assault at Jonesboro was “sheer hell.” Afterward McConnell was in despair, no doubt sensing that the loss of Atlanta was at hand. Southern casualties at the Battle of Jonesboro totaled 2,500, perhaps more, while General Logan reported casualties of fewer than 200 in the Fifteenth Corps.115

BY SEPTEMBER 1, Confederate manpower had been severely depleted as a result of Hood’s assaults, while the Yankees had finally gotten control of every railroad into Atlanta. Hood really had no choice but to give up the city. Late in the afternoon of the first, the Grayclad evacuation of Atlanta began, with Alexander Stewart’s corps and the Georgia militia tramping southeastward down the McDonough Road. The last troops to clear the city fired the military warehouses and army property that could not be hauled away. Over eighty freight cars, about one-third of which were loaded with ammunition, were set ablaze, sometimes resulting in rapid detonation of shells; and sometimes in huge explosions, as whole caches of gunpowder discharged and lit up the night sky. General Hardee, with the Rebel forces at Jonesboro, slipped away during the night, and eventually joined up with Hood and the remainder of the Army of Tennessee at Lovejoy’s Station, about half a dozen miles farther south.¹¹⁶

For a time on the afternoon of August 31, and during the following day, Sherman’s superior numbers had been located between the two segments of Hood’s army. General Thomas proposed that while Schofield and Major General David S. Stanley’s troops destroyed the railroad on September 1, he be allowed to swing the Army of the Cumberland east and south to pin the Confederates at Jonesboro between his Cumberlanders and the Army of the Tennessee, with results, declared Thomas, that would be “eminently beneficial.” Sherman was skeptical, telling Thomas that he wanted to see “the first step in the enemy’s game, after he knows we [the mass of the Union Army] are between him and Atlanta.” He believed that “the sooner we get all of our army together in close order the better.” Actually Sherman came up with a more tightly conceived plan of attack for September 1. He hoped, with a direct route, to strike the northern flank of the Rebels who faced the Army of the Tennessee. David Stanley and U.S. Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis were the key actors, but Stanley, who was to come up on Davis’s left flank, was late. An exasperated Sherman dispatched staff officers to hurry Stanley on and finally even sent General Thomas to bring up Stanley’s troops. “Had [Stanley] moved straight on by the flank, or by a slight circuit to his left, he would have inclosed the whole ground occupied by Hardee’s . . . [men],” who could not, Sherman asserted, “have escaped us; but night came on, and Hardee did escape.”117

Nevertheless, Sherman had Atlanta and, on September 2, his lead elements moved into the city. Sherman said that before giving official notice of the triumph to the army in general orders, he wanted to be sure that General Thomas was made aware of the wonderful news. According to Sherman, the usually reserved Virginian reacted by snapping his fingers, whistling, “and almost dancing.” As word spread rapidly among the Union armies, Sherman recalled that shouts, “wild hallooing, and glorious laughter” arose from the men in the ranks. And Sherman sent General Halleck a wire that became at once famous: “Atlanta Is Ours, and fairly won.”¹¹⁸