XXXVII. ATLANTA CAMPAIGN: ADVANCE TO THE ETOWAH…

XXXVII. ATLANTA CAMPAIGN: ADVANCE TO THE ETOWAH

Tactics modified by character of the country--Use of the spade--Johnston's cautious defensive--Methods of Grant and Sherman--Open country between Oostanaula and Etowah--Movement in several columns--Sherman's eagerness--Route of left wing--Of McPherson on the right--Necessity of exact system in such marches--Route of Twenty-third Corps--Hooker gets in the way--Delays occasioned--Closing in on Cassville--Our commanding position--Johnston's march to Cassville--His order to fight there--Protest of Hood and Polk--Retreat over the Etowah--Sherman crosses near Kingston--My reconnoissance to the Allatoona crossing--Destruction of iron works and mills--Marching without baggage--Barbarism of war--Desolation it causes--Changes in our corps organization--Hascall takes Judah's division--Our place of crossing the Etowah--Interference again--Kingston the new base--Rations--Camp coffee.

The opening period of the campaign had developed the conditions of warfare in so broken and difficult a country, and they were only emphasized by the later experiences of both armies. Positions for defence could be intrenched with field-works whilst the hostile army was feeling its way forward through dense forests and over mountain ridges. To carry such positions by direct assault was so costly that the lesson of prudence was soon learned and such attacks were more and more rarely resorted to. Sherman had moved upon the enemy at Resaca as promptly as the deployment and advance could be made after the turning movement and the passage of the Snake Creek defile; but we found Johnston strongly placed, on ground naturally difficult of approach, with works which gave his men such cover as to overcome any advantage we had in numbers. Still, the enemy found in turn that we could make counter-intrenchments and quickly extend them till we turned his flanks and threatened his communications, when he must either retreat or assault our works, and that, if he assaulted, the balance of losses would turn so heavily against him as to fatally deplete his army. Johnston carefully and systematically maintained this defensive, and in Virginia, after Lee had tried the policy of attack in the Wilderness, he became as cautiously defensive as Johnston. Grant was slower than Sherman in learning the unprofitableness of attacking field-works, and his campaign was by far the more costly one. The difference in such cases goes much farther than the casualty list; it was shown in October, when Sherman's army was strong and well-seasoned, but Grant's was so full of raw recruits as almost to have lost its veteran quality. There were special reasons which led Grant to adhere so long to the more aggressive tactics, which would need to be weighed in any full treatment of the subject; but I am now only pointing out the fact that in both the East and the West the lesson was practically the same. Aggressive strategy had the advantage it always has, but defensive tactics proved generally the better in so peculiar a field of operations.

Between the Oostanaula and the Etowah was the most open portion of northern Georgia, and it was possible for Sherman to move his army southward in several columns of pursuit on parallel roads (such as they were) without extending his front over a width of more than eight or ten miles. He was eager to bring the Confederates to battle in this region, and urged his subordinates to make haste. The assignment of routes to the different columns gave the centre to General Thomas, following the railroad in general, but putting his three corps upon as many country roads, when they could be found. General Schofield with the Twenty-third Corps was ordered to get over to the old Federal road which runs through Spring Place (east of Dalton) to Cassville. General McPherson with his two corps was sent by the Rome road and such parallel road as might be available, keeping communication with the centre. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 216.] Beyond him, on the extreme right, Davis's division of the Cumberland Army supported Garrard's cavalry division in a movement upon Rome by the west side of the Oostanaula. [Footnote: Id., pp. 198, 202-204.] The object of the last-mentioned movement was the destruction of the Confederate machine-shops and factories at Rome, as well as to cover the flank against movements along the main route of travel from Alabama. The extreme left flank was to be covered by the cavalry of the Ohio Army under General Stoneman.

In making such an advance, success as well as comfort depends upon the care with which the several columns are led, so that each shall keep its place, progressing equally with the others, and avoid above all things cutting into and interrupting those moving on its right or left. Each must keep the common purpose in view, and avoid obstructing the rest, for nothing is more wearisome to the troops and ruinous to the plans of the commander than to have the lines of advance cross each other. In our march of the 17th our own corps was fated to feel the full annoyance and delay of such an interference.

General Thomas ordered Howard's corps to cross by the bridges at Resaca, followed by Palmer's, which was diminished by the absence of Davis's division. He also ordered Hooker's corps to march by the long neck between the Oostanaula and Connasauga rivers to Newtown, and cross the Oostanaula there. Hooker would then follow such roads as he could find within two or three miles of Howard's line of march toward Adairsville. Sherman and Thomas both were with Howard. [Footnote: Id., pp. 202, 209, 210, 216, 217.]

Schofield ordered the divisions of the Twenty-third Corps to cross the Connasauga at different places, and make their way by different roads eastward to the Federal road crossing of the Coosawattee, turning south after crossing that river and marching till abreast of Adairsville and some four or five miles distant from it. As we had to gain several miles of easting and to cross two rivers before marching southward, ours was, of course, much the longer route; and as the pontoons were all in use at Resaca and Lay's Ferry, we had to find fords or build trestle-bridges.

I marched my own division to Hogan's Ford on the Connasauga, two miles below Tilton, and there crossed in water so deep that the men had to strip and carry their clothes and arms on their heads. Once over we pushed for the Federal road and the crossing of the Coosawattee at Field's Ferry. The other two divisions of the corps crossed the Connasauga at or near Fite's Ferry, where were trestle-bridges. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 210.]

General Hooker started upon the Newtown road, which runs southward some miles upon a long, narrow ridge which here separates the Oostanaula from its tributary; but before he had gone far he learned that the crossing at Newtown (the mouth of the Connasauga) was unfordable, and other means of getting over doubtful. He now turned abruptly to the east, crossed the Connasauga at Fite's, and marched toward McClure's Ford on the Coosawattee. [Footnote: Id., pp. 205, 206.] In moving out from Hogan's (or Hobart's) Ford, I had learned that the road from the north which crosses the Coosawattee at McClure's was probably the principal and shortest route to Cassville and had reported this to General Schofield, who ordered Judah's and Hovey's division to take the most direct roads to McClure's. These columns, however, ran into Hooker's, which were making for the same point and had headed Schofield's off, having the inner of the concentric routes on which we were marching. Neither at McClure's nor the more distant ferry at Field's Mill was there any bridge or tolerable ford, and Hooker was no better off than he would have been at Newtown. This movement had wholly disjointed Sherman's plan of keeping the three armies upon separate lines of march. Finding no means for rapid crossing at McClure's, he pushed one of his divisions to Field's, and so occupied and blocked both of the Coosawattee crossings, which by the orders should have been wholly at Schofield's disposal. We found ourselves obliged therefore to camp on the north side of the Coosawattee on the night of the 16th, instead of being well over that river and ready for a prompt advance on the 17th. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 210, 211, 220, 221, 225, 226.] Hooker himself might much better have obeyed his original orders. He reported to Thomas at ten o'clock on the morning of the 17th that he was not yet over, and had not the means of constructing a bridge that would stand; in short, that he had been "bothered beyond parallel." [Footnote: Id., p. 221.] When Schofield requested that he would allow our troops to take precedence of the Twentieth Corps wagons at either the ferry or the bridge, so that Sherman's expectation might not be disappointed, Hooker suggested that we should march back to Resaca and follow Thomas across the bridges there, thus getting into the place he himself should have taken if the Newtown crossing had been really impossible! [Footnote: Id., p. 227.]

Modern systems lay great stress upon the most scrupulous care on the part of corps commanders to follow the roads assigned them, and to avoid trespassing upon those assigned to others. Moltke has even condensed the whole strategic art of moving troops into "marching divided in order to fight united," and to avoid interference and confusion of columns en route is quite as essential as to keep tactical manoeuvres on the battle-field from crossing each other. [Footnote: See Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen's Letters on Strategy (Wolseley Series), vol. ii. pp. 160, 161, 185, 237, etc.] No better proof of the necessity of the rule could be given than this. Sherman was most anxious to bring Johnston to battle in the open country between the two rivers, and ordered his subordinates to press the pursuit and to engage the enemy wherever he might be overtaken, trusting to the quick advance of the several columns to their support. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 201, 202, 211, 220, 232, 242.] Anything which delayed the columns or put them on different roads from those indicated by the commanding general, directly tended to thwart his plans. All of Sherman's dispatches during the 17th, 18th, and 19th of May show his disappointment at not getting forward more rapidly.

Johnston seemed disposed, in the afternoon of the 17th, to meet Sherman's wish for a decisive battle, and had selected a position a mile or two north of Adairsville, where the valley of the Oothcaloga Creek seemed narrow enough to give strong positions for his flanks on the hills bordering it. Preliminary orders were given and the cavalry was strongly supported by infantry to hold back Sherman's advance-guard till the deployment should be completed. The skirmishing was so brisk that, at a distance, it sounded like a battle; but upon testing the position by a partial deployment, Johnston concluded that his army would not fill it, and he resumed his retreat on Cassville and Kingston, hoping that Sherman's columns would be so separated that he could concentrate upon one of them, and so fight his adversary in detail. [Footnote: Narrative, pp. 319, 320.]

Schofield had pressed the march of his troops after getting over the Coosawattee, but the interruptions had been such that the distance made was not great, though the time was long and the troops were more tired than if they had made double the number of miles on an unobstructed road. My division was on the extreme left flank and in advance. After crossing the river at Field's Mill, the infantry by Hooker's foot-bridge and the artillery by the flat-boat ferry, I marched at ten o'clock in the evening and reached Big Spring Creek at two o'clock in the morning of the 18th. Resting only till five o'clock, we marched again, going southward on the Cassville road three miles, thence westward on the Adairsville road five miles to Marsteller's Mill. The other divisions of our corps took roads westward of that which I followed, and the cavalry under Stoneman passed beyond our left flank, scouting up the valley of Salequa Creek as far as Fairmount and Pine Log Post-Office. Hooker moved two of his divisions toward Calhoun after getting over the Coosawattee, and these regained the position relative to the rest of Thomas's army which the corps had been ordered to take. The other division (Butterfield's), which had crossed in advance of my own at Field's Mill, was necessarily on roads assigned to Schofield's command, and a good deal of interference was inevitable. Hooker was personally with this division, and in the afternoon of the 18th met General Schofield at Marsteller's Mill, and then went forward about six miles to the foot of the Gravelly Plateau, Butterfield's division going still further forward on its top. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 238-242. The Atlas of the Official Records does not give the routes of all the columns of either Hooker's or Schofield's corps, nor does it give the line of march of the cavalry on our left. The march of my own division is fixed by the memoranda of my personal diary of the campaign. The official "Atlas" (Plate lviii.) gives two mills as Marsteller's. It is difficult to identify the several roads, but my own line of march was the principal Cassville road leading from Field's Mills and ferry through Sonora until we reached the road running directly to Adairsville. On this last we marched to Marsteller's Mills. Our route on the 19th is also incorrectly marked on the map. See Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 256.]

General Schofield assembled the corps at the mills and rested for the night. Early on the 19th my division took the advance and marched southward on by-roads till we overtook Hooker's corps and found it in line of battle, its movement being disputed by the enemy's cavalry. Schofield deployed his corps on Hooker's left, my division taking the extreme flank and advancing in line to the south fork of Two Run Creek. Crossing this, we went forward to a position a mile northeast of Cassville, briskly skirmishing with part of Hood's corps. We found that we were opposite the extreme right of the Confederate position, which was a strong one on the hills behind Cassville; but an exchange of artillery shots satisfied us that we to some extent enfiladed their intrenchments. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. ii. p. 680.] The concentration of Thomas's army with Schofield's made a continuous line facing the enemy on the north and west. Night was falling as we took position.

Johnston had followed the railroad to Kingston, where he was joined by French's division coming to Polk's corps from Rome, and still stuck to the general line of the railway to Cassville, though this led him by a considerable detour to the east. His manifest policy was to make the largest use of the railroad to move his baggage and supply his troops, for wagon trains were not over-abundant with the Confederates. He naturally reckoned also that Sherman could not go far from the same line, and as the road crossed the Etowah near the gorges of the Allatoona hills, he wished to lead the national commander into that difficult country from the north, instead of taking the more direct wagon-roads from Kingston toward Marietta. Could Sherman have been sure of the route his adversary would take, no doubt he would have concentrated his columns by shortest roads on Cassville, gaining possibly a day thereby. [Footnote: Id., pt. iv. pp. 242, 266.]

The position on the hills behind the village of Cassville was so strong a one, and Johnston so much desired to offer battle at an early day, that he resolved to retreat no further and to try conclusions with Sherman here. He signified this in an unusually formal manner by issuing a brief and stirring address to his troops, in which he said that as their communications were now secure, they would turn and meet our advancing columns. "Fully confiding in the conduct of the officers and the courage of the soldiers," he said, "I lead you to battle" [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 728.] But when our left flank crossed Two Run Creek and partly turned the right of his position, his corps commanders, Hood and Polk, became so uneasy that they protested against giving battle there, and induced Johnston to continue the retreat through Cartersville across the Etowah River. He saw the mistake he had made as soon as it was done, and never ceased to regret it. [Footnote: Narrative, p. 323, etc.] The Richmond government had been disappointed at his retreat from Dalton and Resaca and its continuation through Adairsville. His strained relations with Mr. Davis were rapidly tending toward his deprivation of command. But more strictly military reasons made his change of purpose very undesirable. Hardly anything is more destructive of the confidence of an army than vacillation. The order to fight had been published, and even a defeat might be less mischievous than the sudden retreat in the night without joining the battle which had been so formally announced. Either the order had been an error or the retreat was one. Every soldier in the army knew this, and the morale of the whole was necessarily affected by it.

Sherman had no mind to follow the enemy into the defiles of Allatoona from Cartersville. His position at Kingston offered a far more easy way to turn that fastness by the south, if he could replenish his stores, rebuild the bridges behind him, and make Kingston the base for a march upon Dallas and thence on Marietta. On the 20th of May his orders were issued for the new movement, to begin on the 23d with preparation for a twenty days' separation from the railroad. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 271.] My own duty on the 20th was to follow the enemy's rear-guard to the river and learn the condition of the bridges and crossings. The division marched early, most of the distance to Cartersville being made in line of battle, the opposition being at times stubborn. The purpose of this was probably to prepare for the destruction of the bridges, which were burned as soon as the rear-guard crossed. We sent detachments to destroy the Etowah Mills and Iron Works a few miles above; [Footnote: Id., pp. 286, 298.] meanwhile General Schofield concentrated the Army of the Ohio at Cartersville, General Thomas occupied Kingston as the centre, and McPherson came into position on the right near the same place. General J. C. Davis's division had occupied Rome, finding there important iron-works and machine-shops as well as considerable depots of supplies. [Footnote: Id., p. 264.] General Blair was advancing from Decatur, Ala., with the Seventeenth Corps, under orders to relieve Davis at Rome, when the latter would rejoin Palmer's corps at the front.

The ten days which had passed since the movement to turn the enemy's position at Dalton was begun, had been in literal obedience to the order to march without baggage. At my headquarters we were, in fact, worse off than the men in the ranks, for, although the private soldier finds his knapsack, haversack, canteen, and coffee-kettle a burden and a clattering annoyance, he soon learns to bear them patiently, for they are the necessary condition of the comparative comfort of his bivouac when the day's march is over. The veteran, indeed, clings to them with eager tenacity, when he has fully learned that they are his salvation from utter misery. But the officer, whose hours of halting are crowded with important business, and whose movements must be light and quick whenever occasion arises, cannot carry on his person or on his horse the outfit necessary for his cooking and his shelter. We had been full of the most earnest zeal to respond thoroughly to the general's wishes, and had not tried to smuggle into wagons or ambulances any extra comforts. We had left mess chests behind, and had used our fingers for forks and our pocket-knives for carving, turning sardine boxes into dishes, and other tins in which preserved meats are put up into coffee-cups. Such roughing can be kept up for a week or two, but it is not a real economy of means to make it permanent. A compromise must be found in which the wholesome cooking of food and the shelter in a rainstorm, without which no dispatches can be written or records kept, may be made to consist with the lightness of transportation which active campaigning requires. The simple, closely packed kitchen kit of a Rob-Roy canoe voyager was more or less completely anticipated by the devices and inventions born of necessity in our campaign in Georgia. The remainder of the season bore witness that we could organize our camp life so as to secure cleanliness of person and healthful living without transgressing the reasonable rules as to weight and bulk of baggage which Sherman insisted on. Every day proved the reasonableness of his system, without which the campaign could not have been made.

The tendency of war to make men relapse into barbarism becomes most evident when an army is living in any degree upon the enemy's country. Desolation follows in its track, and the utmost that discipline can do is to mitigate the evil. The habit of disregarding rights of property grows apace. The legitimate exercise of the rules of war is not easily distinguished from their abuse. The crops are trampled down, the fences disappear, the timber is felled for breastworks and for camp-fires, the green forage is used for the army horses and mules, barns and houses may be dismantled to build or to floor a bridge,--all this is necessary and lawful. But the pigs and the poultry also disappear, though the subsistence officers are issuing full and abundant rations to the troops; the bacon is gone from the smoke-house, the flour from the bin, the delicacies from the pantry. These things, though forbidden, are half excused by sympathy with the soldier's craving for variety of food. Yet, as the habit of measuring right by might goes on, pillage becomes wanton and arson is committed to cover the pillage. The best efforts of a provost-marshal with his guard will be useless when superior officers, and especially colonels of regiments, encourage or wink at license. The character of different commands becomes as notoriously different as that of the different men of a town. Our armies were usually free from the vagabond class of professional camp-followers that scour a European battlefield and strip the dead and the wounded. We almost never heard of criminal personal assaults upon the unarmed and defenceless; but we cannot deny that a region which had been the theatre of active war became desolate sooner or later. A vacant house was pretty sure to be burned, either by malice or by accident, until, with fences gone, the roads an impassable mire, the fields bare and cut up with innumerable wagon-tracks, no living thing to be seen but carrion birds picking the bones of dead horses and mules, Dante's "Inferno" could not furnish a more horrible and depressing picture than a countryside when war has swept over it. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 273, 297, 298.]

The orders issued from our army headquarters in Georgia forbade soldiers from entering houses or stripping families of the necessaries of life. Most of the officers honestly tried to enforce this rule; but in an army of a hundred thousand men, a small fraction of the whole would be enough to spoil the best efforts of the rest. The people found, too, that it was not only the enemy they had to fear. The worse disciplined of their own troops and the horde of stragglers were often as severe a scourge as the enemy. [Footnote: See Hood's orders, Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. pp. 960, 963.] Yet I believe that nowhere in the world is respect for person and property more sincere than among our own people. The evils described are those which may be said to be necessarily incident to the waging of war, and are not indications of ferocity of nature or uncommon lack of discipline.

