Chapter Twenty-One   

I KNEW MORE OF GEORGIA THAN THE REBELS DID

Sherman opened the campaign with 25,000 of “the best men in America,” as he characterized the Army of the Tennessee, marching in the hope of striking a decisive blow. He intended to surprise the Confederates by rapidly turning their left flank and cutting the vital Western & Atlantic Railroad at Resaca, a dozen miles south of Dalton. With the Rebel supply line from Atlanta broken, the Southerners would have to fall back from their imposing fortifications at Dalton and fight Sherman’s superior numbers under far less favorable, and possibly disastrous, circumstances. While McPherson and the Army of the Tennessee maneuvered to smite the railroad, the armies of Thomas and Schofield were to press forward, strongly feigning a frontal attack against the formidable enemy position. Thus Sherman would avoid “the terrible door of death that Johnston had prepared for [the Union forces] in the Buzzard Roost.”¹

The unsavory name of Buzzard Roost was a local designation for Mill Creek Gap, where the Western & Atlantic Railroad passed through the long, high and precipitous Rocky Face Ridge, just northwest of Dalton. The Confederate Army had strongly entrenched along Rocky Face, occupying a nearly unassailable position for several miles north and south of Buzzard Roost. The ridge was a rugged, narrow eminence—not more than ten to thirty feet wide at the top, according to the diary of Confederate Captain Samuel T. Foster—rising about seven hundred feet above the valley, and stretching from north of Dalton, in a generally north-northeast to south-southwest direction, for more than twenty miles. From the northern point of Rocky Face, a well-developed line of Rebel earthworks extended eastward across Crow Valley, connecting the Rocky Face defenses with the high ground commanding the East Tennessee Railroad, which ran northward from Dalton, and crossed into Tennessee east of Chattanooga.2

FROM CHATTANOOGA TO ATLANTA

In early May 1864, Sherman launched a 100,000-man offensive in northwest Georgia. Map by Jim Moon Jr.

Further enhancing the Confederate defenses, Johnston had dammed Mill Creek at all the railroad culverts, forming “a sort of irregular lake,” as Sherman described it, to help protect some portions of his line. Also, trees had been felled to block roads by which the Yankees might approach. Large stones had been positioned atop Rocky Face, ready to be rolled off onto any attackers trying to scale the ridge, and artillery batteries were strategically located at many places. “The position was very strong,” remembered Sherman, and he was certain that Johnston “had fortified it to the maximum.” Brigadier General John Geary said that “the enemy had posted skirmishers thickly behind rocks, logs, and trees, and their fire was galling and destructive.” Little wonder that Sherman never had any intention of launching a serious frontal assault at Dalton.3

Breaking the railroad at Resaca was not Sherman’s original plan, however. Initially he intended for the Army of the Tennessee to march from north Alabama directly upon the important industrial complex of Rome, forty miles southwest of Dalton, while Thomas and Schofield demonstrated strongly against Johnston’s Rocky Face fortifications. Besides capturing and destroying Rome’s factories and ironworks, McPherson’s army then would be within fewer than fifteen miles of the Western & Atlantic rails, presenting the Confederates with an insufferable threat to their supply line. The Rebel commander would have to retreat, with Thomas and Schofield pursuing, while McPherson ripped into his flank.⁴

The concept was excellent, but when Nathaniel Banks failed even to attack Mobile or return the troops Sherman lent him, the plans had to be altered. Sherman had envisioned McPherson’s seizing Rome with a 35,000-man force. Deprived of both the veterans still on furlough, and the men withheld by Banks, the strength of the Army of the Tennessee was, as noted earlier, less than 25,000. Also, Banks’s nonperformance on the Gulf freed Leonidas Polk’s forces in south Alabama and Mississippi. Probably those Rebels would be moving north, possibly striking the relatively isolated Army of the Tennessee, and maybe in tandem with detachments from Johnston’s army. Sherman, uncomfortable with such a scenario, prudently decided against the march on Rome. Instead, he would keep McPherson’s forces closer to Thomas and Schofield. McPherson would strike through Snake Creek Gap, a pass in Rocky Face Ridge several miles south of the Confederate fortifications, which would place him only a few miles from the Western & Atlantic Railroad at Resaca.5

Actually, General Thomas had proposed the march through Snake Creek Gap, having learned about the pass a few months earlier, when some of his forces were skirmishing with the Rebels west of Rocky Face Ridge. He recommended that Sherman assign his Army of the Cumberland to flank Johnston through the gap. Possibly Sherman, during his explorations in the region as a young lieutenant, might have come across Snake Creek Gap. The passage of more than twenty years, however, would have taxed even Sherman’s remarkable memory and eye for terrain. Whether Sherman already knew about the gap or not, he liked Thomas’s idea, except that he realized the Army of the Cumberland was too large and unwieldy for the assignment. For whatever reason, he did not give Thomas any credit for the concept.⁶

The smaller Army of the Tennessee, as Sherman well knew from his own recent experience in leading the outfit, could be expected to march rapidly, while still possessing sufficient strength to strike powerfully. Furthermore, with the Army of the Cumberland positioned immediately in front of Johnston’s fortifications, the withdrawal of 60,000 men seemed quite likely to destroy any possibility of maintaining secrecy. McPherson’s forces, on the other hand, were not yet occupying a part of the Union lines. Thus the Army of the Tennessee stood a good chance of striking the Western & Atlantic before Johnston realized what was happening. Factoring into Sherman’s decision as well, which Brigadier General Jacob D. Cox, who commanded one of the three divisions in the Army of the Ohio pointed out, was “the desire to have the greater strength of the Army of the Cumberland at the center,” thereby solidly covering his rail communications and the forward base at Chattanooga.7