In the organization of the Army of the Ohio, General Schofield made an important change by assigning Brigadier-General Hascall to command the second division in place of General Judah. In the battle of Resaca the division suffered severe loss without accomplishing anything, and General Schofield found, on investigation, that it was due to the incompetency of the officer commanding it. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 243.] The brigade commanders, in their reports, complained severely of the way in which the division had been handled, and the army commander felt obliged to examine and to act promptly. [Footnote: Id., pt. ii. pp. 581, 610, 611.] Judah was a regular officer, major of the Fourth Infantry, a graduate of West Point in the class of 1843, but lacked the judgment and coolness in action necessary in grave responsibilities. General Schofield kindly softened the treatment of the matter in his report of the campaign, but in his personal memoirs he repeats the judgment he originally acted upon. [Footnote: Schofield's Report, Id., pt. ii. p. 511; Forty-two Years in the Army, p. 182. In the passage of his memoirs last referred to, General Schofield had been using the case of General Wagner at Franklin to give point to "the necessity of the higher military education, and the folly of intrusting high commands to men without such education" (p. 181); but he also distinctly recognizes the fact that such education is gained by experience, and the fault of those he uses as illustrations was that they had not learned either by experience or theoretically. I have discussed the subject in vol. i. chapter ix., ante. There must be knowledge; but even this will be of no use unless there are the personal qualities which fit for high commands.] The crossing of the Etowah River on May 23d was again the occasion of an interference of columns, because Sherman's orders were not faithfully followed. To McPherson was assigned a country bridge near the mouth of Connasene Creek, to Thomas one four miles southeast of Kingston, known as Gillem's Bridge, and to Schofield two pontoon bridges to be laid at the site of Milam's Bridge, which had been burned. There were fords near all these crossings which were also to be utilized as far as practicable. [Footnote: Sherman's general plan was given to his subordinates in person, but he repeated it to Halleck, Official Records vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 274. Thomas's order is given, Id., p. 289, and accompanying sketch, p. 290. Gillem's Bridge in the Atlas is called Free Bridge, plate lviii. Schofield's place for pontoon bridges is fixed by his dispatch to Sherman, Id., p. 284, my own dispatch, Id., p. 298, and my official report, Id., pt. ii. p. 680. The line of march and place of crossing as given in the Atlas are incorrect.] We marched from Cartersville on the Euharlee road by the way of the hamlet of Etowah Cliffs, till we reached the direct road from Cassville to Milam's Bridge, when we found the way blocked by Hooker's corps, which had possession of the pontoons which Schofield's engineer had placed. Hooker, however, was not responsible for this, as he had been ordered to change his line of march by a dispatch from Thomas's headquarters written without stopping to inquire how such a change might conflict with Schofield's right of way and with Sherman's plans. Halted thus about noon, we were not able to resume the march till next day, as Hooker had ordered his supply trains to follow his column. [Footnote: Id., pt. iv. pp. 283, 291. Schofield to Sherman and reply, Id., pp. 296, 297. When I wrote "Atlanta," I supposed Hooker acted without orders.] The incident only emphasizes the way in which we learned by experience the importance of strict system in such movements, and the mischiefs almost sure to follow when there is any departure from a plan of march once arranged. There was, of course, no intention to make an interference, and the difficulty rarely, if ever, occurred in the subsequent parts of the campaign.

In preparation for the movement to turn Johnston's new position at Allatoona we were ordered to provide for twenty days' absence from direct railway communication. Within that time Sherman expected to regain the railway again and establish supply depots near the camps. Meanwhile Kingston was made the base, and was garrisoned with a brigade. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 272, 274, 278.] The returning veterans were coming back by regiments and were fully supplying the losses of the campaign with men of the very best quality and full of enthusiasm. Nine regiments joined the Twenty-third Corps or were en route during the brief halt at the Etowah. [Footnote: Id., p. 291.] The ration was the full supply of fresh beef from the herds driven with the army, varied by bacon two days in the week, a pound of bread, flour, or corn-meal per man each day, and the small rations of coffee, sugar and salt. [Footnote: Id., p. 272.] Vegetables and forage were to some extent gathered from the country. The coffee was always issued roasted, but in the whole berry, and was uniformly first-rate in quality. The soldiers carried at the belt a tin quart-pail, in which the coffee was crushed as well as boiled. The pail was set upon a flat stone like a cobbler's lapstone, and the coffee berries were broken by using the butt of the bayonet as a pestle. At break of day every camp was musical with the clangor of these primitive coffee-mills. The coffee was fed to the mill a few berries at a time, and the veterans had the skill of gourmands in getting just the degree of fineness in crushing which would give the best strength and flavor. The cheering beverage was the comfort and luxury of camp life, and we habitually spoke of halting to make coffee, as in the French army they speak of their soupe.

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XXXVIII. ATLANTA CAMPAIGN: NEW HOPE CHURCH AND THE KENNESAW LINES

Sherman's plan for June--Movements of 24th May--Johnston's position at Dallas and New Hope Church--We concentrate to attack--Pickett's Mill--Dallas--Flanking movements--Method developed by the character of the country--Closer personal relations to Sherman--Turning Johnston's right--Cross-roads at Burnt Church--A tangled forest--Fighting in a thunderstorm--Sudden freshet--Bivouac in a thicket--Johnston retires to a new line--Formidable character of the old one--Sherman extends to the railroad on our left--Blair's corps joins the army--General Hovey's retirement--The principles involved--Politics and promotions.

Sherman's general plan of campaign for the month of June was to move his army in several columns upon Dallas, and then along the ridge between the Etowah and Chattahooche rivers on Marietta. As Johnston was at Allatoona and his cavalry was active all along the south bank of the Etowah, our left flank was not only covered by Stoneman's cavalry, but Schofield was purposely held back a day's march so as to cover the rear as well as the flank, which was exposed to a possible attack from Johnston as we marched south and opened a space between us and the river, uncovering the supply trains which filled the roads over which the troops had passed.

After crossing the river at Milam's bridge on May 24th, we turned eastward through Stilesborough, to and across Richland Creek, reaching the road on the upland which runs from Cassville to Marietta by way of Rowland's Ferry. Stoneman, who had crossed the Etowah with his division of horse at Shellman's Ford on the 22d, and covered the laying of the pontoon bridges at Milam's, went back to look after a raid by the Confederate cavalry at Cass Station, and was not able to return to his position south of the river until the evening of the 24th, when he scouted the road toward Allatoona. Having the advance, my division marched southward on the Marietta road to Sligh's Mill, where the road forks, the right-hand branch turning southwest, along the ridge, to Huntsville, better known in the neighborhood as Burnt Hickory. This place was about half-way on the direct road from Kingston to Dallas, and was the rendezvous for the Cumberland Army for the night. We camped at Sligh's Mill, being joined by Hascall's division of our corps. Hovey's division and the corps trains took the road from Stilesborough up Raccoon Creek, some miles west of us and covered by our march. The Army of the Tennessee reached VanWert, some miles west of Burnt Hickory, on the Rome and Dallas road.

We lay at Sligh's Mill during the 25th, till five P.M., [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 311.] giving time for McPherson to approach Dallas, and for Thomas to continue his movement of the centre upon the same place. We were then to march to Burnt Hickory and follow Thomas to Dallas. But the enemy was also active and modified our program. His cavalry had reported our concentration in front of Kingston, and the laying of our pontoons at Milam's bridge on the 23d. [Footnote: Id., p. 737.] They had also made a reconnoissance to Cass Station, and found nothing there but the wagons of the Twenty-third Corps, of which a number were captured and destroyed. Satisfied that Sherman was marching southward in force, Johnston immediately put his army in motion. Hardee's Corps, being his left, marched to Dallas and took position south of the town, covering the main road to Atlanta and extending its line northeast toward New Hope Church. Hood was assigned to the right at the church, and Polk had the interval in the centre, upon the main road they had travelled from Allatoona. The line was along the ridge dividing the headwaters of Pumpkin Vine Creek, which flows northward into the Etowah, from the sources of the Sweetwater and Powder-spring creeks which empty into the Chattahoochee at the south.

The movement was begun on the 24th, and in the forenoon of the 25th the Confederate troops were taking the positions assigned them, covered by their cavalry. A captured dispatch gave Sherman useful information, and he directed that instead of marching straight to Dallas, Hooker should test the appearance of hostile force toward New Hope Church, turning off on the Marietta road at Owen's Mill. This brought on the fierce combat at New Hope Church, where Hood's Corps held its line against Hooker's very vigorous attack. The fighting began about four o'clock in the afternoon and lasted till darkness put an end to it. All the other troops of the grand army were hurried forward. McPherson continued his march to Dallas, Thomas hastened the Fourth Corps to Hooker's support, holding part of the Fourteenth as a general reserve, and Schofield was directed to hasten the march of the Twenty-third Corps by way of Burnt Hickory.

My division marched from Sligh's Mill at five o'clock, and on reaching Burnt Hickory took the road Hooker had travelled to Owen's Mill, accompanied by Hascall's division, Hovey's being left near Burnt Hickory to protect the trains. A thunderstorm with pouring rain came on soon after we started and lasted through the night. On reaching the road behind Hooker, we found it filled with his wagons, and the storm, the darkness, and the obstructed road produced a combination of miseries which made the march slow and fatiguing to the last degree. We plodded on till midnight, but had not yet reached Pumpkin Vine Creek, when we halted for a little rest, and to get further orders from Schofield, who had before nightfall gone on to communicate with Sherman. Word came that he was disabled by an accident when on his way back to us, and I was directed to lead the two divisions forward and report to Sherman. After a halt of an hour the men fell into ranks again, and pressing the toilsome march, reached the field at daybreak. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 303, 311, 320. The official Atlas is again inaccurate in making our line of advance from Sligh's Mill follow the Marietta road instead of that to Burnt Hickory (Huntsville).]

By Sherman's orders we joined the Fourth Corps (Howard's), extending its line to the left, and the whole swung forward through a terribly tangled forest till we passed Brown's saw-mill and reached the open valley which was the continuation of that in front of Hooker, and took our extreme left over the Dallas and Allatoona road. We had met with a strong skirmishing resistance, for Johnston was manifestly unwilling to give up the control of the road we had crossed. Having thus partly turned the Confederate position on our left, Sherman hoped that McPherson might complete their dislodgment by a similar flanking movement through Dallas on our right. [Footnote: Id., pp. 321, 322.] The distances, however, were greater than we estimated, and though McPherson kept with him Davis's division of Palmer's Corps (greatly to Palmer's disgust), [Footnote: Id., pp. 316, 324.] he was still unable to connect his line with Hooker's, and occupied an isolated, salient position in front of Dallas which would be perilous if Johnston were able to concentrate upon him.

The enemy's line was along one of the smaller branches of Pumpkin Vine Creek, and Sherman ordered for the 27th that McPherson should press toward the left down the little valley, whilst Howard, with one division of his own corps withdrawn from the line and one division of Palmer's which had been in reserve, should push out beyond our left and turn the enemy's right near Pickett's Mill. A brigade of the Twenty-third Corps moved in the interval to cover Howard's flank and keep connection with the intrenched line. The almost impenetrable character of the forest made the movement slow, and it was late in the afternoon when Howard reached the enemy's position. He found they too had been busy in extending their lines, though pretty sharply recurved, to the eastward. The fierce combat did not succeed in carrying the Confederate position, but it gained good ground near the mill, better covering all the roads toward the railway. The left wing of the Twenty-third Corps swung forward to Howard's position, and all intrenched strongly upon it.

On May 28th McPherson was ordered to prepare for moving to the extreme left, continuing the extension of our line toward the railroad. Suspecting this, the Confederates made a fierce attack upon the position in front of Dallas, but were repulsed with heavy loss. At McPherson's request his movement was delayed a little, lest it should seem to be forced by Johnston's attack. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 339, 340.]

Sherman had been very unwilling to give up the hope of putting Johnston's army to rout in a decisive engagement, and to accept, instead, the patient flanking movements by which he should force upon his adversary the dilemma of abandoning more and more of Georgia, or of himself making attacks upon intrenched lines. In writing to Halleck after the battle of Resaca, he had said that although the campaign was progressing favorably, he knew that his army "must have one or more bloody battles such as have characterized Grant's terrific struggles." [Footnote: Id., p. 219.] But the affairs at New Hope Church and Pickett's Mill show that the country was so impracticable that it was not possible to deliver an attack by his whole army at once, and so to give real unity to a great battle. He was therefore brought, perforce, to accept the systematic advance by flanking movements, and to avoid assaults upon intrenched positions on the forest-covered hills. He knew that this policy would bring a time when the enemy could no longer afford to retreat and must resort to aggressive tactics, even at the risk of destruction to his army. It was a curious repetition of the ancient colloquy,--"If thou art a great general, come down and fight me.--If thou art a great general, make me come down and fight thee." It may be readily admitted that in such a country as Central Europe other methods would have been feasible and preferable; but in the tangled wildernesses of Virginia and Georgia the matter was brought to the test by leaders who had courage and will equal to any, and the result was a system which may be confidently said to be the natural evolution of warfare in such environment. Johnston knew that his retreat, though slow, was giving dissatisfaction to President Davis at Richmond, but he saw also that to assault Sherman's lines meant final and irretrievable disaster, and he continued his patient and steady defence. Our progress around his right warned him that the New Hope Church position must soon be abandoned, and a new one was already selected, closer to Marietta, with Kennesaw, Pine and Lost mountains, for its strongholds.

The two or three days during which General Schofield had been disabled had brought me into closer personal relations with Sherman than I had enjoyed before, and was the beginning of an intimate friendship which lasted as long as he lived. I had the opportunity of learning more of his characteristics and his methods, and saw how sound his judgment was, and how cool a prudence there was behind his apparent impulsiveness. The untiring activity of his mind turned every problem over and over until he had viewed it from every point and considered the probable consequences of each mode of solving it. At bottom of all lay the indomitable courage and will which were only stimulated by obstacles, and which stuck to the inexorable purpose of keeping the initiative and making each day bring him nearer to a successful end of the campaign.

By the 1st of June McPherson had brought the Army of the Tennessee into close connection with the centre, where Palmer's Corps of the Cumberland Army had its three divisions reunited (except one brigade), relieving us and enabling Thomas to draw out Hooker's Corps as a reserve. The orders for the 2d were that we were to pass to the left beyond Howard's Corps, and push out upon the Burnt Hickory and Marietta road, turning the enemy's flank and reaching, if possible, the cross-roads where it intersected a second road leading from New Hope Church to Ackworth, a little in rear of the enemy's lines. The object was to cover more completely the connections with the railroad south of the Etowah, and to gain positions which would take in reverse portions of the Confederate lines. Hooker's Corps was ordered to support this movement on our extreme left. The cavalry were ordered to make a combined effort to reach Allatoona Pass on the railroad, and to hold it till Blair's (Seventeenth) Corps, coming from Alabama by way of Rome, could arrive and occupy it in force. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 348, 349, 362, 366, 367.]

Stoneman with the cavalry of the Army of the Ohio entered Allatoona on June 1st, and reported the gorge a place he could hold against a superior force. [Footnote: Id., p. 379.] General Johnston was so well persuaded that his position was no longer tenable that he issued the same day a confidential order directing a withdrawal, but recalled it late in the day in view of the changes evidently going on at our extreme right, and so remained a few days longer. [Footnote: Id., p. 753.] On the morning of the 2d, the preliminary changes in the line being completed, Schofield marched with the Twenty-third Corps to the left until he reached the Burnt Hickory and Marietta road, near the Cross Roads Church, or Burnt Church, [Footnote: Id., p. 396.] then turning to the east and guiding his left on the road he pushed forward through an almost impenetrable forest where it was impossible to see two rods. There was great difficulty in keeping the movement of the invisible skirmish line in accord with the line of battle, which we directed by compass, like a ship at sea. In the advance, my adjutant-general, Captain Saunders, was mortally wounded by my side, as we were riding, unconscious of our danger, through an opening out of our skirmishers in a momentary loss of direction. There were extensive thickets of the loblolly pine occasionally met, where these scrub trees were so thick and their branches so interlaced that neither man nor horse could force a way through them, and the movement would be delayed till these densest places were turned by marching around them. The connection would then be made again, the direction of the skirmishers rectified, and the advance resumed. The regiments advanced by the right of companies in columns of fours at deploying distance, but not even the men of a company could see those on right or left, so dense was the tangle.

We passed over the divide separating Pumpkin Vine Creek, and its branches from Allatoona Creek, and the sharp skirmishing began as we approached the latter. The afternoon was well advanced when we reached the creek, and a heavy thunderstorm broke as our line forded the stream and pushed up the hill on the other side. We now drew the artillery fire from an intrenched line on the crest which we could not see, and for a time the mingled roar of the thunder and of the enemy's cannon was such that it was hard to tell the one from the other. My advanced line closed in as near the intrenchments as possible, whilst the second remained on the hither side of the creek. At my request Hascall's division swung still farther out to the left to develop the line of the enemy's works, and Schofield asked Butterfield's division of Hooker's Corps to advance on the extreme flank. He found that Hascall developed the full extent of the Confederate line, and thought it a good opportunity to take the position in reverse. Butterfield, however, declined to do more than move up to Hascall's support in rear, and night fell before Schofield could accomplish anything decisive. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 386. In this instance the question of relative rank by date of commission was slightly involved. Butterfield claimed to rank Schofield and declined to do more than is stated. Schofield's Report, Id., pt. ii. p. 512; Schofield's Forty-six Years in the Army, p. 130.]

The downpour of rain had been such that the creek, which was insignificant when we first came to it, became unfordable before sunset, and gave me no little concern for the first line of my division, which was over it. It was ordered to cover itself with such abatis as could be speedily made and to intrench, whilst we improvised footbridges for crossing to its support if it should be attacked. I announced that my headquarters for the night would be immediately in rear of the centre of my second line; but when the pressure of duty was off and I was at liberty to go to the position I had named, I found that it was one of the densest parts of a pine thicket, and I could not even get back of the troops in line till a path was cut for me by a detachment of men with axes. They cleared a narrow way for a few rods, and then widened it out into a circular space at the foot of the trunk of a great tree so that there was room for a camp-fire, and for two or three of us to bivouac, but most of the staff remained at a more approachable place a little in rear. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 396.] We regarded it so important that the notice given to subordinates of our whereabouts at night should not be misleading, that we stuck to the place that had been named, in spite of the inconvenience and discomfort. The fall of rain is amusingly illustrated by the fact that in the height of the storm my knee-boots filled with the water running off me, and I emptied them as I sat in the saddle by lifting first one leg and then the other up in front of me till the water ran out of the boot-top in a stream. I had been a little ailing for a day or two, and my sleep was not as sound as it usually was even in close contact with the hostile lines. In the wakeful hours the loss of my friend and able staff officer, Captain Saunders, filled me with mournful thoughts; for though the daily work under fire had exposed all the little circle at headquarters to casualties, our good fortune hitherto had bred a sort of confidence in immunity, and the sudden fall of him who had been the centre of the staff group and a personal favorite with all was a heavy blow to us when we had time to think of it.

Next morning Schofield arranged with General Thomas to relieve Hovey's division of our corps which had been on our right, and marching this division beyond Hascall's on our extreme left, the whole line went forward. The Confederate intrenchment in my immediate front was completely outflanked, and was found to be a detached position which the enemy abandoned when threatened by Hascall's advance, and my men at once occupied it. The movement was continued until Hovey's division was upon the interior Dallas and Ackworth road near Allatoona church, whilst my division and Hascall's held the cross roads which had been covered by the fortifications we had captured. Hooker's Corps passed beyond Hovey, covering the flank to the eastward. Sherman now hastened the extension of the line toward the railroad by passing the whole army behind us, till by the 6th we became the extreme right flank of the army. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. ii. p. 681; Id., pt. iv. p. 407.] Johnston had abandoned his position on the night of the 4th, falling back on the new line he had selected with his left resting on Lost Mountain and his right upon Brush Mountain, the next eminence north of Kennesaw. [Footnote: Id., pt. iv. pp. 408, 758.]

The abandonment of the New Hope line gave us the opportunity to examine it, which, of course, we did with great interest. It was about six miles long, of the most formidable character of field fortifications. The entry in my diary says of them that we found them "very strong, both for artillery and infantry, with abatis carefully sharpened and staked down. They have never before shown so much industry and finished their defensive works with so much care." When it is remembered that these lines could only be approached through forests which hid everything till we were right upon them, it will easily be believed that we congratulated ourselves that the enemy was manoeuvred out of them and was being crowded back till he must soon assume the aggressive and assault our works.

Sherman's new positions placed McPherson's army on Proctor's Creek, a branch of the Allatoona in front of Ackworth on the railroad, Thomas's army between Mt. Olivet Church and Golgotha, covering the principal roads from Cassville and Kingston to Marietta and Lost Mountain, whilst Schofield was placed in echelon on the right flank, covering the hospitals and trains until the base could be transferred to the railway. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 423, 428, 430.] My own division was left for some days in the position we had carried on the 3d, about a mile separated from the rest of the line. A pontoon bridge was laid at the Etowah railway crossing till the great bridge could be constructed, and General Blair, who was on the 6th at Kingston, with two divisions of the Seventeenth Corps, was ordered to march to Ackworth by this direct road. [Footnote: Id., p. 424.] Blair's command was the only important reinforcement received by Sherman during the campaign, and just about made up for the losses by battle and by sickness up to the time of its arrival. A more open belt of country lay along the western side of the line from Kennesaw to Lost Mountain, and Sherman hurried the readjustment of his forces in the hope of a decisive engagement with Johnston by the 9th of June or soon afterward.

A change now occurred in the organization of our corps which afterward became a matter of so much historical notoriety that it may be worth while to give the particulars with accuracy. General Hovey tendered his resignation as a division commander, and asked a leave of absence to await the action of the President upon it. The reasons assigned by him were his dissatisfaction and unwillingness to serve longer with his division, which he claimed should be increased by five regiments of Indiana cavalry, recruited at the same time and in connection with his infantry regiments, and, as he asserted, with some assurance that they should be one organization under him. He also intimated that he had reason to expect promotion which had not been given him.

I have already mentioned some dissatisfaction on General Schofield's part with him at the beginning of the campaign, [Footnote: Ante, p. 214.] but the middle of the campaign seemed so inconvenient a time to make a change that Schofield sought earnestly to smooth the matter over, and tried to obtain for Hovey other troops to increase the size of his division. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 439.] Sherman had no infantry which was not a regular part of other divisions, and could not increase Hovey's command in that way. He said that he could not tolerate the anomaly of combining five cavalry regiments with infantry in a division of foot, and that, in fact, the regiments were along the railroad, protecting our communications and could not be spared. He invited Hovey to a personal conference, and urged him to withdraw his resignation, to take time at least for reflection, and not insist upon changes in the midst of a campaign and in the presence of the enemy. The appeal was unsuccessful, and Sherman telegraphed to the War Department that Hovey was discontented because he was not made a major-general, and that, though he esteemed him as a man, he should recommend the acceptance of the resignation. On the paper itself he endorsed a full statement of the circumstances and his recommendation that General Hovey be allowed to resign. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 433, 439, 443, 448.]

The official censure of General Sherman having been thus spread upon the records of the War Department, and that department having made a tender of resignation in the presence of the enemy a cause for summary dismissal of inferior officers, the surprise of the army may be imagined when, on July 25th, Sherman was notified from Washington that Hovey and Osterhaus had been promoted to be major-generals,--the first by brevet, the other to the full grade. To Sherman himself the thing was exceedingly galling, for not only was his action in Hovey's case reversed, and that which he condemned made the occasion for reward, but he had, only the day before, in asking to have Howard transferred to the command of the Army of the Tennessee, made vacant by McPherson's death, added a special request on the general subject of promotions. "After we have taken Atlanta," he had said, "I will name officers who merit promotion. In the mean time I request that the President will not give increased rank to any officer who has gone on leave from sickness, or cause other than wounds in battle." [Footnote: Id., pt. v. p. 241.] This language had manifest reference to the cases in hand, and was, no doubt, based on rumors of what was about to happen: but it was too late, for a dispatch from Colonel Hardie, Inspector-General, was already on the way to him, announcing the promotions by order of the War Department.

Sherman's indignation boiled over in his reply, which said: "I wish to put on record this, my emphatic opinion, that it is an act of injustice to officers who stand by their posts in the day of danger to neglect them and advance such as Hovey and Osterhaus, who left us in the midst of bullets to go to the rear in search of personal advancement. If the rear be the post of honor, then we had better all change front on Washington." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 247.] The vigor of this protest carried it to Mr. Lincoln's personal attention, and he answered it, admitting that it was well taken, but urging reasons for his action which show only too well that they were more political than military. A Presidential campaign had just begun, and with all his great qualities, Mr. Lincoln was susceptible to reasons of political policy in the use of appointments to office. He referred to the recommendations for promotion that Grant and Sherman had given these officers in a former campaign, and to "committals" which had been drawn from him which he "could neither honorably nor safely disregard." [Footnote: Id., p. 259.] In the case of Osterhaus the President added that his promise had been given "on what he thought was high merit and somewhat on his nationality." In short, Indiana and Missouri were doubtful States, and the German vote was important. But what idea of military promotions was that which, in such a war and in the midst of such a campaign, advanced officers to the highest grade upon personal importunity, not only without consultation with their commanding general in the field but in spite of his protest; which does not seem even to have asked the question what was going on in Georgia and what would be the effect of such action upon the army there! If there had been unlimited power of promotion, the case might have been less mischievous; but Congress had limited the number of officers, so that vacancies were now filled, and, for the Atlanta campaign and Sherman's army in Georgia, these two were the only promotions that could be given, and of those whom Sherman recommended for the grade of major-general for service in that campaign when Atlanta was taken, not one then received it. When these things are remembered, Sherman's indignation will be seen to be righteous, and his protest a memorable effort in favor of good military administration. In replying to the President he apologized for the freedom of his language and assured Mr. Lincoln of his confidence in the conscientiousness of his general course, but he did not soften or blink the facts. "You can see," said he, "how ambitious aspirants for military fame regard these things. They come to me and point them out as evidence that I am wrong in encouraging them to a silent, patient discharge of duty. I assure you that every general of my army has spoken of it, and referred to it as evidence that promotion results from importunity and not from actual service. I have refrained from recommending any thus far in the campaign, as I think we should reach some stage in the game before stopping to balance accounts or to write history." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 271.]

Some promotions to the rank of brigadier were made in the Potomac Army at this time, and Grant was notified that there were three or four other vacancies in that grade. This led him to say he would like to have them given to such men as Sherman might recommend. He added: "No one can tell so well as one immediately in command the disposition that should be made of the material on hand. Osterhaus has proved himself a good soldier, but if he is not in the field I regret his promotion." [Footnote: Id., p. 260.] As it had been Grant's former recommendation which had been the strongest ostensible ground of the promotion, this remark of his is important as pointing out the true principle in such matters. Recommendations of such a sort are always on the implied condition that the claim shall not be forfeited by subsequent conduct, and Grant said in substance that the circumstances had altered the cases and relieved him (and the administration too) of any obligation.

To complete the discussion, it must be noted that there were three brigadiers from Indiana in the Twenty-third Corps at this time, and Hovey was not only the junior of the three but had been the least actively employed in the campaign. Manson had been stricken down in the battle of Resaca whilst heroically leading his men to the capture of the rebel position, and never fully recovered from the injury. [Footnote: Ante, p. 221.] Hascall distinguished himself at every step of the campaign. Both left the service at last without any further recognition. It was common fame in the army that they were not favored by Governor O. P. Morton, the dominant political influence in their State. Hovey's further service was not in the field, but as commandant of the District of Indiana. Osterhaus returned to the Fifteenth Corps and served creditably in Sherman's remaining campaigns. Hovey's division was broken up, one brigade being added to Hascall's division and the other to mine. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 448.]

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XXXIX. ATLANTA CAMPAIGN: MARIETTA LINES--CROSSING THE CHATTAHOOCHEE

Continuous rains in June--Allatoona made a field depot on the railway and fortified--Johnston in the Marietta lines--That from Pine Mountain to Lost Mountain abandoned--Swinging our right flank--Affair at Kolb's farm--Preparing for a general attack--Battle of Kennesaw--The tactical problem--Work of my division--Topography about Cheney's--Our advance on the 27th--Nickajack valley reached--The army moves behind us--Johnston retreats to the Chattahoochee--Twenty-third Corps at Smyrna Camp-ground--Crossing the Chattahoochee at Soap Creek--At Roswell--Johnston again retreats--Correspondence with Davis--Mission of B. H. Hill--Visit of Bragg to Johnston--Johnston's unfortunate reticence--He is relieved and Hood placed in command--Significance of the change to the Confederacy and to us.

In the month of June we had more than three weeks of pouring rains, making a quagmire of the whole country. The "dirt roads," which were the only ones, were soon destroyed by the heavy army wagons, and even the place where they had been could not be distinguished in the waste of mud and ruts which spread far and wide. Sherman found the intrenchments Johnston had left "an immense line of works," and congratulated himself that they had been turned with less loss to himself than he had inflicted on the enemy. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 408.] The first reconnoissances found that Johnston had retreated so far that, from the commander downward, we all harbored the hope that he had retreated beyond the Chattahoochee. [Footnote: Id., p. 427.] To prepare for our next step, the railway crossing of the Etowah must be completed and our depot of supplies advanced to Allatoona. The gorge there was almost as defensible on the south as on the north, and Sherman set Captain Poe, his engineer, to work laying out fortifications to cover its southern mouth and thus prepare for holding it by a small garrison as a secondary base if we should have to leave it again to make a wide turning movement. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 428.]

We were not long in learning that Johnston was not over the Chattahoochee, but had only fallen back to a shorter and more formidable line about Marietta, covering the railway where it passed through the defiles of Kennesaw Mountain, extending his left centre to the isolated knob of Pine Mountain, and thence recurving his flank by way of Gilgal (Hard-Shell Church in local nomenclature) toward Lost Mountain, which was held by his cavalry.

At the first appearance of a retreat by the Confederates beyond the Chattahoochee, Sherman's mind naturally turned to the plans of campaign which should follow his approach to Atlanta as they had been indicated by General Grant at the beginning of operations in the spring, and he inquired of Halleck whether the intended movement of the fleet under Farragut and part of the southwestern army under Canby against Mobile had been ordered. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 418.] Halleck answered that it had been suggested to Canby, but that Grant had, just then, all he could attend to on the Chickahominy. The fierce battles in Virginia had culminated on June 3d, in the terrible struggle at Cold Harbor, where the assault had been so costly as almost to produce dismay throughout the country, and in all our armies to enforce the lesson of caution in attacking such works as the enemy was now habitually constructing. The feeling was hinted at by Sherman in his dispatch to Washington on the 5th, when he said that although he should probably have to fight Johnston at Kennesaw, he would not "run head on to his fortifications." [Footnote: Id., p. 408.]

Amid the discouragements incident to the incessant rains the army gained positions closely enveloping Johnston's lines, and we who constituted the right flank, pushing out from hill to hill and from brook to brook, gradually outflanked the enemy and forced him to swing back his left. On the 14th he let go of Pine Mountain, where General Polk was killed and General Johnston himself had a narrow escape from our artillery fire while they were reconnoitring our positions from its summit. On the 16th we were close upon the Gilgal and Lost Mountain line, and the enemy again withdrew that flank beyond Mud Creek, which with Noyes's Creek [Footnote: Noyes's Creek was pronounced Noses Creek by the negroes and the people of the neighborhood, and the name took that form in our reports at the time. It was afterward corrected in the Official Records.] and Olley's are the tributaries of the Sweetwater (before mentioned) which flows southward into the Chattahoochee. Sherman was on the lookout for weak places in his adversary's line where he might break through and change into a rout the war of positions which was too much like siege operations to suit him. He said to Halleck that Johnston had declined the assault which must have followed our so close contact, "and abandoned Lost Mountain and some six miles of as good field-works as I ever saw." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 498.] Still keeping the right shoulder forward, we crowded in upon the new line, and in the night of the 18th the enemy retreated from the intrenchments behind Mud Creek to those of Noyes's Creek, whilst at the same time he drew back his extreme right behind Noonday Creek, compacting his lines with the purpose of transferring a corps to his left, where we now began to threaten his communications.

Again there was a momentary belief that Marietta was abandoned, but again it was premature, for the apex of the angle was stoutly held at the rocky crest of Kennesaw. [Footnote: Id., p. 519.] There was nothing for it but to continue the swing of the right flank. In his instructions to Thomas, Sherman said, "Until Schofield develops the flank we should move with due caution; but the moment it is found or we are satisfied the enemy has lengthened his line beyond his ability to defend, we must strike quick and with great energy." [Footnote: Id., p. 509.]

The waters were up in all the streams, and Noyes's was wholly unfordable. Following the Sandtown road southward, my division was stopped by the creek, and the enemy's artillery and dismounted cavalry held a good position on the other side, having removed the flooring of the bridge. In a brilliant little affair by a part of Cameron's brigade, the bridge was carried, and the whole division was soon across and intrenched at the crest on the south side, covering the intersection of the Sandtown road with that from Marietta to Powder Springs Church. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviiii. pt. iv. pp. 534, 540.] On the morning of June 22d, the rest of Schofield's corps crossed the creek and took the Marietta road, whilst Hooker's corps swung forward from the right of the Cumberland Army to keep pace with Schofield. My own division at the same time marched southward on the Sandtown road to Cheney's farm, near the crossing of Olley's Creek, the next in the series of parallel valleys trending to the southwest. Cheney's was also at the crossing of the lower road from Marietta to Powder Springs village, which forked near Kolb's farm, the northern branch being that on which Schofield was advancing with Hascall's division. But Hood's corps was also upon this road, having marched in the night from the extreme right of Johnston's army to extend the left and meet our aggressive movement. This brought on the bloody affair of Kolb's (or Culp's) farm, Hood making a fierce attack on Schofield's left and Hooker's right, which was repulsed. [Footnote: Atlanta, p. 108, etc.] The enemy had to content himself with extending southward the line confronting ours, till it passed over the ridge behind Noyes's creek and covered the valley of Olley's. Schofield had called me with three brigades to Hascall's support, leaving one (Reilly's) at the Cheney farm. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 558, 559, 566-569.]

Hood's attack had checked the flanking movement from which Sherman had hoped good results. Johnston had also been able to stretch out his right so that the works in front of McPherson seemed to be held in force enough to make an assault unpromising. On the reports of subordinates as to their uneasiness at the stretching of their lines, Thomas suggested to Sherman that the lines be contracted and strengthened. [Footnote: Id., p. 581.] At the same time reports were received that Confederate cavalry had crossed the Etowah in our rear, and had begun to make use of torpedoes to derail and destroy trains on the railway. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 579.] Yet Garrard's cavalry on our left reported the enemy's horse superior in numbers, and were unable to make such progress there as Sherman had expected. [Footnote: Id., pp. 542, 555.] It began to look like a dead-lock, and that, of all things, was what Sherman could not endure. With grim humor he wrote to Thomas, "I suppose the enemy with his smaller force intends to surround us!" [Footnote: Id., p. 582.] The only alternative seemed to be to find the places where that smaller force was most attenuated and break through by main strength. He notified his subordinates that this must be done on the 27th. [Footnote: Ibid. and p. 588.] As a preliminary, he ordered demonstrations to be kept up on both flanks to draw the enemy away from the centre. His formal order, issued on the 24th, directed General Thomas to select a point of attack near his centre. McPherson was directed to make a feint with his cavalry and one division of infantry on the left, but to make his real attack at a point south and west of Kennesaw. Schofield was likewise to make a demonstration on the extreme right, in front of my division, but to attack a point as near as practicable to the Powder Springs road, which was the scene of the affair of the 22d. [Footnote: Ibid.] The tactical details were all left to the subordinate army commanders.

On the 25th Sherman visited our positions in person, and accompanied the active reconnoissances which we were making. The result he stated in an evening dispatch to Thomas, saying, "I found that the enemy had strengthened his works across the Powder Springs road very much, having made embrasures for three complete batteries, all bearing on that road. Line extends as far as can be seen to the right, mostly in timber and partly in open ground. The enemy is also on his [Schofield's] right flank on the other side of Olley's Creek." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 589.] The outcome of this was a modification of Schofield's orders, so that instead of attacking seriously in force, he should make strong demonstrations to attract the enemy to our wing of the army as much as possible, and thus assist Thomas and McPherson in their attacks near the centre.

It was with reluctance that Sherman was brought to the determination to make a front assault. His preference and his earlier purpose had been to make an equal force to Johnston's keep the Confederates in their works whilst the remainder of his own army should move from our right and attack beyond Johnston's left flank. He had thought the opportunity was come when we had secured the crossing of Noyes's Creek, and he indicated the morning of the 22d for an advance on the Powder Springs and Marietta road which we then commanded. In his dispatch to Thomas on the 21st, he said, "I feel much disposed to push your right, supported by Schofield and Stoneman's cavalry, whilst McPherson engages attention to his front, but keeps ready to march by his right to reinforce you." [Footnote: Id., p. 546.]

The founderous condition of the whole region had made every movement slow, and in the same note to Thomas, Sherman had summed it up in the two words: "Roads terrific." Yet on the morning of the 22d the way to Marietta by the Powder Springs road was only contested by cavalry, though Johnston's ever-watchful eye had seen the danger and by his order Hood was marching his corps from the other flank of the army to meet Sherman's extension by our right. In going to examine McPherson's lines himself, Sherman had added to his dispatch, "If anything happens, act promptly with your own troops and advise me and your neighbor, Schofield, who has standing orders to conform to you." [Footnote: Ibid.] The situation was, in fact, exactly what he had been hoping for. The flank of the enemy was exposed, and we had the opportunity to use the broad road leading to Marietta to turn it. Could Hooker, supported by Hascall's division of our corps, have reached Zion's Church before Hood, or at the same time with him, it seems almost certain that the position gained would have compelled Johnston to abandon Kennesaw and Marietta at once, and fall back to the line of the Nickajack if not beyond the Chattahoochee. In that case the battle of Kennesaw would not have been fought.

In the evening of the 22d, when Sherman received Hooker's answer to a question sent him during the progress of the combat in the afternoon, and found the latter laboring under the conviction that the whole of Johnston's army was in his immediate front, he was naturally annoyed at so exaggerated a view of the situation. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 558.] Thomas received similar reports from Hooker and a call for reinforcements, and though he said he "thought at the time he was stampeded," [Footnote: Id., p. 559.] he sent to him a division from Howard's corps. The truth was that one brigade of Hooker's corps and one of Schofield's were the only ones that had suffered at all severely, the total list of less than 300 casualties being about equally divided between them. Hood had been repulsed with a loss of more than 1000. [Footnote: Atlanta, p. 113.] When to these circumstances are added those which have before been mentioned, [Footnote: Ante, pp. 258, 259.] we can understand how Sherman began to fear that, in the systematic flanking operations he had been carrying on, his army was losing the energetic aggressive character without which he could not profit decisively by the opportunities which might offer. [Footnote: See Sherman's personal letters to Halleck of July 9th, Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 91; to Grant of June 18th, Id., pt. iv. p. 507; and of July 12th, Id., pt. v. p. 123.] Adding still further the difficulty, amounting almost to an impossibility, of supplying the wing of the army most distant from the railroad, and the probability that Johnston's army was stretched into a line even thinner than his own, it will not seem strange that he concluded it was time to try whether a bold stroke would not break through the Confederate defences and rout his adversary. I am saying this from the standpoint of our own experience in the wooded and sparsely settled region we were operating in. From a European point of view, an aggressive policy of attack would be taken as a matter of course, and the only questions open for debate would be the tactical ones as to the method of making the assault and the points at which to deliver it. [Footnote: For a recent summary of the discussion of "Attack or Defence," see Letters and Essays of Captain F. N. Maude, R. E. (International Series), p. 70; also his "Cavalry and Infantry" (same series), p. 127, etc.]

The attack was made on the 27th, and failed to carry the enemy's works, though our troops were able to hold positions close to the ditch and to intrench themselves on a new line there. The casualties in the action were 2164. [Footnote: In Logan's Corps, 629 (Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 85); in Howard's, 756 (Id., pt. i. p. 205), and in Palmer's, 779 (Id., p. 509).] Some of the best officers who took part in the assault were of the opinion that had the supports been well in hand, so as to have charged quickly over the first line when it was checked and lost its impetus, the works in front of Davis's division would have been carried. [Footnote: McCook's Brigade at Kennesaw Mountain, by Major F. B. James of the Fifty-Second Ohio; Ohio Loyal Legion Papers, vol. iv. pp. 269, 270.] It is hardly necessary to say that at the present day an entirely different deployment and organization of the attacking forces would be considered essential, and the preparation by concentrated artillery fire would be much more thorough than was practicable then. The dense forest made the cannonade almost harmless at the points chosen for assault, and the attack was one of infantry against unshaken earthworks. [Footnote: For description of the battle, see "Atlanta," chap. x.]

In Sherman's visit to our position on the 25th, he had arranged with Schofield the general plan for our demonstrations on the 26th and 27th. Hascall's division was to make a feint of attack near the Powder Springs road, whilst mine should force the crossing of Olley's Creek near Cheney's, on the Sandtown road, build a temporary bridge over the creek a mile or two above, and make a strong show of a purpose to attack beyond Hascall's right flank by crossing with a brigade there. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 589, 592.]