With good reason, Sherman believed that he had a winning plan; he was confident that his favorite, McPherson, would get the job done. McPherson’s orders were to break the railroad and then take up a strong defensive position at the mouth of Snake Creek Gap. When the Confederate commander, learning that his supply line had been cut, began falling back, with Thomas and Schofield in pursuit, McPherson would attack the Rebels in flank. With a little luck, Sherman just might deal Johnston’s army a deathblow with his very first maneuver.⁸

Johnston anticipated that Sherman would strike from the north, moving against the right front of the Southern defenses. Not only was the Confederate general totally wrong about Sherman’s scheme of attack, he had also “completely ignored Snake Creek Gap,” leaving it undefended. Sherman’s plan seemed to be coming together beautifully—even more so than he could have known. McPherson’s advance units, having moved through Ship’s Gap and Villanow, reached Snake Creek Gap late in the evening of May 8. On the following morning, the Army of the Tennessee emerged from the gap’s eastern mouth, easily driving off a Confederate cavalry brigade and moving toward Resaca.⁹

“I got a short note from McPherson that day (written at 2 p.m. when he was within a mile-and-a-half of the railroad, above and near Resaca),” remembered Sherman, “and we all felt jubilant.” Sherman triumphantly exclaimed, “I’ve got Joe Johnston dead!” Indeed, he very nearly did. The exuberant Union commander renewed his orders to Thomas and Schofield to be prepared for “instant pursuit of . . . a broken and disordered army, forced to retreat by roads . . . east of Resaca, which were known to be very rough and impracticable.”¹⁰

But the dream of a brilliant and decisive triumph, as rather often with dreams, came suddenly to an unexpected and disappointing conclusion. The Army of the Tennessee’s advance units, within less than half a mile of the Western & Atlantic tracks, came under infantry fire heavier than McPherson had anticipated. Haunted by the unknown, perhaps a nightmare vision of Johnston’s speeding large numbers of troops to attack him while he was separated from the rest of Sherman’s command, McPherson pulled back into the safety of Snake Creek Gap. When Sherman learned that his preferred subordinate had failed to break the railroad his spirit sank. “Well Mac,” he admonished the Army of the Tennessee’s commander when again they stood face-to-face, “you missed the opportunity of your life!”11

Sherman recognized that McPherson, in falling back to the gap, had been “perfectly justified by his orders”—except that McPherson had been ordered to break the railroad first. Clearly Sherman felt that McPherson had not been as aggressive as he should have been. Years later he wrote in his memoirs, with a touch of exaggeration, that McPherson “could have walked into Resaca . . . or he could have placed his whole force astride the railroad above Resaca, and there have easily withstood the attack of all of Johnston’s army, with the knowledge that Thomas and Schofield were on his heels.” Sherman, of course, was the beneficiary of hindsight when writing his memoirs, having observed Joe Johnston’s actions throughout all of the campaign. Knowing the history of Johnston’s movements may well have influenced Sherman’s claim in his memoirs that Johnston, rather than attacking McPherson in position on the railroad, would have retreated eastward, and “we should have captured half his army and all his artillery and wagons at the very beginning of the campaign.”¹²

The strike through Snake Creek Gap was McPherson’s first significant assignment as an army commander. General Wesley Clark pertinently observed that command in war has to be learned “the only way it can be learned—by experience.” Perhaps with greater experience, McPherson would have acted more aggressively, and Sherman’s turning maneuver would have brought an unqualified triumph at the inception of the campaign. When it failed to do so, the plan became a subject for second-guessing—as might be expected. General Schofield, in his memoirs published after Sherman’s death, claimed in defense of his West Point classmate that McPherson’s force “was entirely too small for the work assigned it.” Not that the Army of the Cumberland was the answer. Declaring Thomas’s command “unwieldy and slow,” and too large for such an endeavor, Schofield wrote that Sherman’s best move would have been to strengthen McPherson’s maneuver “with a corps of Thomas’ army in close support.” Also, he said that Johnston’s railroad should have been seized and held, not merely broken.13

The most severe castigation of Sherman’s Snake Creek Gap maneuver was presented by the historian Albert Castel in a 1992 history of the Atlanta campaign. Contending that Sherman’s “first and by-far-greatest mistake was not to execute Thomas’s original plan of operations,” Castel proclaimed that “had ‘Slow Trot’ Thomas, as some members of Sherman’s entourage disparagingly call him, been in command of the Union army in Georgia, the North probably would have won the campaign in less than a week.” What General Thomas might or might not have accomplished remains forever unknowable, but Castel’s flat-out confidence in Thomas is questionable. Larry Daniel, in a history of the Army of the Cumberland, offered a thought-provoking comparison with the earlier Tullahoma, Tennessee, campaign: “In that instance, Thomas seized Hoover’s Gap, but then squandered his success and subsequently stalled, thus giving the Confederates time to withdraw to Tullahoma. If Thomas performed sluggishly with one corps, would he [at Snake Creek Gap] have acted more boldly with three?”¹⁴

While both Stones River and Chickamauga offered compelling evidence of Thomas’s prowess as a defensive commander, the general’s offensive credentials were murky. The Army of the Cumberland’s celebrated assault at Missionary Ridge, for example, was neither planned nor ordered by Thomas. There was no good reason, in the spring of 1864, for Sherman to think of Thomas as a better offensive commander than McPherson. Given Sherman’s familiarity with McPherson and the Army of the Tennessee, as well as the Army of the Cumberland’s bulk and positioning, his decision to assign the turning maneuver to McPherson was reasonable and understandable. And nearly 25,000 veteran infantry was not a paltry force for such a mission. Admittedly, as Schofield later contended, strengthening the Army of the Tennessee with supporting troops from Thomas—even one division—would have provided McPherson with significant reinforcement. Sherman simply never thought that “Mac” needed assistance.

McPherson’s march very nearly succeeded and probably would have if he had pressed forward as Sherman expected. Brigadier General John W. Fuller, commanding the lead brigade as it advanced to break the railroad, contributed a revealing summation: “The skirmishers had already reached a position from which they commanded the railroad, and the battalions were close behind, with every prospect of beating the small force sent out by the enemy to counteract our movements. Here, however, General McPherson deemed it prudent to halt . . . and to withdraw . . . immediately to the mouth of the gap in our rear.” McPherson should have realized, as Sherman had reminded, that Johnston “cannot afford a detachment strong enough to fight you,” without having to deal with an overwhelming Federal force at his back. The overly cautious action of McPherson, who graduated first in his West Point class, was not foreseeable, and Sherman should not be faulted for something no one could have prophesied.15

Sherman soon ordered most of his forces to move through Snake Creek Gap, straight for Resaca. Only Oliver O. Howard’s Fourth Corps, Army of the Cumberland, along with a division of cavalry, were left in front of Buzzard Roost to watch Johnston’s army. Moving out on May 10, most of the Yankee troops reached Snake Creek Gap by the evening of May 12. While Sherman’s men tramped southward on the west side of Rocky Face, Joe Johnston and his chief subordinates remained perplexed about the Union commander’s intentions. Not until May 12 did Johnston realize that Sherman was marching around his left flank. The Confederate commander would likely have faced a dire situation, despite McPherson’s failure to carry out his mission, had not Leonidas Polk’s reinforcements from Alabama and Mississippi—some 15,000 troops—begun arriving in Resaca the day before Sherman got there.¹⁶

Awakened at last to the danger of being trapped north of Resaca and the Oostenaula River, Johnston moved rapidly southward to join up with Polk’s forces. Total Rebel strength then numbered approximately 65,000, organized into three corps, commanded by William Hardee, Lieutenant General John Bell Hood and Leonidas Polk. Johnston occupied a formidable line, extending in a rough, crescentlike shape from the Oostenaula west of Resaca to a point northeast of town. Potentially, he still had a major problem. Two sizable rivers, the Oostenaula and the Conasauga, were at his back. Sherman approached Johnston’s new position with the Army of the Ohio on the left, the Army of the Cumberland in the center and the Army of the Tennessee on the right.17

General Schofield climbed up a hill to the rear of his troops, discovered that portions of the enemy’s main line of defense were visible and sent a courier to inform Sherman of the vantage point. The commanding general soon appeared, accompanied by George Thomas, Joe Hooker and several staff officers. All of them scrambled up the hill to survey the Southerners’ works, only to be greeted by an enemy shell crashing through and exploding in the branches of a dead tree. Schofield said everybody scattered to find cover except for Sherman and Hooker. He claimed the two men drew themselves to full height, as if totally unconcerned with danger, and strode around the top of the hill in silence, each waiting, thought Schofield, for the other to first seek shelter. At last, “as if by some mysterious impulse,” they simultaneously marched to the rear, the event convincing Schofield that personal relations between the two were not good.¹⁸

Sherman had no more intention of attacking the Rebel defenses at Resaca, which appeared to be strongly manned at all points, than he did at Buzzard Roost. Sergeant Andrew McCornack, serving with the 127th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, who knew something about assaulting enemy fortifications—having won the Medal of Honor for the Forlorn Hope effort against Stockade Redan on May 22, 1863, at Vicksburg—declared in a letter to his father that the Rebel defenses at Resaca “were better than they had at Vicksburg.”¹⁹

Sherman quickly decided on another turning movement. He sent a division of the Army of the Tennessee trekking for Lay’s Ferry, several miles southwest of Resaca. Brigadier General Thomas W. Sweeny’s division of the Sixteenth Corps was ordered to establish a bridgehead on the south bank of the Oostenaula, thereby placing the Yankees within a short distance of Johnston’s crucial railroad. As Sweeny maneuvered to carry out his mission, Sherman closed in against Resaca, although making no attempt to actually assault the enemy’s fortified works. On May 14 and 15, booming artillery and the din of musketry reverberated for miles through the north Georgia hills, while the Army of the Tennessee managed to gain a ridge overlooking the town, from which its field artillery commanded the Western & Atlantic bridge over the Oostenaula. The Grayclads attempted, unsuccessfully, to regain the position.20

For men in the ranks, the fortunes of soldiering sometimes varied remarkably. Sergeant Eugene A. “Casey” McWayne, also serving with Andrew McCornack in the 127th, wrote the “folks at home” that on May 10 he “had a good time; went fishing, caught some Bull Points [bullheads?] and an eel.” May 14 and 15 presented quite a contrast. McWayne’s regiment charged up a hill in the face of enemy fire, drove the Rebels back and dug in at the top. McWayne claimed that Brigadier General Giles Smith ordered their colonel “to hold that hill if he lost every man in doing so.” Soon, wrote McWayne, “the Rebs charged [attempting to recover the high ground], but were repulsed with a heavy loss.”²¹

Andrew McCornack essentially confirmed McWayne’s account of the regiment’s action at Resaca, writing that in attempting to recover the hill, “the Rebs formed five columns deep and made for us.” When General John A. Logan, commanding the Fifteenth Corps, saw the heavy Confederate force advancing, he exclaimed, according to McCornack, that “the first brigade is gone to hell.” However, McCornack proudly reported, “We took it cool . . . gave them 4 or 5 rounds, and you ought to [have seen] the Johnny Rebs run.” Assuring his parents and sisters that he was “well, tough, & hearty,” McCornack urged the family to send him “some fine cut chewing tobacco,” as well as “a good hat.” He did not care how much the hat might cost, because he expected soon to get paid. “They owe us four months [pay] now,” added the sergeant.²²

While the mass of the Union Army pressed hard against the Southerners at Resaca, Sweeny’s division proceeded with the cross-river assault near Lay’s Ferry. The assignment was not easy though, as soldiers struggled, under fire, to carry heavy boats to the launching point and then rowed, twenty men to a boat, across the Oostenaula to secure a landing site on the south bank. But the demanding operation did succeed, placing Sherman in position once more to imperil the Rebel line of communication. As soon as Johnston realized that he was being flanked again, he pulled out of Resaca under cover of the early morning darkness on May 16, burning the railroad bridge over the Oostenaula, and heading southward in rapid retreat.23