The valley of Olley's Creek was broad and open, and the country beyond my right was more practicable than the tangled wilderness on the northern slope of the watershed. We had got beyond the denser thickets of the loblolly pine, and could better see what we were about. The old Sandtown road south of Cheney's crossed the creek on a wooden bridge which was commanded by a fortified hill a little beyond where a battery of artillery swept the bridge and its approaches. The stream widened out after passing the bridge and ran between low and marshy banks with bluffs further back. I had placed Reilly's brigade astride the road at Cheney's with Myer's Indiana battery of light twelves, smooth-bore bronze guns. A gap of more than a mile lay between Reilly and the other three brigades of the division after I had marched to Hascall's support on the 22d. The lower branch of the Powder Springs road was parallel to the creek and not far from it, and my artillery near the right of the three brigades was on an advancing knoll where the guns not only commanded the valley before them, but Cockerill's Ohio battery of three-inch rifles swept nearly the whole space to Reilly's position. [Footnote: Id., p. 568.]

To give more effect to our demonstration, Sherman directed that it begin on the 26th, and preparations were made to build a bridge in front of Byrd's brigade, which was ordered to cross the stream when Reilly's effort against the lower bridge should begin. Our first information was that the fortified hill in front of Reilly was held by infantry, and as the work was in form a redoubt, its garrison of course on foot, we assumed that it was a detached outwork of the Confederate line. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 597.] Reilly kept up a cannonade of the hill in front of him during the 26th, and made some attempts to get over the stream at the bridge, but did not seriously try to force the passage. A temporary bridge was laid at Byrd's position, and soon after noon he crossed the creek with little opposition, our artillery thoroughly commanding the further bank. [Footnote: Id., p. 599] I personally accompanied Byrd's movement. The artillery of Hascall's division as well as my own was turned on the enemy's works when they came out into the open. The hills along this part of Olley's Creek were not a continuous ridge, but knobby and somewhat detached; the higher land marking the edge of the plateau about Marietta was further back, and the Confederate line of works followed it. Byrd's direction of march was nearly parallel to the Sandtown road, and by advancing about a mile and a half he reached the summit of a rough wooded hill about six hundred yards from the main ridge, with open ground intervening. He was here from half a mile to a mile east of the Sandtown road, and from the fortified hill in front of Reilly, which was on the continuation of the same ridge, though with ravines interrupting it. The position was a very threatening one, and if any demonstration could draw the enemy in that direction, this seemed likely to do it. I directed Byrd to intrench on the crest, drawing back the flanks of the brigade so as to be ready for attack from any direction. Our movement had been sharply resisted by the enemy, but so far as we could see, only by dismounted cavalry. Sherman had said that he did not care to have Reilly force the passage of the creek that afternoon, for a strong threatening of the fortified hill would be more likely to draw the enemy that way than actually capturing it. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 597.] On my reporting to General Schofield in the evening the position of Byrd's brigade with the favorable look of the country beyond, it was arranged that Byrd's bridge should be made stronger for permanent use, and that Cameron's brigade should follow him at daylight in the morning. With my whole division except Barter's brigade, which was left to cover Hascall's right flank, I was to test what further progress could be made on the Sandtown road. [Footnote: Id., pp. 598-600.]

At peep of day on the 27th we were astir, anxious to get our part of the day's work well advanced before the more serious engagement at the centre should begin. Another battery had been sent to Reilly, and he was directed to silence the enemy's guns and find a way across the creek under cover of his own if he could, but if this failed, to storm the bridge.

Cameron was over Byrd's bridge at four o'clock, and was ordered upon reaching the ridge in rear of Byrd to push boldly along it toward the fortified hill the other side of the Sandtown road in front of Reilly. Byrd's orders were to hold his position with the main body of his brigade, but to throw out detachments and skirmishers in all directions to watch the enemy and to get information of the country. Leaving Cameron as soon as he was well on his way, I rode to Reilly in front of the Cheney farm, and found that at five his dispositions for forcing the passage of the stream were well under way. He had determined to try it some distance below the bridge, at a place where, though the banks were swampy, the creek was fordable, and the hills behind gave good opportunity to use the artillery and put the men across under shelter. My chief of artillery, Major Wells, was with him, selecting places for the batteries and getting them in position. Soon after six I was with Cameron again, and before eight was back at Reilly's position, urging each to all the speed which the strong skirmishing opposition would permit. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 619.] As it was necessary to pass from one position to the other by way of the roads at the rear, it made hard riding for one who wished to be as much as possible with the active heads of columns.

Soon after eight o'clock part of Reilly's brigade got over the swamp and creek under cover of the artillery, uncovering the bridge at the road where the rest crossed; Cameron's was now coming into close co-operation from the east, and a dashing charge by both carried the hill. [Footnote: Id., pt. ii. pp. 683, 703, 720.] It was now half-past eight, and the cannonade which preceded the attacks at the centre was opening heavily behind us. [Footnote: Id., pt. i. pp. 199, 632.] The captured position was a commanding one, and the view from it covered the whole region from Kennesaw to Lost Mountain. Cameron was left there whilst Reilly followed the retreating enemy with orders to advance as far as he could toward the Marietta and Sandtown road, which was supposed to come into the old Cassville and Sandtown road a mile or two ahead. We now knew from prisoners that the force opposed to us was the division of Confederate cavalry under Jackson, and that they were not closely supported by infantry.

The hill had been held by Ross's brigade, which retreated to another eminence half a mile further down the road. Reilly again advanced, supported by Cameron. Ross was again dislodged and retreated upon the rest of the division at the junction of the roads above mentioned. [Footnote: Id., pt. iv. pp. 799-801.] As we advanced it became evident that the principal ridge on which Johnston's army was broke down into separate hills as it came forward toward the forks of the main roads, and it seemed feasible to hold some of these in such a way as to make mutually supporting positions from Byrd to Reilly, covering a front of two miles and commanding the lower part of the Nickajack valley, in which the Marietta road ran. Reilly was put in one of these positions with his right across the road on which we had come, two miles south of Cheney's; Cameron was ordered forward upon high ground near Reilly's left, and Byrd was directed to straighten out his line on his right and reach as far as he could toward Cameron. All were ordered to intrench as rapidly and thoroughly as possible, for it was plain that we now commanded a short road to the railway in Johnston's rear, and that he must drive us out or abandon the Kennesaw line he had clung to so stubbornly.

I had sent my aide, Mr. Coughlan, with the orders to Byrd, and when the line was extended and skirmishers partly covered the front, he came back to me by a direct course from Byrd to Cameron and Reilly, with the daring and intelligence which made him a model staff officer, and reported that a continuous ridge connected the brigades so that pickets could be well placed in the interval to give warning of any hostile attempt to pass between. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. pp. 620, 621. Lieutenant Coughlan was afterward killed in the heroic performance of duty at the battle of Franklin. See "Franklin," p. 114.] A small hill a few hundred yards in front of the main line better commanded the Marietta road, and upon this I directed Reilly to build a lunette for an advanced guard of a regiment and a battery.

The whole affair was one of the minor class in war, but it had a special interest, in our ignorance of the topography of the country, because it revealed a way to Johnston's line of communications, which could not be seen and was not suspected when Sherman made the reconnoissance with us on the 25th, and saw the Confederate lines crossing the Powder Springs road and stretching away far beyond our right. In my field dispatch to General Schofield I said: "The possession of the end of the ridge, if we can hold it, I am now sure will prevent the enemy from extending his line along it, since it would be necessarily flanked and enfiladed by our positions. The only objection is the extension relatively to the strength of my command and the distance from supports. Upon carefully re-examining the ground my conviction is strengthened that it is exceedingly desirable to hold all we have gained, and if Hascall's place could possibly be filled by troops drawn from other parts of the line, it would give all the force needed to make a point-d'appui which would be safe and exceedingly available for future movements in this direction if they become necessary. I only suggest this by way of indicating the impression made on my own mind by the position." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 621.]

Reilly was three miles distant from Barter's brigade, which covered the right of the continuous line of the army intrenchments, and it was certainly risking something to extend the brigades of a single division so far, but it would have been a great disappointment to us to have been called back. General Schofield instantly saw the advantage, and in answering my dispatch, said, "I do not think the importance of the position you have gained can be over-estimated, especially in view of the failure elsewhere and probable future movements." [Footnote: Ibid. See map, p. 255.] He ordered Stoneman's cavalry to aid me in holding the ground and in picketing the intervals, and reported to General Sherman the details of the operation. The latter determined to make use of the advantage gained, and said, "If we had our supplies well up, I would move at once by the right flank, but I suppose we must cover our railroad a few days." [Footnote: Dispatch to McPherson, Id., p. 622.] We were left, therefore, for a little while in our exposed position, whilst the whole army made strenuous efforts to get forward supplies enough for a few days' separation from the railway. The weather had begun to favor us. The day of the affair at the Kolb farm (22d) had been the first fair day of the month, and the continuous clear skies and hot suns rapidly dried the roads. Sherman sent Captain Poe to make an engineer's examination of our position and reconnoissance in front. The report confirmed his purpose of making us the pivot in a swinging movement of the whole army. On the 29th Generals Thomas and Howard accompanied General Schofield and myself in a similar inspection, to help fix the details of the movement for the Army of the Cumberland. Crittenden's brigade of dismounted cavalry reported to me for temporary duty as infantry with my division. On the 1st of July Hascall's division was relieved by the extension of Hooker's corps, and Schofield with his whole corps in hand advanced a mile upon the Marietta road toward Ruff's Mill. Johnston's failure to attack was proof that he was preparing for retreat, and Sherman pressed the movement of his own army.

On the 2d Johnston knew that McPherson's army was marching to interpose between him and the Chattahoochee, and issued his orders for the evacuation of the Marietta lines in the night, and the occupation of the position beyond the Nickajack. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 860.] But Thomas and McPherson both followed so vigorously that the Confederate general saw that he could not cover the crossings of the river which Stoneman's cavalry was already reaching on our right, and in the night of the 4th he again retired, this time to intrenchments with both flanks resting on the river and covering the railway bridge with two or three of the principal ferries. With his usual prudence, Johnston had prepared both these lines with the aid of the Georgia militia under General Gustavus W. Smith, who, being himself an engineer, was admirably fitted to co-operate with the plans of the staff.

Again a few days had to be given to repairs of the railroad and a readjustment of the depots and means of supply, whilst careful reconnoissances of the river were made both above and below the Confederate position. Schofield's corps was placed in reserve near the railway, at Smyrna Camp ground, and on the 8th my division was assigned the duty of making a crossing of the Chattahoochee, and laying pontoon bridges at Isham's ford and ferry at the mouth of Soap Creek, [Footnote: In the official Atlas, pl. lx., two creeks are named Rottenwood. The upper one of these with paper-mills upon it is Soap Creek. The ford was sometimes called Cavalry Ford in the Confederate dispatches. For particulars of the movements at this period of the campaign, see "Atlanta," chap. xi.] about nine miles above the railway crossing of the river. Johnston does not seem to have been well served by his cavalry on this occasion, for the crossing was gained and two bridges laid with only trifling opposition, and my division was over and strongly intrenched before any concentration of the enemy was made in my front. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. pp. 85, 89, 93.] This, of course, decided Johnston to abandon the northern bank of the river, and he selected a strong position behind Peach-tree Creek as the next line of defence for Atlanta, burning the railway bridge and other bridges behind him.

Several days were occupied by Sherman in moving McPherson's command to Roswell, twenty miles above the railway, and building a trestle-bridge there, in accumulating supplies and organizing transportation for another considerable absence from the railroad. By the 17th the army was over the Chattahoochee, McPherson on the left, Schoneld next, and Thomas from the centre to the right. A general wheel of the whole toward the right was ordered, to find and drive back the enemy upon Atlanta.

Meanwhile the relations between General Johnston and the Confederate government had reached a crisis. He had regularly reported the actual movements of his army, but had carefully avoided any indication of his intentions or of his hopes or fears. When, on the 5th of July, he retreated to the position at the Chattahoochee crossing, his dispatch briefly announced that "In consequence of the enemy's advance toward the river below our left, we this morning took this position, which is slightly intrenched." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 865.] Mr. Davis replied on the 7th, expressing grave apprehensions at the situation, pointing out the dangers of the position, and saying that other places had been stripped to reinforce him, that further increase was impossible, and that they now depended on his success. [Footnote: Id., p. 867.] By an unfortunate blunder of a subordinate, the dispatch was not sent in cipher as was intended, and Johnston knew that the contents with its implied criticism was known to the telegraphers along the line and was practically public property. [Footnote: Id., p. 871] this was not soothing to the general's feelings, even when explained. His answer said that he had been forced back by siege operations, and had no opportunity for battle except by attacking intrenchments. He suggested that the enemy's purpose to capture Atlanta might be foiled by sending part of the 16,000 cavalry believed to be in Alabama and Mississippi to break up the railroads behind Sherman and force him to retreat. Davis replied with the intimation that Johnston must know that no such force was available in the West, and that it would be much more to the purpose to use the cavalry he had for that task of pressing importance. [Footnote: Id., p. 875] He sent also by letter fuller details of the stress under which General S.D. Lee was in the Department of Mississippi, showing that the hands of that officer were more than full. [Footnote: The letter, however, did not reach Johnston till after he had been relieved of command.] On the 10th Johnston had forwarded a laconic dispatch, saying, "On the night of the 8th the enemy crossed at Isham's Cavalry Ford; intrenched. In consequence we crossed at and below the railroad, and are now about two miles from the river, guarding the crossings." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 873.] On the 11th he telegraphed, recommending the immediate distribution elsewhere of the prisoners at Andersonville. [Footnote: Id., p.876]

It cannot be denied that there was a certain justification for Mr. Davis's conclusion that the circumstances foreboded the yielding of Atlanta without the desperate struggle which the importance of the position demanded. Had Johnston expressed any hopefulness, or said, what was the fact, that he was himself coming to the determnation to try the effect of a bold attack whilst Sherman's army was in motion, he would probably have been left in command. But the personal estrangement had gone so far that he confined himself rigidly to the briefest report of events, leaving the Richmond government to guess what was next to happen. His attitude was in effect a challenge to the Confederate President to trust the Confederate cause in Georgia to him absolutely, or to take the responsibility of removing him. The Hon. B. H. Hill, who was in Richmond, at Johnston's request, to learn if it was possible to reinforce him, telegraphed him on the 14th, "You must do the work with your present force. For God's sake, do it." [Footnote: Id., p. 879.] Governor Brown offered to furnish 5000 "old men and boys" for the local defence of Atlanta in the emergency, in addition to the similar number of the militia reserves already in the field. These were 'promptly accepted by Mr. Davis and the order was issued to arm them. [Footnote: Id., p. 878, and vol. lii. pt. ii. pp. 691-695, 704. The correspondence between Mr. Hill and Mr. Seddon, Secretary of War, is especially instructive as to the issue between Johnston and Davis.]

Before acting further the Confederate President sent out General Bragg to Atlanta to examine on the spot and report upon the condition of affairs. Bragg arrived on the 13th and reported that an entire evacuation of Atlanta seemed to be indicated by what he saw. The army was sadly depleted, he said, and reported 10,000 less than the return of June 10th. He could find but little encouraging. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 878.] On the following two days he visited Johnston twice and was "received courteously and kindly." "He has not sought my advice," Bragg added, "and it was not volunteered. I cannot learn that he has any more plan for the future than he has had in the past. It is expected that he will await the enemy on a line some three miles from here, and the impression prevails that he is now more inclined to fight. The enemy is very cautious, and intrenches immediately on taking a new position. His force, like our own, is greatly reduced by the hard campaign. His infantry now very little over 60,000. The morale of our army is still reported good." [Footnote: Id., p. 881.]

The receipt of this dispatch with Johnston's of the 16th seems to have decided President Davis to make a change in the command of the army, and on the 17th Hood was appointed to the temporary rank of general in the Provisional Army and ordered to relieve Johnston. [Footnote: Id., pp. 885, 887, 889.] Hood shrank from the responsibility in the crisis which then existed, and suggested delay till the fate of Atlanta should be decided; but Mr. Davis replied, "A change of commanders, under existing circumstances, was regarded as so objectionable that I only accepted it as the alternative of continuing in a policy which had proved so disastrous. Reluctance to make the change induced me to send a telegram of inquiry to the commanding general on the 16th instant. His reply but confirmed previous apprehensions. There can be but one question which you and I can entertain: that is, what will best promote the public good; and to each of you I confidently look for the sacrifice of every personal consideration in conflict with that object." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 888.]

Johnston magnanimously assisted Hood in completing the movements of the army during the 18th to the Peachtree Creek position and explained to him his plans. These were, first, to attack Sherman's army when divided in crossing that difficult stream, and, if successful, to press the advantage to decisive results. If unsuccessful, to hold the Peachtree lines till Governor Brown's militia were assembled;[Footnote: Johnston says ten thousand of these were promised him instead of five. Narrative, p. 348.] then, holding Atlanta with these, to draw the army back through the town and march out with the three corps against one of Sherman's flanks, with the confidence that even if his attack did not succeed, with Atlanta so strongly fortified he could hold it forever. [Footnote: Narrative, p. 350.]

In reading his more elaborate statement of the plans of which the above is an outline, one cannot help thinking how unfortunate for him it was that he did not give them to Mr. Davis as fully as he gave them to Hood! In answer to the pressing inquiry of the 16th for "your plan of operations so specifically as will enable me to anticipate events," he had replied, "As the enemy has double our number, we must be on the defensive. 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." [Footnote: Id., p. 883.] A good understanding with his government was so essential, just then, that the most reticent of commanders would have been wise in sending in cipher the whole page in which he tells the specific details of his purposes and their alternates as he gave them to Hood. Had he done so, it is quite safe to say that he would not have been removed; but reading, in the light of the whole season's correspondence, the dispatch he actually sent, we cannot say that Mr. Davis was unreasonable in finding it confirm his previous apprehension. Had the general fully and frankly opened to Bragg the same purposes, the latter could not have sent the hopeless message which clinched the President's decision.

Johnston said in his final message to Davis that the enemy had advanced more rapidly and penetrated deeper into Virginia than into Georgia; and that confident language by a military commander is not usually regarded as evidence of competency. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 888.] There was much force in both points, but they do not touch the heart of the matter. Between Lee and his government there was always a frank and cordial comparison of views and perfect understanding; so that even in disaster it was seen that he had done the best he could and was actively planning to repair a mischief. On the other hand, they got from Johnston little but a diarist's briefest chronicle of events with no word of hopeful purpose or plan. It was not necessary that he should use "confident language," but words were certainly called for which expressed intelligent comprehension of the situation and fertility in purposed action according to probable contingencies. His advice to Hood showed that he only needed to be equally frank with the Richmond authorities. [Footnote: Mr. Davis has discussed his relations to Johnston in chapter xlviii. of his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," vol. ii. pp. 547, etc.; but the most succinct statement of his views is found in a paper prepared for the Confederate Congress, but withheld. See his letter to Colonel Phelan, Meridian, Miss., O. R, vol. xlvii. pt. ii. pp. 1303-1311.]

The assignment of Hood to the command was, of course, in the belief that he would take a more energetic and aggressive course. He seems to have been free in his criticisms of his commander, and upon Bragg's arrival had addressed to him a letter which it is hard to view as anything else than a bid for the command. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 880.] It said Johnston had failed to use several opportunities to strike Sherman decisive blows; that yet the losses of the army were 20,000; that under no circumstances should the enemy be allowed to occupy Atlanta; that if Sherman should establish his line at the Chattahoochee, he must be attacked by crossing that river; that he had so often urged aggressive action that he was regarded as reckless by "the officers high in rank in this army, who are declared to hold directly opposite views." He concluded by saying that he regarded it a great misfortune that battle was not given to the enemy many miles north of the present position.

When Johnston learned from Hood's report [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 628.](dated February 15, 1865) the nature of the latter's statements and criticisms, he notified the Richmond government as well as Hood that he should demand that the latter be brought before a court-martial; [Footnote: Id., p. 637.] but it was then April, on the very eve of the collapse of the Confederacy, and the discussion was left for continuance in the private writings of the parties and their friends. Johnston affirmed that in the only instances in the campaign in which it could be said that a favorable opportunity for battle had not been seized, Hood himself had been prominent in protesting against an engagement or had himself failed to carry out the orders given. In his service as commander of the army, Hood became involved in disputes as to fact with Hardee and Cheatham as well as with Johnston, and the result was damaging to his reputation for accuracy and candor. [Footnote: Johnston's case is stated in his "Narrative," chapters x. and xi.; Hood's in his "Advance and Retreat," chapters v. to ix. In connection with these, Hardee's Report of April 5, 1865, is of interest (Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 697), and his letter to General Mackall (Id., pt. v. p. 987).]