Sherman has been faulted by historian Richard McMurry for not making “a serious effort [at Lay’s Ferry] to cut off Johnston north of the Oostenaula or trap him on the north side of that stream with his back to the river.” Surely that possibility crossed Sherman’s mind—although probably not for long. Lay’s Ferry would have presented a more difficult maneuver than Snake Creek Gap. To again take Johnston by surprise would have seemed unlikely, while bridging the Oostenaula and placing a major force on its south bank before Johnston could react was a greater challenge than merely marching through Snake Creek Gap. Also, with McPherson’s failure fresh in mind, Sherman would not have been inclined to give him a more difficult assignment.²⁴

Nor would he have entrusted the taxing mission to Schofield or Thomas. The Army of the Ohio was too small for such a job, even if Sherman had sufficient confidence in Schofield’s ability to do the work, which, at best, is questionable. After the Snake Creek failure, Sherman was not about to immediately follow it with a more difficult maneuver, regardless of who might direct the action.

Already Sherman had flanked the Southerners out of two strong defensive positions in less than two weeks. Confidently, he put his three armies in immediate pursuit of the Rebels. Sherman had seized the offensive, a key principle of generalship long recognized by the U.S. Army, and he had no intention of relinquishing it. General Thomas advanced directly south along the Western & Atlantic railway. The Army of the Ohio and Joe Hooker’s Twentieth Corps, which Sherman detached from the Army of the Cumberland, composed the left flank of the march, while James McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee became the right flank. Sherman’s forces were spread out across several miles, east and west of the railroad, forging ahead with a bold self-assurance epitomized by the commander himself.25

“So eager was [Sherman] to bring on a battle in the comparatively open country north of the Etowah [River],” wrote Jacob D. Cox, the division commander in the Army of the Ohio, “that he ordered his subordinates not to hesitate to engage the enemy without reference to supports, feeling sure that he could . . . concentrate with rapidity enough to secure the victory.” Cox said that Sherman’s “apparent carelessness was a calculated audacity, willing to take some risks for the sake of tempting his adversary to a general engagement.” Sherman wanted very much, as he wrote Schofield on May 18, to “bring Johnston to battle this side of the Etowah . . . even at the hazard of beginning battle with but a part of our forces.”²⁶

Meanwhile, farther to the south, at Confederate headquarters, General Johnston had been experiencing increasing pressure to turn and fight the oncoming Yankees. If he kept giving up huge chunks of territory without a major battle, would he not ultimately destroy the morale of his forces? Richmond was prodding him to attack, and his senior corps commander, William Hardee, urged him to make a stand at Adairsville. But Johnston did not like the look of the terrain. Again he retreated, only this time armed with a plan to mass his forces against a smaller, relatively isolated segment of Sherman’s host.

Johnston’s concept for battle was excellent, pivoting on a simple divergence of the road. He believed that Sherman would divide his large forces at Adairsville, sending part on the road to Cassville, and the remainder down the road to Kingston. The Rebel commander intended, with the weight of his army, to attack the smaller of Sherman’s advancing columns while it was separated from the other. Johnston sent Hardee’s corps, with most of the cavalry and the army’s wagon trains, directly south to Kingston, skirmishing heavily with Sherman’s pursuers in the hope that the Union commander would believe that the main body of the Confederates was retreating toward Kingston. Simultaneously Hood and Polk, with their corps, hurried down the Cassville Road and prepared for the ambush. The plan was for Polk to launch a head-on attack, while Hood struck the Federals in flank.27

Sherman proceeded as the Confederate commander hoped. Convinced that Johnston was heading to Kingston, Sherman was perplexed about the reason. “All the signs continue of Johnston’s having retreated on Kingston,” Sherman told Schofield, “and why he should lead to Kingston, if he designs to cover his trains to Cartersville [a town on the Western & Atlantic about six miles south of Cassville] I do not see.” Nevertheless, he assured Schofield, “in any hypothesis our plan is right.” Sherman had sent the main portion of Thomas’s army, along with McPherson on his right flank, directly toward Kingston, while Hooker’s Twentieth Corps was veering southeast to Cassville, with Schofield on Hooker’s eastern flank.²⁸

Everything seemed to be developing favorably for Johnston’s attack. The recent arrival of Polk’s cavalry division and Samuel G. French’s infantry division had boosted total Rebel strength above 70,000, possibly as high as 74,000. It was the largest army that the western Confederacy ever marshaled. Hood and Polk were massed to assail Schofield and Hooker, while Hardee had positioned his corps to block Thomas and McPherson from rendering any assistance to their comrades.

“I lead you to battle,” proclaimed Johnston in an ostentatious address on the morning of May 19, which was read at the head of each regiment. “The greatest enthusiasm prevailed in our ranks,” reported Colonel Ellison Capers of the Twenty-Fourth South Carolina Infantry, “as the men and officers saw the army formed for battle.” Every moment of that hot, fateful morning seemed to be building to an inevitable and major engagement. Then suddenly chance took a hand.²⁹

While maneuvering to strike an unsuspecting Schofield, about 10:30 a.m., General Hood discovered that Yankee cavalry were approaching on a road off to his right. The Federal troopers were totally unexpected, for a recent Confederate reconnaissance to the northeast had not revealed any signs of the enemy. Hood had no idea either how large the Union force might be or whether infantry were coming on immediately behind the cavalry. To launch an assault when his own command might be attacked from the flank and rear was unthinkable. Quickly Hood halted his advance, deployed skirmishers to engage the Federals on his right flank, sent word of the alarming enemy presence to Johnston and began falling back toward Cassville. Albert Castel declared that the surprise appearance of the Federal cavalry on Hood’s right flank “unknowingly . . . saved the Union column that was moving down the Adairsville Road from a damaging if not devastating attack.”30

That afternoon, Johnston drew up his army, as he later reported, “in what seemed to me an excellent position—a bold ridge immediately in rear of Cassville, with an open valley before it.” Hardee’s corps held the left, with Polk in the center and Hood on the right. Hardee advised Johnston to wait and see whether Sherman would attack. However, Polk and Hood soon claimed their lines would be enfiladed by Union artillery on the morrow, and “urged [Johnston] to abandon the ground immediately.” Once more the Rebel commander retreated, crossing the Etowah on May 20. He reported it was “a step which I have regretted ever since.”

Confederate Brigadier General Arthur Manigault remembered, “To our great surprise, and to the disgust of many, at midnight we received the order to retire, and at two o’clock, our division drew out as noiselessly as possible, and bringing up the rear of our corps, took up the line of march for the railroad crossing at the Etowah River.” The retreating Southerners burned the railroad bridge as soon as they were across, but Sherman’s hardworking repair crews, as at Resaca, wasted no time in reopening the vital span. General Howard described how Sherman, while working at his headquarters in Kingston on May 22, became irritated by the ringing of a church bell, and sent a guard to arrest the bell ringer. When the man was brought into his office, Sherman looked up from his writing and asked abruptly: “What were you ringing that bell for?” The man replied: “For service. It is Sunday, General.” Sherman responded: “Oh! Is it? Didn’t know it was Sunday. Let him go.”³¹

SHERMAN WAS ECSTATIC. “The Etowah . . . is the Rubicon of Georgia,” he declared on May 23. The campaign was not yet three weeks old, and not only had the Confederates twice been maneuvered out of formidable defensive positions, while retreating nearly fifty miles, but Sherman’s Yankees were also across two of the three major rivers between Chattanooga and Atlanta: the Oostenaula and the Etowah. Only the Chattahoochee remained, and the Union commander believed, as he spiritedly told Ellen, that soon he would be putting “the best army in the country” across it. “We are all in motion like a vast hive of bees,” Sherman asserted in his effervescent style, “and expect to swarm over the Chattahoochee in a few days.” Chief Quartermaster and Brigadier General Robert Allen, who was visiting Sherman’s headquarters, observed that “officers and men are in the highest spirits and confident of success.” Allen also noted Sherman’s words, with pleasure no doubt, that “no army in the world is better provided.”32

Besides the obvious success of forcing the Rebels south of the Etowah, Sherman had already secured the industrial town of Rome and the Noble Iron Works. Joe Johnston’s retreat then handed Sherman the Etowah Iron Works as well, which were located near Cartersville, and allowed the Union forces to continue building a lethal momentum. Sherman ordered Schofield to destroy those works, along with some nearby flour mills, which was quickly accomplished. In Richmond, Jefferson Davis became still more concerned about how much farther his Georgia commander intended to fall back before ever making a stand. Sherman seemed fully in control, gaining more territory more readily than expected. Perhaps reflecting the thinking of many Federals, Private Jacob Dickason, Twenty-Fifth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, wrote his brother on May 22: “I feel in hopes the war will come to a close by fall.” Dickason was correct—for him personally. He died of disease on August 31, 1864.³³

Sherman was soon on the move again. “I knew more of Georgia than the Rebels did,” the Union commander later blurted. He knew that he did not want to attack Joe Johnston’s new position at Allatoona Pass, through which ran the Western & Atlantic Railroad and the pike to Atlanta. Sherman explained that two decades before he had stopped to see some Indian mounds on the Etowah River and, staying in the vicinity for several days, had also noted the Allatoona Pass. He remembered that it “was very strong, would be hard to force, and resolved not even to attempt it.” Instead, he decided “to turn the position by moving from Kingston to Marietta via Dallas.”34

The small town of Dallas lay about fifteen miles south of the Etowah River—measuring in a straight line from the site of the Indian mounds—and about eighteen miles west of the Confederate’s new supply base on the Western & Atlantic at Marietta. Sherman’s turning maneuver would force the Southern commander to abandon his impressive defensive position in the Allatoona region, or otherwise Sherman soon would be marching against his railroad communications, and threatening to cut him off on the north side of the Chattahoochee River. Sherman anticipated that Johnston well might “fall behind the Chattahoochee.”³⁵

On May 23 Sherman initiated his grand turning maneuver, a movement broader and more daring than at Dalton or Resaca. Quite possibly he would be operating “independent of the railroad for twenty days.” He did not seem at all worried about leaving his rail communications. In addition to fully packed army supply wagons, and “beef on the hoof,” Sherman would also “rely on getting much meat, and forage, and vegetables” from the countryside through which his forces would be passing. General Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland advanced by the direct middle route, with Schofield on the left of Thomas, while McPherson’s hard-marching Army of the Tennessee swung widely to the right of Thomas, in order to approach Dallas from the west. Sherman rode with Thomas.³⁶

He hoped again to take Johnston by surprise, but this time the Confederate cavalry quickly warned their commander that Sherman’s forces were on the move. Instead of falling back to the Chattahoochee, as Sherman thought likely, Johnston directed the Confederate Army south and west toward Dallas, to intercept the Yankee threat of turning his flank. Captain Sam Foster, reflecting the disgust of Southerners with retreating, recorded in his diary: “We travel in a southwest direction, but none of us have any idea where we are going. . . . Some say we are going to Florida and put in a pontoon bridge over to Cuba.” By midmorning of May 25, the Confederate forces were positioned to block Sherman’s advance. They defended a line facing generally north by northwest, with Hardee’s corps on the left near Dallas, Polk’s corps on Hardee’s right flank, while Hood’s corps, the last to leave Allatoona lest Sherman send a force down the railroad, lay to the right of Polk. Hood covered a key crossroads marked by a Methodist church known as New Hope.37