The change of commanders undoubtedly precipitated the ruin of the Confederate cause; yet we must in candor admit that the situation was becoming so portentous that human wisdom might be overtaxed in trying to determine what course to take. Of one thing there is no shadow of doubt. We of the National Army in Georgia regarded the removal of Johnston as equivalent to a victory for us. Three months of sharp work had convinced us that a change from Johnston's methods to those which Hood was likely to employ, was, in homely phrase, to have our enemy grasp the hot end of the poker. We knew that we should be kept on the alert and must be watchful; but we were confident that a system of aggression and a succession of attacks would soon destroy the Confederate army. Of course Hood did not mean to assault solidly built intrenchments; but we knew that we could make good enough cover whilst he was advancing against a flank, to insure him a bloody repulse. The dense forests made the artillery of little effect in demolishing the works or weakening the morale of the defenders, and it was essentially an infantry attack upon intrenched infantry and artillery at close range.

The action of the Confederate government was a confession that Sherman's methods had brought about the very result he aimed at. The enemy had been manoeuvred from position to position until he must either give up Atlanta with its important nucleus of railway communications and abandon all northern Georgia and Alabama, or he must assume a desperate aggressive with a probability that this would fatally reduce his army and make the result only the more completely ruinous. This was the meaning of the substitution of Hood for Johnston.

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XL. HOOD'S DEFENCE OF ATLANTA--RESULTS OF ITS CAPTURE

Lines of supply by field trains--Canvas pontoons--Why replaced by bridges--Wheeling toward Atlanta--Battle of Peachtree Creek--Battle of Atlanta--Battle of Ezra Church--Aggressive spirit of Confederates exhausted--Sherman turns Atlanta by the south--Pivot position of Twenty-third Corps--Hood's illusions--Rapidity of our troops in intrenching--Movements of 31st August--Affair at Jonesboro--Atlanta won--Morale of Hood's army--Exaggerating difference in numbers--Examination of returns--Efforts to bring back absentees--The sweeping conscription--Sherman's candid estimates--Unwise use of cavalry--Forrest's work--Confederate estimate of Sherman's campaign.

In advancing from the Chattahoochee, the arrangements Sherman made for the supply of his army provided separate lines for the trains of the three columns. McPherson' s wagons would reach him from Marietta by way of Roswell and the bridge which General Dodge built there. Schofield's had their depot at Smyrna and came by the wooden bridge which we built at the mouth of Soap Creek to replace the pontoons. The latter were of canvas, and whilst unequalled for field use, were unfit for a bridge of any permanence, because the canvas would be destroyed by long continuance in the water. As soon as they could be replaced by a pier or trestle-bridge of timber, they were taken up, cleaned and dried, and then packed on their special wagons for transport. This train was in charge of a permanent detachment of troops who became experts in the handling and care of the material and in laying the bridge. The brigade of dismounted cavalry in my division was left at the river as a guard for the wooden bridge which was kept up till the railway bridge was built and opened for use. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 163.] Thomas's troops, who were more than half the army, drew their supplies from Vining's Station byway of bridges at Power's Ferry (mouth of Rottenwood Creek) and Pace's Ferry, a mile below.

Grant sent warning of rumors afloat that reinforcements would be sent Johnston from the east, and in advancing from the Chattahoochee by a great wheel to the right, Sherman extended his left so that McPherson should move to the east of Decatur and break the Georgia Railroad there, whilst Garrard with his division of cavalry should continue the destruction toward Stone Mountain and make the gap as wide as possible. [Footnote: Id., p. 158.]

This movement made the distance travelled by McPherson and Schofield a long one, and extended their front largely, whilst Thomas was much more compact. But when once the railway should be so broken that Johnston's direct communication with the east would be interrupted, McPherson and Schofield would both move toward their right, and in closing in upon Atlanta, come into close touch with Thomas. [Footnote: Id., p. 167.]

It was whilst this movement was progressing, on the 20th of July, and was near its completion, that Hood made the attack already planned by Johnston, upon Thomas's columns, crossing Peachtree Creek by several roads converging at Atlanta. It involved the right of Howard's corps, the whole of Hooker's, and the left of Palmer's. It was a fierce and bloody combat, in which the Confederates lost about 6000 men in killed and wounded, whilst the casualty lists of Thomas's divisions amounted to 2000. Again, on the 22d, the second part of Johnston's plan was tried, and Hardee's corps, moving by night through Atlanta and far out to the southward of Decatur, advanced upon the flank of McPherson's army, whilst Cheatham at the head of Hood's own corps advanced from the Atlanta lines and continued the attack upon the centre and left of McPherson and upon the right of Schofield. A great battle raged along five miles of front and rear, but at evening the worsted Confederates retired within the fortifications of the city, a terrible list of 10,000 casualties showing the cost of the aggressive tactics. The losses on the National side were 3500, heavy enough, in truth, but with very different results on the relative strength of the armies and their morale. But the end was not yet. On the 28th McPherson's army, now under the command of Howard, was marching from the left wing to the right, to extend our lines southward on the west side of Atlanta, when once more Hood struck fiercely at the moving flank at Ezra Church, but again found that breastworks grew as if by magic as soon as Howard's men were deployed in position, and again the gray columns were beaten back with a list of 5000 added to the killed and disabled. Howard had less than 600 casualties in the action. It was only a week since Johnston had been relieved, and matters had come to such a pass in his army that the men stolidly refused to continue the assaults. From our skirmish line their officers were seen to advance to the front with waving swords calling upon the troops to follow them, but the men remained motionless and silent, refusing to budge. [Footnote: For details of these engagements, see "Atlanta," chaps, xii.-xiv.]

During the first half of August Sherman extended his lines southward, until my own division, which was the right flank of the infantry lines, was advanced nearly a mile southeast of the crossing of the Campbelltown and East Point roads on high ground covering the headwaters of the Utoy and Camp creeks. We were here somewhat detached and encamped accordingly in a boldly curved line ready for action on the flanks as well as front. It was now the 18th of August and Sherman devoted the next week to the accumulation of supplies, the removal of sick and wounded to the rear, getting rid of impedimenta, and general preparation for a fortnight's separation from his base. My position had been selected with reference to this plan, as a pivot upon which the whole of the army except the Twentieth Corps should swing across the railways south of Atlanta.

The movement began on the 25th, and we stood fast till the 28th, when we began our flank movement on the inner curve of the march of the army, taking very short steps, however, as we must keep between the army trains and the enemy. On the 30th Schofield moved our corps from Red Oak Station, on the West Point Railroad, a mile and a half directly toward East Point, so as to cover roads going eastward toward Rough-and-Ready Station on the Macon road. We were hardly in position before our skirmishers were briskly engaged with an advancing force of the enemy's cavalry, and we felt sure that it was the precursor of an attack by Hood in force. It proved to be nothing but a reconnoissance, and showed that Hood was strangely misconceiving the situation. Its chief interest to me at the moment was in the experiment it enabled me to make of the speed with which my men could cover themselves in open ground in an emergency. The division was astride the East Point road, the centre in open fields where no timber could be got for revetment, and only fence rails to give some support to the loose earth. Giving the order to make the light trench of the rifle-pit class, where the earth is thrown outward and the men stand in the ditch they dig, in fifteen minutes by the watch the work was such that I reckoned it sufficient cover to repel an infantry attack, if it came. It would be an extraordinary occasion when we did not have more warning of an impending attack; and the incident will illustrate the confidence we had that in forcing the enemy to assume aggressive tactics, the campaign was practically decided.

On the 31st, as Sherman's left wing, we held the Macon Railway at Rough-and-Ready Station, Howard, as right wing, was across Flint River, closing in on Jonesboro, whilst the centre under Thomas filled the interval. Hood had sent Hardee with his own and Lee's (late Hood's) corps to defeat what was supposed to be a detachment of two corps of Sherman's army, and a sharp affair had occurred at the Flint River crossing, where Howard succeeded in maintaining his position on the east side. On hearing of our occupation of Rough-and-Ready, Hood jumped to the conclusion that it was preliminary to an attack on Atlanta from the south, and ordered Lee's corps to march in the night and rejoin him at once. Getting a better idea of the situation before morning, he stopped Lee and prepared to evacuate Atlanta. On September 1st Sherman closed in on Jonesboro, his latest information indicating that two corps of the enemy were assembled there. Late in the day he learned of the disappearance of Lee's corps, but assumed that Hood was assembling somewhere near. He tried hard to concentrate his forces to prevent Hardee's escape, but his scattered army could not be united till nightfall.

In the night Hood blew up the ordnance stores at Atlanta, and hastening to join Lee by roads east of Sherman's positions, he marched on Lovejoy Station. Hardee evacuated Jonesboro also, and before morning the Confederate army was assembled again upon the railroad, five miles nearer to Macon. Atlanta was occupied by the Twentieth Corps on the 2d, and Sherman ordered his army to return to the vicinity of that city for a period of rest. Hood's conduct for the past three days had been the result of complete misapprehension of the facts; but its very eccentricity had been so incomprehensible that no rule of military probabilities could be applied to it, and before Sherman could learn what he was doing, the time had passed when full advantage could be taken of his errors.

The condition of Hood's army at the close of the campaign was anything but satisfactory to him. His theory was that his offensive tactics would keep up the spirit and energy of his men and constantly improve their morale. When he found that they were, on the contrary, discouraged and despondent, and could not be induced to repeat the assaults upon our positions which had followed each other so rapidly in the last days of July, he querulously laid the blame at the door of his subordinates. He called the attack upon Howard's advance at Flint River "a disgraceful effort" because only 1485 were wounded, and asked to have Hardee relieved and sent elsewhere. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. pp. 1021, 1023, 1030. Hardee had before asked to be relieved. (Id., pp. 987, 988.) For Hood's final, urgent request and the result, see vol. xxxix. pt. ii. pp. 832, 880, 881.] True, he had telegraphed Hardee that the necessity was imperative that the National troops should be driven into and across the river, and that the men must go at them with bayonets fixed; but it was his own old corps, now under Lieutenant-General S. D. Lee, that made the principal attack and was repulsed. Lee was not one of the officers who might be presumed to be discontented with Johnston's removal, but had been brought from the Department of Mississippi, at Hood's suggestion, to take the corps when the latter was promoted, and had won Davis's admiration by his zeal. [Footnote: Id., p. 892, and vol. lii. pt. ii. p. 713.] It would be hard to find better proof that the trouble lay in the consciousness of the men in the line that they were asked to lay down their lives without a reasonable hope of benefit to their cause. The discouragement pervaded the whole army, and is seen in Hood's own dispatches hardly less than in others. [Footnote: Hood to Davis, September 3, two dispatches, Id., vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 1016. In another, p. 1017, he repeated an earlier suggestion to remove the prisoners from Andersonville. When Johnston had done this, it was made one of the charges against him. See Davis to Lee, Id., vol. lii. pt. ii. p. 692. For Hardee's opinion of the situation, see Id., vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 1018.] In a labored letter to Bragg on September 4th, he unconsciously shows how his own total misunderstanding of Sherman's movements was the prime cause of his disaster, whilst the shame at the result leads him to charge it upon others. As to the spirit of the army, nobody has given more telling testimony, for he says, "I am officially informed that there is a tacit if not expressed determination among the men of this army, extending to officers as high in some instances as colonel, that they will not attack breastworks." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. lii. pt. ii. p. 730. This letter seems to have come to light since the first publication of the records of the campaign, and is found in the supplemental volume.]

In the correspondence between Johnston and the Confederate government regarding the numerical force of his army, he naturally emphasized his inferiority to Sherman in numbers as an explanation of his cautious defensive tactics and his retreating movements. The introduction into the Southern returns of a column of "effectives" as distinguished from the number of officers and men "present for duty," [Footnote: Ante, vol. i. p. 482.] led to a habitual underestimate by their commanding officers. On several occasions Johnston defended his conduct of the campaign by asserting that his army was less than half the size of Sherman's, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 795.] and this necessarily led to an examination of his returns. These regular numerical reports are of course the ultimate authority in all disputes, and we find the Richmond government doing just what the historian has to do,--comparing the estimates of the general with his official returns. Officers of all grades and of the highest character fall into the error of memory which modifies facts according to one's wish and feeling. Thus at the beginning of this campaign we find General Bragg, speaking for the President, saying that General Polk's "estimates and his official returns vary materially." [Footnote: Id., vol. lii. pt. ii. p. 659.] Nobody could be freer from intentional misstatement than the good bishop-general. We find the same discrepancies at the East as well as the West. Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, and their subordinates fall into the same error. It is therefore the canon of all criticism on this subject, that nothing but the statistical returns in the adjutant-general's office shall be received as proofs of numbers, though, of course, the returns must be read intelligently.

Conscious of straining every nerve to reinforce the great armies in the field, Mr. Davis naturally asked what it meant when the army in Georgia was said to be so weak. General Bragg assisted him with an analysis of Johnston's last returns. Writing on June 29th, he refers to the last regular return, that of June 10th, which is the same now published in the Official Records. In using it, therefore, we agree with the Confederate government at the time in making it conclusive. It shows that Johnston's army had present for duty 6538 officers and 63,408 enlisted men, or, in round numbers, was 70,000 strong. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iv. p. 805; Id., pt. iii. p. 677.] The "effectives" are given as 60,564; but this, as we know, is the result of subtracting the number of the officers and non-commissioned staff from the aggregate present for duty. But in addition to the troops named, Bragg very properly adds that Johnston "has at Atlanta a supporting force of reserves and militia, estimated at from 7000 to 10,000 effective men, half of whom were actually with Johnston near Marietta." We thus have from Confederate authorities the proof that the army was nearly 80,000 strong on June 10th, after the first month of the campaign had closed, including the engagements at Dalton, Resaca, New Hope Church, Dallas, and Pickett's Mill.

To complete the examination of the same return, it is necessary to notice that the "aggregate present" is given at 82,413, or 12,500 more than the "present for duty." This includes "extra-duty men," such as clerks at headquarters of the organizations from Johnston's own down to brigades and regiments, men permanently detailed for any special service, men in arrest, etc. [Footnote: Hood's dispatch of September 5, Id., pt. v. p. 1021; and his Order No. 19, vol. xxxix. pt. ii. p. 835.] It is here that good administration in an army seeks to reduce the number of those who are withdrawn from the fighting ranks, and to make the "aggregate present" agree as closely as possible with the "present for duty." I shall presently note the result of such an effort.

Sherman's return of "present for duty" on May 31st, just after Blair had joined him with the Seventeenth Corps, was the largest of the campaign, being 112,819. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. i. p. 117.] By the end of June it was reduced to 106,070, when Johnston's was 59,196 without the reserves and militia. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 679.]

When Hood assumed the command, Bragg visited the army a second time, and gave new impulse to the effort to increase its effective force. On July 27th, in a very full report to Mr. Davis, he says, "the increase by the arrival of extra-duty men and convalescents, etc., is about 5000, and more are coming in daily. The return of the 1st of August will show a gratifying state of affairs." [Footnote: Id., vol. lii. pt. ii. p. 714.] This promise was fulfilled when that return showed a diminution in the "present for duty," since the 10th of the month, of only 7403, [Footnote: Id., vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 680.] although the period included the bloody engagements of Peachtree Creek, Atlanta, and Ezra Church.

The Confederate conscription included the whole able-bodied population, and details as for extra duty were the means by which physicians, clergymen, civilian office-holders, etc., were exempted from service in the army. These lists were rigidly scrutinized, and the laxity which had grown was corrected as far as possible. The aggregate of Hood's army, "present and absent," on August 1st, was 135,000, though his "aggregate present" was only 65,000. [Footnote: Ibid.] It included, of course, prisoners of war, deserters, and men otherwise missing, besides the class last mentioned. The extent to which the efforts to bring back absentees succeeded, is shown by the return for September 20th, when the aggregate of the "present and absent" falls to 123,000, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 637.] though the "present for duty" are almost as numerous as at the end of July. The difference of 12,000 shows how many were added to the army in this way, and these are in addition to the thousands which Bragg spoke of as gained by transferring non-combatants present with the army to the list of those present for duty.

It is only by examining Hood's returns in this way that they become intelligible, for his rolls of those present for duty hardly diminish at all during the whole month of August, being 51,793 on the 1st, 51,946 on the 10th, and 51,141 on the 31st. [Footnote: Id., pp. 680-683.] On September 10th he reports 46,149, and on the 20th 47,431, the first of these returns including his losses in the final combats of the campaign and the fall of Atlanta, and the latter indicating a gain by the exchange of prisoners with General Sherman. [Footnote: Id., vol. xxxix. pt. ii. pp. 828, 850.] By ignoring all the additions to his fighting force from the sources which I have enumerated, Hood was able to claim that his total losses while in command of the army were 5247. [Footnote: Id., vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 636.] The absurdity was indicated by Hardee, who replied in his official report that the losses in his own corps, which was only one third of the army, "considerably exceeded 7000" during the same period. [Footnote: Id., p. 702.]

Sherman's returns show a steady diminution of his available numbers during July and August, though, as he himself has said, it was not altogether from casualties on the battlefield and the diseases of the camp. [Footnote: Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 134.] The term of service of all the troops enlisted in the spring and summer of 1861 for three years was now ended, and an interval occurred in which the new levies under the law to enforce the draft had not yet reached the field, and the army was depleted by the return home of the regiments which had not "veteranized" in the last winter. He had present for duty, on July 31st, 91,675 officers and men; on August 31st, 81,758. Sherman's statement of his losses in battle and his comparison of them with his opponents is a model of candor and fairness. With the light we now have, he might properly have increased considerably his estimate of Johnston's casualties. [Footnote: Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 131-136.]

General Hood was quite right in arguing, in his memoirs, that the wounded in a campaign are not all a permanent loss to an army, "since almost all the slightly wounded, proud of their scars, soon return to the ranks." [Footnote: Advance and Retreat, p. 217.] But what I have said above shows that he was entirely astray when he concluded that the difference in the returns of his effective force at the beginning and end of the campaign would show the number of killed and permanently disabled. The absence of data as to the additions to his field force through the means which I have analyzed, shows how absurd a result was drawn from his premises. The reports of casualties are not unfrequently faulty, but with all their faults they would be much more valuable if a complete series existed which could be compared and tested. It would require a minute examination of all returns, from companies to divisions, to determine accurately how many men returned to duty after being wounded or captured. The imperfect state of the Confederate archives would prevent this, if it were otherwise practicable. The statistical returns are conclusive for what they actually give, but inferences from them must be drawn with care. As an illustration (in addition to those already given) it may be noted that the Confederate cavalry made no returns of casualties or losses, and they do not appear at all in the Medical Director's report which General Hood makes the basis of his own assertions. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 687.] How grave an omission this is will be partly seen from the fact that Wheeler's corps, which reported 8000 men present for duty on August 1st (the last return made), was in such condition when he reached Tuscumbia after the raid in the rear of Sherman's army, that its adjutant-general doubted if more than 1000 men could be got together. [Footnote: Letter of General Forrest to General Taylor, Sept. 20, 1864, Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. ii. p. 859.]

The use of the cavalry in "raids," which were the fashion, was an amusement that was very costly to both sides. Since Stuart's ride round McClellan's army in 1862, every cavalry commander, National and Confederate, burned to distinguish himself by some such excursion deep into the enemy's country, and chafed at the comparatively obscured but useful work of learning the detailed positions and movements of the opposing army by incessant outpost and patrol work in the more restricted theatre of operations of the campaign.

From Chattanooga to the Chattahoochee, good work was done by Stoneman and McCook in scouting upon the front and flanks of the army, and by Colonel Lowe in vigilant guard of the railway close in rear of Sherman's movements; but the use of mounted troops in mass was not satisfactory, and as to the raids on both sides, the game was never worth the candle. Men and horses were used up, wholesale, without doing any permanent damage to the enemy, and never reached that training of horse and man which might have been secured by steady and systematic attention to their proper duties. Forrest, of the Confederates, was the only cavalry officer whom Sherman thought at all formidable, and he showed his high estimate of him by offering, in his sweeping way, to secure the promotion of the officer who should defeat and kill him. In another form he expressed the same idea, by saying he would swap all the cavalry officers he had for Forrest. [Footnote: The matter took an odd turn, when on the report that General Mower had defeated Forrest in West Tennessee and that the brilliant cavalry leader had fallen in the action, Mower got his promotion, but it turned out that it was Forrest's brother, a colonel, who was killed--"a horse of another color." Mower, however, was worthy of promotion "on general principles." See Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 471; vol. xxxix. pt. i. p. 228; Id., pt. ii. pp. 130, 142, 219, 233.]