The brutal struggle that soon erupted along the Dallas–New Hope Church–Pickett’s Mill line, has been characterized by some writers as hardly more than heavy skirmishing. Historian James Reston Jr., in Sherman’s March and Vietnam, discounted all the fighting in the Atlanta campaign except Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain and three engagements around Atlanta as merely “maneuver, usually Johnston fortifying the high ridges and Sherman bypassing them to the west.” Sherman biographer Lloyd Lewis made reference to “three days’ skirmishing around New Hope Church,” thus dismissing the subject in less than half a sentence. Actually the intense, savage fighting on this line, and the large number of casualties, fully justified the designation by which many of Sherman’s men later referred to the encounters: “the Battle of the Hell Hole.”³⁸

On the morning of May 25, Fighting Joe Hooker’s Twentieth Corps, Army of the Cumberland, led the Union advance. Tramping along the road to Dallas, the Federal soldiers were steadily approaching the crossroads at New Hope Church, where Hood’s corps was drawing up for battle. In the center-front of Hooker’s corps marched John Geary’s division, with Daniel Butterfield’s division moving on a country road to Geary’s left and rear while Alpheus Williams led the division on Geary’s right. Geary’s troops advanced on the better road, by the shortest route, and were the first to strike the enemy, and that unexpectedly. Around noon, his skirmishers became heavily involved with those of the Grayclads. General Geary, a veteran of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Wauhatchie (where his son Edward had been killed) and Chattanooga, reinforced his skirmishers and ultimately deployed all three of his brigades before his division began gradually forcing the Rebels to give ground.³⁹

Geary was really worried. “From prisoners captured we learned that Hood’s entire corps was in our front,” reported the brigadier, “and Hardee’s not far off in the direction of Dallas. My division was isolated, at least five miles from the nearest supporting troops, and had been sustaining a sharp conflict with the enemy for four hours. Close in my front was an overwhelming force.” Joe Hooker, who was with Geary at the time, ordered him to dig in on a ridge that, in Geary’s words, “appeared advantageous for defense.” A slight barricade of logs was hastily thrown up, and skirmish lines “deployed to a greater extent than before, and ordered to keep up an aggressive fire,” hoping to deceive the Confederates “as to our weakness.”40

About this time Sherman got involved. His idea of the tactical situation was quite different from Geary and Hooker—and he was wrong. Sherman believed he was on Johnston’s left flank. Apparently Sherman’s mind had locked in on a preconception of how his turning maneuver would play out. He did not think Johnston could have so quickly shifted his forces to counter the Union advance, and impatiently he ignored the evidence to the contrary. From studying a map Sherman had recognized the importance of the crossroads at New Hope Church, and he wanted it seized at once. When informed of Geary’s situation, Sherman thought it had been exaggerated. Reluctantly consenting to a delay while Williams’s division came up to join Geary’s, Sherman told a staff officer, “Let Williams go in anywhere as soon as he gets up. I don’t see what they are waiting for in front now. There haven’t been twenty rebels there today.”⁴¹

By five o’clock Williams’s division was at hand, with Butterfield arriving about the same time. All three divisions were rapidly deployed for attack in columns of brigades (meaning one behind another), a massed formation devised for penetrating power. The brunt of the Federal assault was met by Alexander P. Stewart’s division. Stewart had three brigades deployed along a low ridge at the crossroads, while holding a fourth in reserve. Two of the three front-line units managed to throw up breastworks. Sixteen artillery pieces supported them, some of which were angled for cross-firing. Confederates who were not protected by breastworks scrambled for whatever cover they could find, even tombstones in the church cemetery.

Although the Yankees outnumbered the Rebels approximately three to one, their assault failed to break through the Southern line. The in-depth attack formation presented a narrow front of only one brigade for each division. Thus the majority of the Union soldiers were not in position to shoot at the enemy, nullifying their superior numbers. The Confederate front was about the same width as that of the Blueclads, enabling the strongly positioned defenders to mount, according to General Geary’s report, “a very heavy artillery and musketry fire [which was] . . . heavier than in any other battle of the campaign in which my command was engaged.” A Southerner wrote in his diary that the continuous volleys of small arms, coupled with the earsplitting cannonading, constituted “the heaviest firing I ever listened to.”42

The intense Confederate fire had an unnerving effect upon some Northerners, as is evident from the report of Lieutenant Colonel James C. Rogers, commanding the 123rd New York Infantry in Alpheus Williams’s division. Rogers said his regiment advanced until “close under the enemy’s guns . . . so near that by lying on the ground nearly all [the grape and canister] passed over it harmlessly.” There his unit lay until a relieving regiment came up, but the fresh regiment “scarcely had formed in front,” reported the lieutenant colonel, “when the enemy’s battery, which had been silent for a few minutes, opened again.” As a result, the newly arrived regiment suddenly “rushed in disorder to the rear,” said Rogers, with “all attempts to stop them . . . even with a line of bayonets, proving useless.” Williams’s command was the hardest hit of Hooker’s divisions at New Hope Church, taking a total of 870 casualties.⁴³

Union Captain John W. Tuttle memorably recorded a disquieting scene of disorientation, suffering and destruction. He said that thousands of men were crowding forward, without any semblance of organization, as they attempted to relieve those who had been fighting. The soldiers relieved came swarming back, adding to the mass of confusion, amd Tuttle thought “nearly everybody was swearing at the top of his voice.” For approximately three hours the fierce struggle continued, as twilight faded and night came on. The night was “intensely dark,” remembered General Geary, who said that “a very severe thunder-storm, with cold, pelting rain, added to the gloom,” while the “fitful flashes of lightning” momentarily illuminated the dead, dying and wounded. Geary said that casualties in his division, although lighter than Williams’s division, came to a total of 376. General Hooker, for all three of his divisions, reported casualties at New Hope Church of 1,665, probably a minimal figure. Confederates were convinced that the true number was considerably higher.44

Joe Johnston, for example, who placed Southern casualties at about 450 killed and wounded, reported that the Union loss was at least 3,000. “No more persistent attack or determined resistance has anywhere been made” was the assessment by Rebel General Stewart, who observed that “the enemy’s fire was very heavy, [but] passed over the [Confederate] line to a great extent,” thus accounting for the relatively few Southern losses, which he placed between 300 and 400, while reporting Hooker’s losses “at from 3,000 to 5,000.” Johnston’s and Stewart’s reports of Federal casualties are almost certainly too high, but they do call in question the accuracy of Hooker’s numbers.⁴⁵

After the carnage was over, Sherman acknowledged in his report that “a hard battle” had been fought at New Hope Church. He never admitted, however, that a Confederate division held the crossroads well before Hooker’s attack. Perhaps Sherman always believed that there had not been “twenty rebels there today,” when he ordered Hooker to secure the crossroads at the church. All generals, even the great ones, make mistakes. If Sherman came to realize that he had been wrong about the Rebel presence at New Hope Church—and he probably did—he would not have been inclined to admit that fact, particularly if it meant acknowledging that Hooker had been right.⁴⁶

On the day after the battle at New Hope Church there was constant skirmishing, but no major fighting. From the day’s action, Sherman determined that the enemy line stretched for four or five miles, and he could discover no significant gaps to exploit. By early morning of May 27, he decided to turn the right flank of the Confederate position. The maneuver would place his forces between the Southerners and the Western & Atlantic, thus enabling him to reopen communication with the railroad. Sherman’s choice to lead the march was General Howard. While Howard trekked for the Rebel flank, with Thomas Wood’s division from the Fourth Corps, along with units from the Fourteenth and Twenty-Third Corps, Union troops all along the front were to keep up an aggressive demonstration to pin down the Southern army.47

The Confederates posted on the Grayclads’ right flank were Patrick Cleburne’s 5,000-man division, one of the hardest-fighting units in the Rebel army, as they had proven at Chattanooga and elsewhere. Howard’s march was discovered almost as soon as his troops began moving out, and the Southerners continued to monitor the Federal progress throughout the day. If the Confederates needed any help in keeping track of the Yankees, they had only to listen for periodic bugle sounds, because one Union brigade commander, attempting to keep his troops going in the right direction through the thick forest, instructed the buglers to frequently sound their pieces. As the day wore on, Cleburne simply shifted his forces farther to the east, while Joe Johnston sent additional troops to back him up if necessary.

The Union march carried across very rugged terrain, which proved fatiguing to traverse, and at times almost impassable. Thomas Wood, directing his three-brigade division, with Brigadier General William B. Hazen’s Second Brigade in the lead, said the men moved “through dense forests and the thickest jungle, a country whose surface was scarred by deep ravines and intersected by difficult ridges.” Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Fullerton wrote in his journal about the difficult, confusing and at times near impenetrable terrain: “1 p.m., have advanced about one mile and a half, and country rolling and covered with timber and undergrowth; can see nothing fifty yards in front.” Fullerton also noted that the day was “very hot.”⁴⁸

General Howard did not know where he was. Anyone who has examined the terrain over which his forces were struggling will not be surprised by the comment he sent to General Thomas: “No person can appreciate the difficulty of moving over this ground unless he can see it.” Howard’s march was delayed by periodic reconnoitering, followed by still further trekking to the left. Uncertain of where the Confederate right flank was located and perplexed about his own location, Howard continued his groping, frustrating, eastward tramp. At last, after advancing a total of approximately three miles, Howard concluded that his march had probably overlapped the right flank of the enemy. He prepared to attack.49

“I am now turning the enemy’s right flank, I think,” he reported to General Thomas at 4:35 p.m. Howard was badly mistaken. His attack, made in the vicinity of Pickett’s Mill, along Little Pumpkinvine Creek, with Hazen’s brigade going in alone, struck a veteran, well-positioned enemy. Hazen had thought his men would be the spearhead for an assault in columns of brigades. Then he heard Wood say: “We will put in Hazen and see what success he has.” Howard seemed to agree, with a nod of his head—perhaps a mere acquiescence—but whatever, the thing was done. Hazen found the Rebels in force, occupying high ground, covered by breastworks, “which extended to our left farther than we could see,” as Fullerton recounted in his journal.

Cleburne’s troops, according to Fullerton, “not only opened a murderous fire from their front line of works, but also terrible cross-fires from both flanks.” Only when the remnants of Hazen’s brigade were falling back did Wood and Howard send in another brigade, which soon shared the same fate as Hazen’s. From beginning to end, the Union attack was an uncoordinated, piecemeal effort. The Federals never came close to deploying their overall superiority of numbers. Pat Cleburne reported that as the Yankees “appeared upon the slope,” his men “slaughtered them with deliberate aim.” He said some of his officers, “who have seen the most service,” testified that the piles of dead “were greater than they had ever seen before.”⁵⁰

Southern Captain Sam Foster, fighting with Hiram B. Granbury’s Texas brigade, wrote in his diary that at sun rise the next morning “I beheld that which . . . I hope never [to] see again, dead men meet[ing] the eye in every direction.” Foster said that “in one place I counted 50 dead men in a circle of 30 feet of me.” He observed that “it seems like they nearly all have been shot in the head.” Stating that he had seen many dead men during the war, as well as wounded men mangled in varied ways, Foster declared that he “never before saw anything that made me sick, like looking at the brains of these men did.” He noted that Generals Johnston, Hardee, Cleburne and Granbury “all say that the dead are strewn thicker . . . than at any battle of the war.” General Johnston, while reporting that the total number of Confederate killed and wounded was about 450, claimed that the Union dead, “except those borne off, were counted at 600.” He thus estimated “the whole [enemy] loss at 3,000 at least.”51