High as was the National estimate of the importance of Sherman's campaign, Southern men rated it and its consequences quite as high as we did. In the conferences at Richmond, at which Mr. Hill had represented the strong desire of Governor Brown and General Johnston for reinforcements, Mr. Davis had made his apprehension of the disastrous results which would follow the loss of Atlanta the reason of his urgency for a more aggressive campaign. In closing the interviews, Mr. Seddon, the Secretary of War, and Mr. Hill showed their sense of the importance of the crisis by exchanging letters which were diplomatic memoranda of the conversations. Mr. Hill repeated his conviction that the fate of the Confederacy hung upon the campaign. He said that the failure of Johnston's army involved that of Lee; that not only Atlanta but Richmond must fall; not only Georgia but all the States would be overrun; that all hopes of possible foreign recognition would be destroyed; in short, that "all is lost by Sherman's success, and all is gained by Sherman's defeat." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. lii. pt. ii. p. 706.] Governor Brown had accompanied Mr. Hill's effort by a dispatch in which he declared that Atlanta was to the Confederacy "almost as important as the heart is to the human body." [Footnote: Id., p. 680.] So far from taking exception to these strong expressions, Mr. Davis based his action in regard to General Johnston upon the absolute necessity of a military policy in Georgia, which would hold Atlanta at all hazards. When the city fell, the whole South as well as the North knew that a decisive step had been taken toward the defeat of the rebellion.

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XLI. THE REST AT ATLANTA-STAFF ORGANIZATION AND CHANGES

Position of the Army of the Ohio at Decatur--Refitting for a new campaign--Depression of Hood's army--Sherman's reasons for a temporary halt--Fortifying Atlanta as a new base--Officers detailed for the political campaign--Schofield makes inspection tour of his department--My temporary command of the Army of the Ohio--Furloughs and leaves of absence--Promotions of several colonels--General Hascall resigns--Staff changes--My military family--Anecdote of Lieutenant Tracy--Discipline of the army--Sensitiveness to approval or blame--Illustration--Example of skirmishing advance--Sufferings of non-combatants within our lines--A case in point--Pillaging and its results--Citizens passing through the lines--"The rigors of the climate"--Visit of Messrs. Hill and Foster--McPherson's death--The loss to Sherman and to the army--His personal traits--Appointment of his successor.

At the close of the first week in September the Army of the Ohio encamped at Decatur, and prepared for a month's rest. My division took position on the east of the little town, Hascall's on the south, and our division of cavalry under Colonel Israel Garrard was east of us, with outposts and patrols watching the roads in that direction as far as Stone Mountain. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 828.] The Army of the Cumberland was encamped about Atlanta itself, and the Army of the Tennessee was at East Point. As Sherman cheerily announced in general orders, we might expect "to organize, receive pay, replenish clothing, and prepare for a fine winter's campaign." [Footnote: Id., p. 801.]

It was of course probable that Hood would use the interval, which was even more welcome to him than to us, in similar preparation for resuming the struggle, though the resources of the Confederacy were so strained that the Treasury was in debt to the soldiers for ten months' pay. He told the government that "it would be of vast benefit to have this army paid," [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 1027.] but this expressed his desire rather than a hope. Depression reigned in his camps about Lovejoy's Station, of which the name was a mockery. Dissent was rife among his general officers, and with the whole army he had lost prestige by the costly failure of his campaign. A period of rest might relieve the discouragement somewhat, and stringent means were to be used to bring absentees and conscripts to the ranks. Hardee was transferred to Savannah; Mackall, Johnston's devoted friend, was removed from the head of the staff, and other changes of organization were made with a view to give Hood the men of his own choice in important positions. [Footnote: These were mostly in accordance with Hood's recommendations to General Bragg when the latter visited him at the end of July. See Bragg to Davis, Id., vol. lii. pt. ii. p. 713.]

Sherman was fully aware that he would have many advantages in pushing after Hood at once, but besides his army's real need of rest, he was clear in his judgment that he must, at this stage of affairs, prepare for a campaign on a great scale to be continued through the winter till great results should be achieved. If the line of operations was to be extended toward Mobile, as was contemplated by General Grant at the opening of the campaign, or if Hood should retreat toward the east, in either case he must make Atlanta a fortified base. Experience had proven that his long line of communications was liable to interruption, and would be still more so as he penetrated further into Georgia. He must have a well-supplied and well-protected depot in the same relations to the next forward movement that Chattanooga had been to the campaign just finished. He wanted to get his share of the drafted men under the conscription law now in operation, to fill up the places of regiments whose terms had expired, and to be assured that Canby from New Orleans would co-operate in a settled plan. He was already revolving in his mind other problems which Hood might possibly open for solution; but the probability seemed strong that the Confederate army would bar the way to his advance, and must be beaten and driven back again. His first task, therefore, was to prepare Atlanta for his uses. "I want it," he said, "a pure Gibraltar, and will have it so by October 1st." [Footnote: Dispatch to Halleck, September 9th. See also that of September 4th, in which his ideas were fully outlined. Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. pp. 794, 839.] This use of the town made it necessary to remove the resident citizens, sending north those who were loyal and ordering south those who adhered to the Confederacy. As a fortified depot must be ready for a siege, trade and free intercourse with the surrounding country could not go on. The inhabitants, therefore, would be dependent on the army for food, their industries must cease, and it was more merciful to them, as well as a military necessity, to send them away. [Footnote: Sherman to Hood, Id., p. 822.]

The temporary interruption of active campaigning was eagerly seized upon as an opportunity for leaves of absence by those whose private and family affairs urgently called for attention. The presidential campaign was on, and in consultation with Governor Morton of Indiana, Secretary Stanton selected half a dozen officers from that State, which was politically a doubtful one, to vary their labors in the field by "stumping the State" for a month. The form of the request indicates the feeling as to the character of the civil contest. "In view," said the Secretary, "of the armed organizations against the Government of the United States that have been made throughout the State of Indiana and are now in active operation in the campaign for Jefferson Davis, this department deems it expedient that the officers named should have leave to go home, provided they can be spared without injury to the service." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 802. Among these appears the name of Colonel Benjamin Harrison, 70th Indiana, afterward President. Sherman's characteristic reply was sent from camp near Jonesboro, on 6th September: "The officers named in your dispatch of the 5th will be ordered to report to the Governor of Indiana for special duty, as soon as I return to Atlanta, which will be in a day or two unless the enemy shows fight, which I am willing to accept on his own terms if he will come outside of his cursed rifle-trenches." Id., p. 809. I don't recall any other instance of a regular military detail for a political campaign.] Generals Logan and Blair also went North for similar work in Illinois and Missouri.

In the middle of September General Schofield left the army for a time, to visit Knoxville and Louisville, within his department, on official business, and extended his absence for a brief reunion with his family north of the Ohio. [Footnote: Id., vol. xxxix. pt. ii. p. 379; pt. iii. p. 10.] This left me in command of the Army of the Ohio, and Hood's later movement upon our communications prevented Schofield's return till the end of our active campaign in October. A liberal issue of furloughs to enlisted men, especially convalescents in hospital, was made, so that we might get them back in robust health and good spirits when the fall campaign should open. General Hascall resigned and left us, and the command of his division passed to General Joseph A. Cooper, who had been promoted from the colonelcy of the Sixth East Tennessee. My own division was temporarily commanded by General James W. Reilly, who had been promoted on my recommendation from the colonelcy of the One Hundred and Fourth Ohio. Hascall had commanded his division with marked ability throughout the campaign, but had become discouraged by the evidences that he need expect no recognition from the Indiana governor, [Footnote: See ante, vol. i. pp. 406, 485; vol. ii. p. 253.] whose influence was potent if not omnipotent in the promotion of Indiana officers. The recently announced promotion of Hovey over him seemed to him equivalent to an invitation to resign, and he acted upon it.

The resting-spell at Decatur was the natural time for such changes in organization as had become necessary. The death of my adjutant-general, Captain Saunders, in June, made it necessary to fill that very important position, and my aide, Lieutenant Theodore Cox, was promoted to it. His regiment (the Eleventh Ohio) was just completing its term of enlistment, and he would be mustered out of service with it, unless a new appointment were given him, fairly won, as it had been, by two years of meritorious service. My request was so cordially backed by Generals Schofield and Sherman that there was no hesitation at Washington, and I secured for the rest of the war an invaluable assistant, whose system, accuracy, and neat methods made the business of my headquarters go on most satisfactorily.

My inspector-general, Lieutenant-Colonel Sterling, felt obliged to resign for business reasons connected with events in his father's family, and I had to part with another faithful friend and able officer. As the adjutant-general is the centre of the formal organization, keeping its records, carrying on its correspondence, and formulating the orders of his chief, so the inspector-general is the organ of discipline and of soldierly instruction as well as the superintendent of the outpost and picket duty, which makes him the guardian of the camp and the head of the intelligence service when no special organization of the latter is made. He should be one of the most intelligent officers of the command, and a model of soldierly conduct. It was no easy thing to fill Colonel Sterling's place, but I was fortunate in the selection of Major Dow of the One Hundred and Twelfth Illinois, a quiet, modest man, a thorough disciplinarian of clear and strong intellect, and of that perfect self-possession which is proof against misjudgment in the most sudden and terrifying occurrences.

I had brought with me from East Tennessee, as my chief of artillery, Major Wells, who had commanded an Illinois battery, and who directed the artillery service of the division with great success. My medical director was Surgeon-Major Frink, of Indiana, who, though he took the position by virtue of his seniority in the division medical staff, was as acceptable as if I had chosen him with fullest knowledge of his qualifications. The topographer was Lieutenant Scofield of the One Hundred and Third Ohio, educated in civil engineering, and indefatigable in collecting the data by which to correct the wretched maps which were our only help in understanding the theatre of operations. He was a familiar figure at the outposts, on his steadily ambling nag, armed with his prismatic compass, his odometer, and his sketch-book. The division commissary of subsistence was Captain Hentig, a faithful and competent officer who worked in full accord with Captain Day, the energetic quartermaster who had come with me over the mountains the preceding year.

A general officer's aides-de-camp are usually his most intimate associates in the military family, and were sometimes selected with too much regard to their social qualities. Those of a major-general were appointed on his nomination, but a brigadier-general must detail the two allowed him, from the lieutenants in his command. When commanding a division, custom allowed him to detail a third. They were the only officers technically called the personal staff, the others being officers of the several staff corps, or merely detailed from regiments to do temporary duty. Thus, no inspector-general was allowed to a brigadier, but when commanding a division or other organization larger than a brigade, he was permitted to detail an officer of the line for the very necessary and responsible duty. The aides are authorized to carry oral orders and to explain them, to call for and to bring oral reports, and as the general's confidential and official representatives they should be of the most intelligent and soldierly men of their grade. All the other staff officers may be called upon to act as aides when it is necessary, but these are ex officio the ordinary go-betweens, and, if fit for their work, are as cordially welcomed and almost as much at home with the brigade commanders as with their own chief.

My senior aide, after my brother's promotion, was Lieutenant Coughlan of the Twenty-fourth Kentucky, a handsome young Irishman of very humble origin, to whom the military service had been the revelation of his own powers and a noble inspiration. He was lithe and well set up, though by no means a dandy; would spring at call for any duty, by night or by day, and delighted the more in his work, the more perilous or arduous it was. He was captured in the last days of our operations about Atlanta; [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 623.] but the exchange of prisoners negotiated by Sherman gave me the opportunity to secure his return after a month's captivity and imprisonment at Charleston. Two months later he died heroically in the battle of Franklin. [Footnote: Id., vol. xlv. pt. i. p. 356.]

Lieutenant Bradley of the Sixty-fifth Illinois was second on the list, an excellent officer who was competent and ready to assist the adjutant-general in his department when work there was pressing.

The third was Lieutenant Tracy of the One Hundred and Fourth Ohio, a man of original character. Tall and angular, there was a little stoop in his shoulders and a little carelessness in his dress. His gait was a long stride, and he was not a graceful horseman. His exterior had a good deal of the typical Yankee, and our Connecticut Reserve in Ohio, from which he came, has as pure a strain of Yankee blood as any in New England. But whoever looked into his sallow and bony face was struck with the effect of his large, serious eye, luminous with intelligence and will. Devotion to duty and perfect trustworthiness, with zeal in acquiring military knowledge, were the qualities which led to his selection for staff duty. When we were preparing for the great swing of the army to the south of Atlanta, my division had been advanced close to the enemy's position near East Point, where, from a strong salient in their works, their line curved back toward the east. Our position was to be the pivot of the movement, and we intrenched the top of a forest-covered knoll separated from the Confederate lines by a little hollow in which ran a small affluent of Camp Creek. Our pickets were directed to advance as close to the enemy as practicable, so that any attempt to make a sally would be detected promptly. Tracy had been directed to accompany the officer of the day and see that the outposts were in proper position. Early next morning General Schofield visited me, and desired to see in person the point most advanced. I called Tracy for our guide, and from the trenches we went down the slope, through the woods, on foot. A spur of the hill went forward, and as we neared the edge of the forest Tracy signalled to go quietly. Stooping carefully in the undergrowth, we noiselessly advanced to a fence corner where a sentinel stood behind a tree. Halting a few paces away, Tracy motioned to us to avoid moving the bushes, but to approach the fence and look between the rails. Doing so, we found the fence at the border of a little strip of hollow pasture in which the brooklet ran, and across it on the other slope, frowning upon us, was a formidable earthwork, an embrasure and the muzzle of a great Columbiad looking directly at us. The enemy's sentinels had been driven in, so that, where we looked, one was pacing his beat at the counterscarp of the ditch. As we drew back to a distance at which conversation was prudent, Tracy asked with a grim little smile whether the picket line was sufficiently advanced. The whole was characteristic of his thoroughness in the performance of duty and his silent way of letting it speak for itself. He was struck in the breast and knocked down by a spent ball in the assault by Reilly's brigade at Utoy Creek on August 6th, but in a week was on duty again, though he never wholly recovered from the injury to his lungs. [Footnote: Being in delicate health after the war, he was made Governor of the National Home for disabled soldiers at Dayton, Ohio, and died in 1868 from an abscess of the lung caused by the old injury.]

Officers were detailed from the line for other staff duty, such as ordnance officer, commissary of musters, etc., and there was no lack of good material. The general officer who sought for sober, zealous, and bright young soldiers for his staff could always find them. They were his eyes and his hands in the responsible work of a campaign, yet their service was necessarily hidden a good deal from view, and their opportunities for personal distinction and rapid promotion were few compared with those of their comrades in actual command of troops.

It was interesting to observe the rapid progress in all the essentials of good discipline made in commands which were permanent enough to give time for development of order and system. We were fortunate in Sherman's army in having in himself and in the three commanders next in rank examples of courteous treatment of subordinates coupled with steady insistence upon the prompt and right performance of duty. Under such a régime intelligent men grow sensitive to the slightest indication of dissatisfaction, and a superior officer has to weigh his words lest he give more pain than he intended. An amusing instance of this occurred during the campaign just ended. Late one evening my division was directed to make a movement at sunrise next day, and the camp was quiet in sleep before my orders were sent out to the brigade commanders. He who was assigned to lead the column was an excellent officer, but irascible, and a little apt to make his staff officers feel the edge of any annoyance he himself felt. Some strain of relations among his assistants at his headquarters happened to be existing when my order came. He had turned in for the night and was asleep when his adjutant-general came to his tent to report the order. Not fully aroused, he made a rough and bluff reply to the call, really meaning that the staff officer should issue the proper orders to the brigade, but in form it was a petulant refusal to be bothered with the business. The adjutant took him literally at his word and left him. Next morning I was in the saddle at the time set, and with my staff rode to the brigade to accompany the head of the column, when, lo, his command was not yet astir, though in the rest of the camp breakfast was over, the tents struck, and officers and men were awaiting the signal to fall in. I rapped with my sword-hilt on the tent-pole, and when the dishevelled head of the colonel appeared, his speechless astonishment told the story of some great blunder. I did not stop for particulars, but only said, "Your brigade, colonel, was to have had the place of honor in an important day's work; as it is, you will fall in at the rear of the column. Good-morning, sir." He stood, without a word, till we rode off, and then turning to an aide who had come to him, exclaimed, "I wish to God he had cursed me!"

In the movement upon Atlanta, after crossing the Chattahoochee, we were not met in force till we came to Peachtree Creek and the extension of that line southward. The country was similar in character to that near Marietta, with openings of farming lands along the principal roads, but probably three fourths of the country was covered with forest. In answer to questions from home as to what our continuous skirmishing in such advances was like, I took as a sample the 20th of July, when we were pushing in to connect with General Thomas's right, and he was making his way to and across Peachtree Creek, where the battle was to rage in the latter part of the day.

"My camp last night," I said, "was formed of three brigades in two lines across the principal road, another brigade in reserve, and the artillery in the intervals, all in position of battle. A strong line of pickets and skirmishers covered the front and flanks some three hundred yards in advance. In the morning we drew in the flanks of the skirmish line, reducing it to about the length of one brigade across the road, and it was ordered to advance. The men go forward, keeping the line at right angles to the road, stopping for neither creek nor thicket; down ravines, over the hills, the skirmishers trotting from a big tree to a larger stone, taking advantage of everything which will cover them, and keeping the general form of the line and their distance from each other tolerably correct. The main body of the troops file into the road marching four abreast, with a battery near the leading brigade. Presently a shot is heard, off on the right, then two or three more in quick succession, and a bullet or two comes singing over the head of the column. 'They've started the Johnnies,' say the boys in the ranks, and we move on, the skirmish line still pushing right along. It proves to be only a rebel picket which has fired and run to apprise their comrades that the 'Yanks' are coming. Forward a few hundred yards, when, bang, bang, and a rattle of rifles too fast to count. The column is halted, and we ride to the skirmish line to see what is up. A pretty strong body of 'rebs' is about some old log houses with a good skirmish line on either side where our men must approach over two or three hundred yards of open fields. A regiment is moved up to the nearest cover on each side of the road, a section of artillery rattles up to the front, the guns are smartly unlimbered and pointed and a couple of shells go screaming into the improvised fort, exploding and scattering logs and shingles right and left. Out run the rebs in confusion, and forward with a rush and a hurrah go our men over the open, getting a volley from the other side. Into the woods they go. The rebs run; two or three are caught, perhaps, as prisoners, two or three of ours are carried to the rear on stretchers, and on we go again for a little way. This is light skirmishing. Sometimes we find extemporized breastworks of rails or fallen trees, requiring more force to dislodge the enemy, and then, finally, we push up to well-constructed lines of defence where we halt for slower and heavier operations."

The inhabitants within our lines about Atlanta had a hard time of it, in spite of all efforts to mitigate their suffering. Their unwillingness to abandon their homes was very great, and it was very natural, for all they had was there, and to leave it was to be beggared. They sometimes, when within range of the artillery, built bomb-proofs near their houses, and took refuge in them, much as the people of the Western plains seek similar protection from tornadoes. In closing in on the west side of the town, near the head of Utoy Creek, we took in a humble homestead where the family tried to stay, and I find that I preserved, in another of my home letters, a description of the place and their life there.

"Just within my lines" (this was written on August 11th), "and not ten paces from the breastworks, stands a log house owned by an old man named Wilson. A little before the army advanced to its present position, several relatives of his, with their families, came to him from homes regarded as in more imminent danger, and they united their forces to build, or dig, rather, a place of safety. They excavated a sort of cellar just in rear of the house, on the hillside, digging it deep enough to make a room some fifteen feet square by six feet high. This they covered over with a roof of timbers, and over that they piled earth several feet thick, covering the whole with pine boughs, to keep the earth from washing. In this bomb-proof four families are now living, and I never felt more pity than when, day before yesterday, I looked down into the pit, and saw there, in the gloom made visible by a candle burning while it was broad day above, women sitting on the floor of loose boards, resting against each other, haggard and wan, trying to sleep away the days of terror, while innocent-looking children, four or five years old, clustered around the air-hole, looking up with pale faces and great staring eyes as they heard the singing of the bullets that were flying thick above their sheltering place. One of the women had been bed-ridden for several years before she was carried down there. One of the men was a cripple, the others old and gray. The men ventured up and took a little fresh air behind the breast-works; but for the women there is no change unless they come out at night. Still, they cling to home because they have nowhere else to go, and they hope we may soon pass on and leave them in comparative peace again."