General Howard acknowledged that Union “losses were very heavy, being upward of 1,400 killed, wounded and missing in General Wood’s division alone.” (Wood specified his division’s casualties at 1,457.) General Hazen said that when he was forced to retreat, his brigade had lost 500 men. A soldier afterward asked Hazen about the location of his brigade, and the veteran general reportedly replied, with tears in his eyes: “Brigade, hell, I have none!” With a well-earned reputation as a hard-fighting officer and a capable leader, no one knew better than the disgusted Hazen that the battle had been a badly managed affair. Little wonder that Ambrose Bierce, a young writer-to-be of notable stature, who was then serving in Hazen’s brigade, later recorded a scathing account of May 27, which he entitled “The Crime at Pickett’s Mill.”⁵²

In bitter retrospect, the Battle of Pickett’s Mill is tragic, because Sherman had sent orders to cancel the attack. But Howard did not get the word in time. Probably the reason that Sherman decided against the attack is revealed in a message that he sent Schofield at five o’clock on that terrible day: “It is useless,” he declared, “to look for the flank of the enemy, as he makes temporary breast-works as fast as we travel.” Sherman, in his official report, did not say much about New Hope Church, and nothing at all about Pickett’s Mill. In his memoirs, he characterized New Hope Church as “a drawn battle,” never mentioning Pickett’s Mill. At the time, Sherman wrote General Joseph D. Webster at the Nashville headquarters of the Military Division of the Mississippi, claiming that “Johnston tried to head us off at Dallas, but did not succeed.” Continuing his brief summation, Sherman declared that “in all encounters we had the advantage. All is working well. You may give this publicly.”53

After Pickett’s Mill, Sherman knew that he needed to get back to the Western & Atlantic. His maneuver had not taken Johnston by surprise—which was key to the whole endeavor. There was no rational expectation of breaking through the enemy line. The army wagons, because of distance and poor roads, were falling behind in sustaining Sherman’s troops, and even if he now succeeded in turning Johnston’s left flank, the Southerners would be positioned to cut him off completely from the railroad. Logistically, he had no other choice, and began preparations, as Basil Liddell Hart wrote, “to side-step eastward toward the railroad.”⁵⁴

Joe Johnston, however, thought he saw an opportunity to strike Sherman’s left flank. Whether the idea originated with Johnston or John Bell Hood is unclear, but Hood drew the assignment. Conducting a slow and arduous night march of a half dozen miles or more, Hood then discovered that the Yankee flank was no longer “in air,” as the Rebel cavalry scouts had earlier reported. Hood halted and informed Johnston of the latest cavalry intelligence. Reluctantly the Confederate commander called off his intended assault.⁵⁵

But Johnston’s hopes for a successful counterattack soon rose anew, based on reports that Sherman’s western flank was vulnerable. Union troops in the Dallas area were thought to be pulling back and moving northward. Johnston ordered General Hardee to send in a division, develop the situation and attack if the circumstances seemed inviting. William B. Bate’s division was selected for the probing mission. Confident that the Yankees were in an exposed situation, Bate ordered a brigade forward to the attack, with the others to follow if indeed the Federals were vulnerable. They were not. The lone Rebel brigade quickly found itself facing a superior enemy force. Once Bate realized the Union strength, he immediately tried to cancel the attack, but without success, as two more Southern brigades took up the assault.⁵⁶

Union Sergeant Robert G. Ardry, 111th Illinois, described the Confederate charge and the resulting slaughter in a letter to his father. The Federals had entrenched after nightfall, he said, “and we covered the clay over with brush and they [the Rebels] did not know that we had anything of the kind. They came up bravely, and when within 75 yards, and our skirmishers all in, the word fire was given.” Ardry declared: “Our line for ¼ of a mile was one sheet of fire,” which broke the enemy lines, “but they rallied and on they came . . . but we just more than shot them down.” Admitting that “we had all the advantages,” the sergeant said the Rebels suffered terribly, and he estimated they lost 3,000 killed and wounded.57

The Southerners had made a fearless but futile effort. “The Rebs charged on our works . . . four times,” according to Andrew McCornack, “but were driven back with a heavy loss.” The “Battle of Dallas . . . is practically a mirror image of Pickett’s Mill,” validly observed Albert Castel, “with the Confederates . . . being the ones to make a valiant but bumbling and bloody assault . . . [that] was utterly unnecessary.”⁵⁸

Thus ended the brutal, sanguinary fighting on the Dallas–New Hope Church–Pickett’s Mill line, fighting in which Sergeant Casey McWayne thought that “the Rebs have been the most desperate . . . that we have ever fought them.” These battles also heralded a marked change in the nature of the western campaigning. Beginning with the “Hell Hole” experience and continuing through the battles for Atlanta, both Yankees and Rebels quickly threw up defensive works whenever and wherever they halted. Soldiers entrenched to a degree previously unmatched. Another significant, tactical lesson presented itself during these grim clashes at New Hope Church and Pickett’s Mill. Both attacks were made in columns of brigades, a formation that, in a rugged, heavily wooded country against an entrenched enemy, “had little, if any advantage over a single line of equal front,” as Jacob Cox explained. He pointed out that the column “could not charge with the ensemble which could give it momentum [to break through the enemy line], and its depth was therefore a disadvantage, since it exposed masses of men to fire who were wholly unable to fire in return.” Not everyone immediately grasped the lesson, of course, but that fact did not make the reality any less manifest.⁵⁹

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WHEN SHERMAN GOT BACK to the Western & Atlantic in early June, he had failed to realize his ambitious goals of gaining the railroad farther to the south at Marietta and maneuvering the Rebels back to the Chattahoochee. Johnston had adeptly countered his determined flanking effort, and in the fighting on the Dallas–New Hope Church–Pickett’s Mill line, Sherman’s forces had suffered greater casualties overall than the enemy. Yet strategically, Sherman had gained another triumph. He had flanked the Confederates out of an apparently impregnable defensive position covering the Western & Atlantic at the Allatoona Pass, which, after all, had been the primary objective when he initiated the turning movement. He had drawn some fifteen miles closer to Atlanta and compelled Johnston to relinquish another hunk of Georgia. Undeniably, Sherman remained in control of the campaign.