In an earlier chapter I have spoken of the easy descent from careful respect for the rights of property to reckless appropriation of what belongs to another, to robbery and pillage. [Footnote: Ante, pp. 233-235.] I find an instance of it given in one of the letters I have been quoting, which is the contemporary record of the thing itself which we had to deal with. It occurred on July 5th, when the whole army was in motion, hurrying past our position southeast of Marietta and following up Johnston's retreating army. "Some soldiers went to a house occupied only by a woman and her children, and after robbing it of everything which they wanted, they drove away the only milch cow the woman had. She pleaded that she had an infant which she was obliged to bring up on the bottle, and that it could not live unless it could have the milk. They had no ears for the appeal and the cow was driven off. In two days the child died, of starvation chiefly, though the end was hastened by disease induced by the mother's trying to keep it alive on food it could not digest. I heard of the case when the child was dead and two or three of the neighbors were getting together stealthily to dig its grave." One of them came to me to beg permission to assist, and to explain that the little gathering meant nothing hostile to us. I got the facts only by cross-questioning, for the old man was abject in his solicitude not to seem to be complaining, and did not give the worst of the story till my hot indignation at what I heard assured him of sympathy and of a desire to punish the crime.

"A woman came to me the same morning, and said the cavalry had taken the last mouthful from her, telling her they were marching and hadn't time to draw their rations, but that she would be fed by applying to us of the infantry column. The robbers well knew that we were forbidden to issue rations to citizens. They sacked the house of an old man with seven daughters by a second wife, all young things. He came to me in utter distress--not a mouthful in that house for twenty-four hours, their kitchen garden and farm utterly ruined, the country behind in the same condition, and he without means of travelling or carrying anything if he tried to move away." I added, "Of course in such extreme cases I try to find some way of keeping people from death, and usually send them to the rear in our empty wagon trains going back for supplies, but their helpless condition is very little bettered by going."

Such things were done chiefly by the professional stragglers and skulkers, and the stringent orders which were issued in both Sherman's and Hood's armies did not easily reach men who would not report for duty if they could help it. The country people could not tell who had done them the mischief, and the rascals would be gone before the case came before any superior officer who would interest himself in it. I must not, however, suppress the comment I made in the letter quoted. "The evil is the legitimate outgrowth of the hue and cry raised by our Christian people of the North against protecting rebel property, etc. Officers were deterred from enforcing discipline in this respect by public opinion at home, and now the evil is past remedy. The war has been prolonged, the army disintegrated and weakened, and the cause itself jeoparded, because discipline was construed as friendliness to rebels." Straggling and its accompanying evils may be said to be the gauge of discipline in an army. There were brigades and divisions in which it hardly occurred; there were others in which the stragglers were a considerable fraction of the whole.

During the evacuation of Atlanta by the citizens, there was a good deal of migration beyond our lines among those who were not compelled to go. In Decatur applications were made to me daily, and we kept a record of the passes we issued, trying to know the purpose and motives of those going away, for, of course, a good deal of it was with the intent to carry intelligence to the enemy. The reasons given were often amusing. Two ladies applied, one day, for leave to go to Florida, which they claimed as their home. They said they had been visiting kinsmen in Decatur when the advance of our army brought them within our lines before they were aware of it. When asked why not stay with their friends till the armies should move away, they answered that they were sure they could not endure the rigors of the climate! The phrase became a byword at our headquarters, where we were longing for the invigorating breezes of the North.

We had a visit, about the middle of September, from two gentlemen of some prominence in the public affairs of Georgia,--Mr. Hill and Mr. Foster. They came ostensibly to seek to obtain and remove the body of Mr. Hill's son, who had fallen in the campaign, but I suspected that they represented Governor Brown, who was known to be in a state of exasperation at the results to Georgia of a war begun to assert an ultra doctrine of State rights, but which had destroyed every semblance of State independence and created a centralized government at Richmond which ruled with a rod of iron. Mr. Hill was the same who had represented Governor Brown and General Johnston at Richmond in the mission in July, [Footnote: Ante, p. 272.] and whilst he did not formally present any subject except that of getting his son's body, our conversation gave me sufficient knowledge of his views on the subjects of controversy to make me deeply interested in the outcome of the visit to General Sherman which I arranged for him. [Footnote: See Sherman's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 137.] Nothing of present practical importance came of the interviews, but the voluminous and bitterly controversial correspondence between the Georgia Governor and the War Department of the Confederacy is a curious revelation of the antagonistic influences which had sprung up in the progress of the war. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. lii. pt. ii. pp. 736, 754, 778, 796, 803.]

The death of General McPherson in the battle of Atlanta had been a great loss to the army, but to Sherman it was the loss of an intimate friend as well as an able subordinate. They had been closely associated under Grant in all the campaigns of the Army of the Tennessee, and their mutual attachment and confidence was as strong as their devoted loyalty to their great chief. My own acquaintance with McPherson had been slight, but yet enough to enable me to understand the warm personal regard he inspired in those who came to know him well. I met him first on the day we passed through Snake Creek Gap into Sugar Valley, before the battle of Resaca. We had to learn from him the positions of the troops already advancing toward the town, and I rode with General Schofield to his tent for this purpose. Schofield and he had been classmates and room-mates at West Point, and McPherson revealed himself to his old friend as he would not be likely to do to others. His affability and cordial good-will struck one at once. His graceful bearing and refined, intelligent face heightened the impression, and one could not be with him many minutes without seeing that he was a lovable person. An evenly balanced mind and character had given him a high grade as a cadet, and at the beginning of the war he was serving as a captain of engineers. Being appointed to General Grant's staff, he won completely the general's confidence, and his promotion was rapid, following closely behind that of Sherman.

His death was sincerely mourned, and his place as a soldier was not easy to fill. Sherman would have given the command of the Army of the Tennessee to General Logan, who was next in rank in it, but the strong opposition of General Thomas made him conclude that this would be unwise. [Footnote: See Sherman, in The Great Commanders Series, pp. 229, 332.] If he made a selection outside of the Army of the Tennessee, Hooker had first claim by seniority of rank, but both Sherman and Thomas lacked confidence in him. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 272.] When Howard was selected on Thomas's suggestion, Hooker was doubly offended, for Howard had been his subordinate at the beginning of the year, and there had been no love lost between them. Hooker now asked to be relieved from further service in Sherman's army, and he retired from active field service,--Slocum, another of his former subordinates, with whom he had a violent quarrel, being appointed to the command of his corps on Thomas's nomination. [Footnote: Id., pp. 272, 273.] Halleck, in a letter to Sherman of September 16th, gave pointed testimony to facts which showed why Hooker was personally an unacceptable subordinate. [Footnote: Id., p. 857.] Sherman insisted, with good reason, that Hooker had no real grievance, as he was left in command of his corps, and Howard's promotion was in another and independent organization, the Army of the Tennessee. He also declared that no indignity was intended or offered, and that he simply performed his own duty of selection in accordance with what he believed to be sound reasons. As to Logan, he took pains to praise his handling of the Army of the Tennessee after McPherson's death, and to emphasize his own high opinion of him as an officer and the respect in which he was held by the whole army. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 522.]

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XLII. CAMPAIGN OF OCTOBER--HOOD MOVES UPON OUR COMMUNICATIONS

Hood's plan to transfer the campaign to northern Georgia--Made partly subordinate to Beauregard--Forrest on a raid--Sherman makes large detachments--Sends Thomas to Tennessee--Hood across the Chattahoochee--Sherman follows--Affair at Allatoona--Planning the March to the Sea--Sherman at Rome--Reconnoissance down the Coosa--Hood at Resaca--Sherman in pursuit--Hood retreats down the Chattooga valley--We follow in two columns--Concentrate at Gaylesville--Beauregard and Hood at Gadsden--Studying the situation--Thomas's advice--Schofield rejoins--Conference regarding the Twenty-third Corps--Hood marches on Decatur--His explanation of change of plan--Sherman marches back to Rome--We are ordered to join Thomas--Hood repulsed at Decatur marches to Tuscumbia--Our own march begun--Parting with Sherman--Dalton--Chattanooga--Presidential election--Voting by steam--Retrospect of October camp-life--Camp sports--Soldiers' pets--Story of a lizard.

General Hood had been pretty well informed of what was going on in Sherman's army, and was disposed to take advantage of the reduction of our forces by furloughs and the absence of numerous officers on leave. The Confederate President had visited him, and changes in his army had been ordered which made the organization more to his mind. Hardee being sent to Savannah to command a department on the coast, General Cheatham succeeded to the command of the corps. Hood proposed to cross the Chattahoochee some twenty miles west of Atlanta, and move on Powder Springs, where he could reach the railroad and force Sherman to attack him or to move south. In the latter case he proposed to follow, and had urged that the forces in central Georgia be increased so as to resist Sherman's progress if it should be toward Augusta or Macon. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. ii. pp. 847, 862.]

Mr. Davis had been convinced by the campaign just ended that Hood's fiery energy needed the guidance of a better military intellect, and the plan of placing a common head over Hood's and Taylor's departments had occurred to him. Beauregard was the officer whose rank, next to Johnston, indicated him for the command, but he was disaffected toward Davis, and his friends in Congress were active in opposition to the government. [Footnote: Ante, p. 183.] General Lee had suggested Beauregard to take Hood's place, and had sounded him as to his willingness to do so after discussing with him the whole situation in Georgia. Lee felt able, thereupon, to assure the President that Beauregard would accept the assignment; saying, "I think you may feel assured that he understands the general condition of affairs, the difficulties with which they are surrounded, and the importance of exerting all his energies for their improvement." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. ii. p. 846.] But having learned Hood's plan of operating upon Sherman's communications, and being impressed anew by his visit with the energy of Hood's nature, which quickly reacted from the discouragement following the fall of Atlanta, he partly accepted Lee's suggestion, modifying it by giving Beauregard the supreme direction of affairs in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, whilst leaving Hood free to carry out the plan of campaign which he proposed, and to retain the command of his army except when Beauregard might be actually present with it. [Footnote: Id., p. 880.]

General Forrest with his cavalry corps had already been ordered to make a raid upon the railways in Tennessee in pursuance of a suggestion of his own, and on September 16th he started northward. [Footnote: Id., pp. 818, 835.] This plan very well accorded with Hood's, and when the latter determined, later in the campaign, himself to invade Tennessee, Forrest's orders were extended so as to direct a junction with him. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 843.]

On September 24th Sherman learned that Forrest was at Athens and Pulaski on the railway from Decatur to Nashville. He had sent a detachment to burn bridges on the Memphis road also, and the whole of middle and western Tennessee was afire with the excitement of the new raid by the doughty Confederate leader. He received the surrender of the garrison at Athens without serious resistance, but by the time he approached Pulaski, burning bridges as he went, General Rousseau, who was in command of the district, had concentrated force enough to repulse him. [Footnote: Id., pt. ii. pp. 450, 455, 456, 870, 876, 879.] After that Forrest attacked no considerable post, and did not reach Sherman's principal line of communications, but making circuitous routes in the region about Columbia, finally retreated across the Tennessee River at Florence on the 5th and 6th of October. [Footnote: Id., pt. i. p. 547.]

On getting the news of Forrest's raid, Sherman sent back two divisions of the Army of the Cumberland to Chattanooga, and one from the Army of the Tennessee to Rome. He also sent General Thomas to Chattanooga to bring into co-operation all the troops posted in Tennessee and northern Georgia. This scattering of his forces to protect his railways proves how low an estimate he put upon the efficiency of Hood's army, and his willingness to receive an attack from it. When he moved northward after Hood, a week later, he left the Twentieth Corps to hold Atlanta, and had with him little more than half of the forces with which he had made the Atlanta campaign; but they proved enough.

My own command had been quietly resting at Decatur with nothing more exciting to do than to send out foraging parties and reconnoissances, when on Friday, September 30th, I got a dispatch from General Sherman which put us on the alert. He told me that Hood had part of his infantry over the Chattahoochee, and was evidently combining desperate measures to destroy our railways. After referring to his arrangements to checkmate Forrest, he gave the "nub" of his own ideas as follows: "I may have to make some quick countermoves east and southeast. Keep your folks ready to send baggage into Atlanta and to start on short notice.... There are fine corn and potato fields about Covington and the Ocmulgee bottoms. We are well supplied with bread, meat, etc., but forage is scarce, and may force us to strike out. If we make a countermove, I will go out myself with a large force and take such a route as will supply us and at the same time make Hood recall the whole or part of his army." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. ii. p. 540.] I answered that we would be "minute men," and also informed General Schofield by telegraph that we might resume active work any moment. [Footnote: Id., p. 541.]

Next day Sherman had evidence that Hood was crossing the Chattahoochee with his whole army, and wrote to General Howard and to me that if Hood should swing over to the Alabama railroad and try to get into Tennessee, he would, if Grant consented, draw to him the troops south of the Etowah, leave Thomas with the rest, and make for Savannah or Charleston by way of Milledgeville and Millen. By the destruction of the east and west roads, Georgia would thus become a break in the Confederacy. But should Hood move upon our communications between the Chattahoochee and the Etowah, he would turn upon him. [Footnote: Id., vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 6.] The latter was the movement Hood actually made, and the March to the Sea was postponed for a few weeks.

I need not repeat here the details of the October campaign, which I have given elsewhere. [Footnote: See "Atlanta," chap. xvii.; and for the growth and completion of the plan of the March to the Sea, reference is made to the Life of General Sherman (Great Commanders Series), chap. x.] On the 2d Sherman was aware that the enemy was advancing on Marietta; but far from hurrying to anticipate him there, we were held back yet another day that Hood might be lured far enough to let us strike him in rear. General Corse at Rome was ordered to reinforce Allatoona pass and hold stubbornly there, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 8.] and then, on the 3d and 4th, Sherman was in motion, trying to catch the enemy in that rough country on the border of the Etowah. On the 2d I had sent a division to make a strong reconnoissance eastward to Flat Rock, and a brigade to Stone Mountain to make sure that no enemy was near us in that direction, [Footnote: Id., p. 33.] and on its return we followed the rest of the army northward, Slocum's corps remaining in garrison at Atlanta, as before mentioned.

There had been continuous heavy rains, and all the rivers were swollen, which retarded Hood's movements as well as ours; but he showed commendable prudence, did not advance with his main body beyond Dallas, and operated by detachments on the railway, which he broke near Ackworth, but did no serious damage. On the 5th Corse and Tourtelotte made their fine defence of the position at Allatoona against French's division, and on the 6th my reconnoissance proved that Hood had concentrated again in the neighborhood of Dallas. The two most important bridges on the railroad were now safe, those crossing the Chattahoochee and the Etowah; and as Forrest had failed to reach the line from Chattanooga to Nashville, Hood's plan of campaign had failed and Sherman's communications were unbroken. Unwilling to confess defeat, Hood now determined to make a considerable circuit westward, cross the Coosa below Rome and march by the Chattooga valley upon Resaca, where the bridge over the Oostanaula was next in importance to that at Allatoona. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 804.] As the enemy's first movement from Dallas was westward, Sherman had to look for information as to his further course. Strengthening the garrison at Rome, he waited at Allatoona for news, discussing with General Grant by telegraph his own plan of marching upon Savannah if Hood moved far westward. The latter repeated to his government his purpose to follow Sherman if he did so. [Footnote: Ibid.] The storms and floods had done much more damage than Hood, several of the large bridges being injured and smaller ones carried away.

At Allatoona Sherman's headquarters were close to my own, and he opened to me his views of the situation. He did not propose to leave the railway line to follow Hood far; but if the opportunity offered to fight him near the line, he would seize it. If Hood entered Tennessee near the Georgia line, he would follow and destroy him; but he was already confident that his enemy would not dare do this, and pointed to Muscle Shoals as the nearest point at which he was likely to cross the Tennessee River. He hoped that General Grant would consent, in this case, to his own march on Savannah, and promised to lead Hood a lively chase if the latter turned back to follow him. Once a new base on the sea was reached, he would turn upon and crush his opponent.

His plan had a personal interest for myself, for as we were out of communication with General Schofield and might march southward any day, he thought it probable that he should separate the Twenty-third Corps from the Department of the Ohio and take it with him, making my command of it permanent. He assumed that Schofield would prefer to remain in the higher position of department commander, rather than leave it for the field command of the corps, which was a good deal weakened by the hard service of the summer.

From the 10th to the 13th of October the army moved in echelon by short marches to Rome, and on the date last named I was ordered to push a reconnoissance with the corps and General Kenner Garrard's division of cavalry down the Coosa far enough to settle the question where Hood had gone. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 230.] We started early and made thirteen miles in the forenoon, routing the enemy's cavalry holding that road and capturing two cannon. It was definitely learned that Hood had taken up the pontoon bridge and gone north. [Footnote: Id., p. 250.] Meantime the enemy had appeared at Resaca, and as soon as it was certain that they were in force Sherman put everything in rapid motion in that direction. He had warned Thomas on the 11th, and directed him to reinforce Chattanooga and Bridgeport. [Footnote: Id., p. 251.] There was again a chance that Hood might be caught between the forces. He had approached Resaca from the west, by the north bank of the Oostanaula, on the 12th, but his summons of the place being defied, he did not assault, but after some threatening demonstrations marched north to Dalton. He plainly felt that he had no time to spare, but it was just as plain that in his haste he was accomplishing nothing.

My march down the Coosa had put me in the rear on the movement north from Rome. I reached Resaca on the 15th, in the early afternoon, having received authority from Sherman to pass the trains and push forward. [Footnote: Id., p. 294.] The Army of the Cumberland had followed Hood to Dalton and Buzzard Roost, the Army of the Tennessee had driven his cavalry out of Snake Creek Gap and occupied it, and we were halted at Resaca to support either. General Schofield had reached Chattanooga on the 13th, and was given command of all troops in that vicinity by General Thomas, who was at Nashville. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 253.] Schofield had in hand the two divisions which had been sent back from Atlanta a fortnight before, besides the garrison; and other troops were on the way to him from Nashville. But communication with Sherman was interrupted, and Hood had better knowledge of the full situation. Learning that Chattanooga was held strongly, Hood marched from Buzzard Roost by way of Villanow over Taylor's Ridge into the Chattooga valley, up which he had just come. Prisoners told us that his army was out of provisions, as they had failed in the hope of capturing depots of stores. [Footnote: Id., pt. i. p. 791.] He must get back within reach of his own depots. Gadsden had been made a temporary base, and he made haste to reach the valley of the Coosa, in which it lay.

Sherman had wished that the rumor would turn out to be true which gave the neighborhood of Bridgeport as the place at which Hood would enter Tennessee; [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. pp. 296, 312.] but if he did so anywhere from Guntersville to Chattanooga, it would be possible to head him off by General Thomas's forces whilst our principal army closed in upon him from the rear. During the 16th Snake Creek Gap was cleared of the timber blockade which Hood had made to delay our chase, and my corps reached Villanow. The Army of the Tennessee was at Ships Gap, and that of the Cumberland in close support. We here learned definitely that Stewart's corps of Hood's army had marched southward from Villanow to Subligna on the east side of Taylor's Ridge, and the main body from Lafayette to Summerville on the west side. [Footnote: Id., pp. 310, 311.]

After a day spent in reconnoissances and renewal of communications with Chattanooga and Nashville, we marched again on the 18th, Sherman leading the main army from Lafayette southward, whilst he ordered me to march from Villanow by way of Subligna to Gover's (or Mattox's) Gap, and thence to Summerville, following the enemy's corps which had gone that way. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 325.] We reached Subligna at noon, driving vedettes and patrols of the enemy's cavalry as we advanced. From Subligna I sent Major Wells of my staff with a regiment over the mountain by a bridle path, to inform General Sherman of our progress. He had an unexpectedly long and rough march, but reported as ordered. [Footnote: Id., p. 351.] We continued the march to Gover's Gap, drove away a cavalry rear-guard, and repaired the road which ran along a bench cut in the precipitous hillside. An easy way of communication with Sherman in the Chattooga valley was thus opened, after a day's march of twenty-two miles. General Kenner Garrard with his cavalry had followed a parallel valley further east, toward Dirt-town, and joined me at Gover's Gap soon after my arrival there. We now marched through Melville to Gaylesville, where the army was concentrated on the 20th. The Twenty-third Corps was placed in advance, near Blue Pond, where a bridge over the Chattooga was to be rebuilt, and one division was sent to Cedar Bluff, a pretty village on the Coosa, where it covered the main road down the valley from Rome to Gadsden. I made a reconnoissance to Center, over the Gadsden road, and learned definitely that the whole army of Hood was at Gadsden. [Footnote: Id., pp. 346, 357, 359, 361, 364, 369. 376, 399, 423.]

Sherman's wish that Hood would cross the Tennessee near Stevenson was very sincere. He approved the movement by Schofield to occupy Trenton with the two divisions still under his command, but he disapproved the directions given by Thomas to place troops at Caperton's Ferry, which was on the direct road to Stevenson. He wanted that door left open till Hood should have part, at least, of his army over the Tennessee River. [Footnote: Id., p. 335.] He felt so sure, however, that Hood would not fall into such a trap, that his dispatches reiterate the opinion that if the enemy crossed the river at all, it would be west of Huntsville or at Muscle Shoals. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. pp. 333, 357, 395.] He was turning his whole mind to the March to the Sea, and studying the contingencies which it involved. In a long dispatch to Halleck on the 19th [Footnote: Id., pp. 357-358.] he had mapped out his general scheme, and gave his reasons why he must have alternates in his choice of objectives, though his real aim would be Savannah. He therefore named, as the points where the Navy should watch for him, Charleston, Savannah, Pensacola, and Mobile, saying, "I will turn up somewhere." On the 22d, writing to General Grant, he reviewed the ground and the effect which it would have on the Confederacy when the Georgia railroads were destroyed and he should "bring up with 60,000 men on the seashore about Savannah or Charleston," concluding, "I think this far better than defending a long line of railroad." [Footnote: Id., p. 395.] At the outset Thomas had advised Sherman, in view of the fact that General Grant had not yet been able to carry out his plan to take southern seaports as a preliminary to an advance beyond Atlanta, to "adopt Grant's idea of turning Wilson loose rather than undertake the plan of a march with the whole force through Georgia to the sea." [Footnote: Id., p. 334.] General James H. Wilson had been sent from Grant's army to be chief of cavalry with Sherman, and Thomas's suggestion was that until Grant's part of the general plan should be accomplished, activity should be limited to the defence of the territory already occupied, except as cavalry raids might harry the Confederate country. But Sherman answered, "To pursue Hood is folly, for he can twist and turn like a fox and wear out any army in pursuit. To continue to occupy long lines of railroad simply exposes our small detachments to be picked up in detail and forces me to make countermarches to protect lines of communication. I know I am right in this, and shall proceed to its maturity." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 378.] He set to work to organize the two armies in such force that Thomas should feel content with his means of meeting Hood if the latter should not turn back after the Georgia column.

General Schofield had been feeling his way southward with Wagner's and Morgan's divisions, and on the 19th Sherman ordered him to move by the most direct route to Alpine, overtaking the column which was marching on the west side of the Chattooga valley, as I was doing on the east. Sherman added the direction to keep the command as it was till they should meet in person. [Footnote: Id., p. 366.] This had reference to his purposes in regard to myself and the Twenty-third Corps, which have been mentioned.

On the 21st Schofield's column reached Alpine, and he rode forward to Sherman's headquarters at Gaylesville. I had gone up from my own headquarters to make some report to Sherman, and was with him when Schofield arrived. Our greeting was a warm one. The present situation and what had occurred since the parting at Atlanta was of course the first topic of conversation, and I had the keen pleasure of hearing Sherman praise the handling of the corps during the past months in much stronger terms than he had used to me alone. Then followed the forecast of the future. Sherman put strongly his belief that Hood would not cross the Tennessee above the Shoals, and his purpose to march to Savannah as soon as the enemy should be definitely committed to a movement across Alabama. He then touched upon the details of organization, and referring to the fact that the corps was weak in numbers and that it would be perhaps unpleasant for Schofield to leave the command of his department for an indefinite period, suggested that he should consent to the temporary absence of the corps. Schofield very promptly replied that he should prefer almost any alternative to the mere administrative work of the department and its garrisons in East Tennessee and Kentucky. He said that if Hood should not follow the southern movement, but should turn his whole force upon Thomas with desperate purpose to drive him out of Tennessee, another veteran corps, though a small one, might make all the difference between defeat and victory. Sherman replied that he would consider the whole matter carefully and adjourned the discussion, requesting that Schofield should confer fully with me.

We continued the conference at the corps headquarters, and I agreed with General Schofield that no military duty was so little attractive as the perplexing semi-political administration at the rear, adding that till the war ended I desired to be with the biggest and most active column in the west. I frankly said that it was this consideration that made with me the great attraction of the arrangement Sherman had suggested. Schofield expressed the strong conviction that Hood would not follow Sherman, and that in middle Tennessee the real fighting must be done. He had no idea of putting the corps in garrison anywhere, but felt sure that Thomas must concentrate everything he might have for most active field work, and that in strictest military sense our task, if we were there, would be not less important or less honorable than that of our comrades who marched eastward. It would, besides, give us the opportunity to fill up the corps with the new regiments that were coming forward, when otherwise, with the expiration of the term of some we had and the casualties of a new campaign, we should probably find it reduced to a single division. Schofield's clearly expressed purpose to seek the most active field work with Thomas in a campaign against Hood's army if we went back to middle Tennessee brought me to agreement with his views, and I promised to support them in my next interview with General Sherman, as I did. I still look back with pleasure to this incident as proof of the hearty comradeship between Sherman and his subordinates, which continued to be shown toward me by both him and Schofield to the end. [Footnote: My memory is supported, in this matter, by home letters written at the time.]

Sherman postponed his decision till he was quite sure what course Hood would take, for the latter was concentrating his army at Gadsden and having a conference with Beauregard on the day of the interviews on our side which I have narrated. After agreeing with his immediate superior upon the plan of entering Tennessee at or near Guntersville, Hood started on the morning of the 22d, but in accordance with confidential directions he gave his corps commanders, his column changed direction at Benettsville, taking the Decatur road, which there branched to the left and forced the marching westward. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. pp. 831, 835, 81, 843.] The gloss which he afterward put on the matter was that he changed his plan in consequence of information that Forrest could not join him as he expected. [Footnote: Advance and Retreat, p. 20.] This does not bear examination. Forrest was, under the orders of General Taylor, preparing a raid into western Tennessee to bring out all the supplies that country contained and to break up the railway to Memphis, sending the iron to repair the road in the vicinity of Tuscumbia, where the base for the new operations in middle Tennessee would be. On the 20th Hood had himself informed Taylor of his purpose to cross at Guntersville, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 835.] and Wheeler's cavalry was relied upon to cover the movement till middle Tennessee should be reached. [Footnote: Id., p. 845.] On the 22d Taylor was directed to have Forrest open communication with Hood "by letter or otherwise," and act for the time under his orders, [Footnote: Ibid.] but no immediate interference with what Forrest was doing in western Tennessee was indicated. The only reasonable interpretation of Hood's conduct is that when he faced the consequences of a movement to Guntersville with Sherman at Gaylesville ready to close the cul de sac behind him, even his audacity shrunk from the plan, and he proved the truth of Sherman's prediction that he would not dare to do it. Beauregard explicitly says that the change in Hood's plan was made after leaving Gadsden, where it had been definitely arranged. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. i. p. 662.]

On our side several days were spent in watchful observation. I returned to my division, Schofield resumed the command of the Army of the Ohio, and the divisions he had led from Chattanooga joined the Fourth and Fourteenth Corps, to which they belonged. [Footnote: Id., vol. xxxix. pt. iii. pp. 401, 402.] Thomas was informed that the Fourth Corps would be sent back to him with about 5000 men from other commands who were not quite in condition for the March to the Sea, but who would be fit for post garrison. [Footnote: Id., p. 408.] Sherman's recommendations for promotions earned in the past campaigns were made on the 24th, in urgent and explicit terms, endorsing the approval expressed by the separate army commanders, and saying that if the law did not allow the addition to the number of general officers, he believed that "the exigencies of the country would warrant the muster out of the same number of generals now on the list that have not done service in the past year." We who were thus recommended thought we had the right to feel that the terms of approval used by such a commander gave a military standing hardly less than the actual gift of a grade from the government. [Footnote: Id., p. 413. See Appendix C for the language used by Sherman, and for the recommendation of General Schofield.]

On the 25th reports came from the light-draft gunboats patrolling the Tennessee River that the enemy was making demonstrations at several points below Guntersville, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 436.] and next day Sherman ordered the Fourth Corps to march to Chattanooga and report to General Thomas. He also issued his order that "in the event of military movements or the accidents of war separating him from his military division," Thomas should "exercise command over all troops and garrisons not absolutely in the presence of the general-in-chief." [Footnote: Id., p. 442.] He pointed out to Thomas that Chattanooga and Decatur were the points to be held "to the death;" that it would not be wise to move into West Tennessee unless he knew that the enemy had followed south, as he thought they would do when they found him starting from Atlanta; and that when Thomas was ready for aggressive movements, his line of operations should be against Selma. [Footnote: Id., pp. 448, 449.]

On the 27th of October Schofield wrote to Sherman, giving details of the reduction in numbers of the divisions of the corps now in the field, and renewing his urgency for some arrangement to increase its force. [Footnote: Id., p. 468.] The news from the west now made it certain that Hood was before Decatur, and Sherman issued orders on the 28th for the army to march to Rome. His purpose in this was double. He would try the effect on the enemy of the apparent start toward the east, whilst he concentrated his army on the railroad which was now repaired and which gave him the means of rapidly reinforcing General Thomas to any extent that might become necessary. He informed Halleck that he had sent the Fourth Corps back and that he might send ours also, though he still thought it probable that his movement on Macon would make Hood "let go." He urged the hastening of reinforcements to Thomas. Rosecrans promised to send General A. J. Smith with his two divisions back from Missouri, and Sherman only waited to get his sick and wounded to the rear, and to accumulate at Atlanta the supplies he reckoned it necessary to take with him. His determination to send us back to join the Fourth Corps was shown by his confidential dispatch to Colonel Beckwith, his chief commissary, that he might reduce his estimates for rations to enough for 50,000 men to go south. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. pp. 476, 477.]

Our orders to march came at noon, and we started at once, with the information that from Rome we should go back to Tennessee. [Footnote: Id., pt. i. p. 793.] In the evening of the same day Sherman definitely advised Thomas of his decision to send Schofield to him, and the outline of the arrangements for the new campaign was completed. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 484.] General R. S. Granger went with reinforcements to the aid of Colonel Doolittle, who commanded the post at Decatur, and that place was held against Hood, who was too short of supplies to delay long. He hastened on to Tuscumbia, where his new base was established, and where he halted to collect the means for the invasion of Tennessee, near the great bend of the river. He first gave orders to lay his pontoons at Bainbridge, at the foot of Muscle Shoals, the place named by Sherman as his probable crossing; but the lack of supplies and the desire for better preparation prevented, and he moved on, reaching Tuscumbia on the 30th. [Footnote: Id., p. 866.]

Our march to Rome was lengthened by our taking the right, leaving the more direct roads for other parts of the army. We crossed the Coosa, following the road to Jacksonville for five miles, and then turned east on the so-called river road. This, however, proved impassable, and, next morning, we were obliged to retrace our steps to the Jacksonville road, and going an hour's march on it reach the road from Centre to Cave Spring, which we followed to the latter place, which takes its name from a remarkable spring breaking out beneath a mountain, a considerable brook at once. Some sixty feet up the hill-side is the mouth of a cave at the bottom of which is the underground stream, which finds its way out by another fissure. The village was the rendezvous where Beauregard overtook Hood on the evening of the 9th of October, and held their first consultation in regard to the campaign. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. i. p. 796.] It was a pretty place which had not suffered the ravages of war; the situation was a lovely one, and there were there a public Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb and some other public buildings. Our countermarch had lengthened the day's journey to twenty-two miles.

On the 30th my division marched to Rome and encamped on the Calhoun road, two or three miles northeast of the town. At Rome I made my farewell visit to General Sherman at his headquarters. He talked freely of his plans to the group of officers who were present, and in the final hand-shaking with me said that Hood had now put so large a space between them that the March to the Sea could not be interfered with, and that whatever hard fighting was to come in the campaign would fall to the lot of us who were going back to middle Tennessee. [Footnote: The fullest resume of Sherman's views when on the point of starting is found in his letter to Grant of November eth. Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. pp. 658-661.] Our movement northward was through Calhoun and Resaca to Tilton, where we were to take railway trains for Nashville; but the rolling stock was overtasked in the rush of work to complete Sherman's preparations, and we marched on to Dalton. An autumnal rainstorm had come on, and though we had good camping ground, our impatience at the delay made our stay of three or four days at the ruined village anything but pleasant. On the 3d of November I noted in my pocket-diary that it was one of those rainy, gusty days "when the smoke from the camp-fire fills your eyes whichever side of the fire you get." As we had gone northward we met large numbers of officers and men who had been on leave, and who were now hurrying to join their commands. Two of my own staff rejoined us in this way, and a brand-new brass band that had been recruited for Casement's brigade came also, making that command proud as peacocks for a while.

Our stay at Dalton gave me the opportunity in the intervals of the storm to ride out and carefully examine the positions the enemy had held at the beginning of May. In the progress of an active campaign the soldier rarely has an opportunity to make such an examination of fortified positions out of which the enemy has been manoeuvred, and I had eagerly seized every chance to do this interesting and instructive work as we had come back through our lines about Marietta and Allatoona. Here at Dalton Johnston's positions had been plainly impregnable, and I congratulated myself that my division had not been ordered to assault them when we made our reconnoissance in force, before Sherman began the turning movement through Snake Creek Gap.

Whilst waiting for our railway trains we heard of Hood's demonstration at Decatur, and of his repulse and his march toward Florence. We knew that he had not yet crossed the Tennessee, and that our delay was not causing embarrassment to General Thomas at Nashville. I got one of my brigades away on November 6th, and the others on the 7th, going with Casement's, which was the last. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. pp. 655, 673.] As we ran into Chattanooga, we were all alert to see the place which had become of such historical importance, for we had advanced into Georgia in the spring by roads far to the east, and I had never visited it. We reached the town just as the sun was setting and the long storm was breaking. My headquarters were in a freight car, and with the side doors slid wide open, we sat on our camp-stools in the doorway watching our progress. Fort Phelps on its isolated hill stood up black and sharp against the western sky, which was gray-clouded, with a long rift, blood red where the sun was breaking through, whilst still further to the left the huge shoulder of Lookout Mountain threw its deep shadows over the landscape. From the other side a fine reach of the Tennessee River opened before us, backed by the mountainous ridges on the north, gleaming in the level sunlight.

We did not leave our train, but after a short delay started again for Nashville. The crowded state of the road made frequent halts necessary, and when day broke we had made only eight miles. As we ran between the high hills, they were in their most gorgeous autumn dress; and, free from care, we enjoyed it all as a holiday outing, calling each other's attention to every new combination of mountain and river, and of changing schemes of brilliant color. It was the Presidential election-day, and in accordance with the provisions of the statutes, we opened the polls in my box car, and the officers and men voted at the halts of the train when they could get to the voting place. Colonel Doolittle of the Eighteenth Michigan, commandant of the post at Decatur, joined us at Stevenson, coming into my car to vote. From him we learned the details of Hood's attempt upon the Decatur post, and got interesting news, throwing light upon the situation before us. At my invitation he remained with us till we reached Nashville, and the acquaintance thus formed led to an arrangement for his temporary service with me after the battle of Franklin. As I wrote home, we voted by steam for "A. Linkum," seeing the end of the war manifestly approaching. The election for Ohio State officers had occurred in October when we were on the march after Hood, and at a noon halt we turned an ambulance into a polling booth in a grove on the banks of the Etowah River, where I voted with one of the Ohio regiments.

Our little October campaign had been a good example of what soldiers regard as pleasant work. There had been constant activity, with no severe fighting, and the weather had been, for the most part, magnificent. The rains had ceased at the end of the first week of the month, and from that time till we halted from our chase on the banks of the Coosa in the edge of Alabama we had a succession of bright, cool days, and comfortable nights. It had been like a hunt for big game on a grand scale, with excitement enough to keep everybody keyed up to a high pitch of physical enjoyment, ready for every call to bodily exertion. The foliage was ripening and changing in the equable autumnal airs without frost, and the results were often very surprising and very beautiful. The gum-tree [Footnote: Liquidambar Styraciflua.] is very common in the open fields of that part of Georgia, and each fine rounded mass had its own special tint, bright crimson, green-bronze, maroon, or pure green; and when a camp-fire was lighted in a grove of such trees the evening effect was a thing to remember for a lifetime. The regimental camps were all alive with diversions of different sorts from the time of the halt at the end of a march till tattoo sounded. Each had its trained pet animals, and the soldiers exhausted their skill and patience in teaching these varied tricks. One regiment had a pair of bull-terrier dogs that played a game which never failed to amuse. At a signal one of the dogs would seize a firebrand by the unburnt end and start off on a run through the camp; the other would follow at speed, trying to trip up the first, to collar him or push him over, and so force him to drop the brand. The second would then grasp it and the chase would be renewed, doubling in and out, over logs, or through a group of lounging men, scattering them right and left, the yelp of the chasing dog accompanying the blazing meteor as it cut odd figures in the darkness, and the shouting laughter of the men encouraging the dogs to new efforts to outdo each other. The intelligence of the dogs in playing the game with apparent recklessness, yet without getting burnt, was something wonderful.

I had myself an interesting experience with a beautiful little creature. Coming one day suddenly into my tent, I surprised a little gold and green lizard on my camp desk. The desk was a small portable one, with lid falling to make the writing-table, set on a trestle, and my appearance scared the little animal into a pigeon-hole, which it took for a way of escape. I sat down on my camp stool in front of the desk, and resumed my writing, watching, also, to see what my prisoner would do. Its little jewel eyes shone in the recess of its prison cell, and soon it cautiously came to the front; but the first move of my hand toward it made it dodge back into the darkness. Two or three times this was done, and I got no nearer to it; so I changed my tactics. I placed my hand against the next pigeon-hole, extending one finger over the occupied one, and waiting in perfect quiet for a few moments, my beauty came slowly forward over the paper files to the mouth of the pigeon-hole near my finger. With great caution and gentleness I stroked its head and it remained quiet. A few more strokes and it seemed pleased and rapidly grew tame. It ceased to be afraid of my motions, and did not try to get away. At intervals, as I sat, the acquaintance was renewed, and the little thing seemed to become fond of me, running about on my papers, climbing my arm to my shoulder, and running back to its home if any one entered the tent. In short, I had followed the example of the private soldiers and had a pet. When we marched I put it on my hat rim as I mounted my horse, thinking it would soon leave me; but it did not. It sat on my hat-crown like a most gorgeous aigrette, or took a little tour around the hat-band or down on my shoulders. I forgot it when busy, but it stayed by, and at the end of a march, when my tent was pitched again and my desk in the usual place, it resumed its home there and thrived on the flies it caught. It was with me for some weeks and became known at headquarters as an attache of the staff. The day we followed Hood westward from Resaca through Snake Creek Gap, I had dismounted, and was talking with General Whitaker, commanding a brigade in the Fourth Corps, whose men with mine were cutting out the timber blockade in the Gap. I had no thought of my lizard, but one of his orderlies caught sight of it on my shoulder. With the common prejudice among the soldiers that the harmless thing was a deadly poisonous reptile, he stood a moment staring and half transfixed, thinking me in deadly peril. Then, with a jump, he struck it off my shoulder with his open hand, and stamped it dead with his heavy boot heel, sure he had saved my life. But when one of my attendants exclaimed reproachfully, "There, you've killed the general's pet," the poor fellow slunk away, the picture of shame and remorse. Pets were sacred by the law of the camp, and he felt and looked as if he were a murderer. No doubt he was also stupefied at the idea that such a thing could be a pet, but in the matter of pets, as in some other things, he bowed to the law, "His not to reason why!"

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