The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta

by Gary Ecelbarger

  General Alexander P. Stewart would mop up the whole, but Hood forewarned him that his position was pivotal as he faced the Army of the Cumberland, which would necessarily make him the last engaged force against McPherson. As Hood explained, “General Stewart, posted on the left, was instructed not only to occupy and keep a strict watch upon Thomas, in order to prevent him from giving aid to Schofield or McPherson, but to engage the enemy as soon as the movement became general; i.e., as soon as Hardee and Cheatham succeeded in driving the Federals up to Peach Tree Creek and near his [Stewart’s] right.” With those instructions Hood was expecting Schofield to be routed with McPherson, treating them as a single entity, and hoping that the Union catastrophe would also infect the Army of the Cumberland.8

  It was a heady plan crafted by a commander seeking a large objective with economy of force, all the while covering as many contingencies as he could in the process. In its conception the apparent flaw existed where Hood wanted the surprise to commence. An attack by 17,000–18,000 soldiers pushing westward from Decatur would not assure that the Army of the Tennessee would be rolled up from south to north, for the assault was destined to strike the army in the rear of its center. If McPherson’s men were not instantly shocked and routed by the presence of Hardee and Wheeler behind them, they could about-face and make a stand facing toward that attack. By attempting to imitate the Lee-Jackson model of Chancellorsville, Hood lost sight of the fact that Stonewall succeeded because he struck and collapsed the flank of the Army of the Potomac, not the rear, rolling it up from west to east in the process. Hood was banking more on the element of surprise than the position of his attack to accomplish the same goal.

  To assure the highest chance for ultimate success, Hood made sure that each commander knew and understood their respective roles, but also the overall plan and the mission of the other “brother corps commanders” [Hood’s term] at the headquarters meeting. Hood’s command style was comprehensive, “I hoped each officer would know what support to expect from his neighbor, in the hour of battle.” Hood repeated the orders and discussed them with each and all his commanders until their comprehension met his satisfaction.9

  Hood had stressed an attack as close as possible to dawn to assure that the Union army would be surprised and to provide enough daylight to accomplish the broad objective “to press the Federal Army down and against the deep and muddy stream in their rear.” The timing was entirely dependent on General Hardee and Wheeler to reach the flank and rear during the night hours of Thursday–Friday. Hood had mapped out the route they were required to take. From Atlanta the troops were required to march southward on McDonough Road, turn sharply left on Fayetteville Road near South River, cross Intrenchment Creek at Cobb’s Mill and continue northeastward toward Decatur (see map on p. 51). The distance from Atlanta to Decatur straight eastward along the road or railroad between the locales is 6 miles. The distance by following that huge “V” of roads around the Union left flank lengthened the distance between Atlanta and Decatur to 15 miles (and up to 3 miles longer for troops that were positioned north or east of Atlanta at the commencement of that grand march).10

  Hardee’s and Wheeler’s mission in the plan was to cover the 15 miles by the break of dawn. That gave them roughly eight hours to cover the route with a minimum of 17,000 men. At Chancellorsville in 1863, Stonewall Jackson moved 28,000 men on a 12-mile flank march, but his grand march and deployment took ten hours and he covered it entirely in daylight. Hood’s expectations for Hardee would have made Jackson blush: add 3 to 6 more miles to Jackson’s immortal march and launch the attack in two fewer hours—and do it all between sunset of July 21 and sunrise of July 22. Hood had no qualms about the task he set before Hardee. Darkness notwithstanding, Hood maintained the route was laid out well and that Wheeler’s cavalry knew the roads enough to guide the troops along it.

  Within a few hours of the close of that meeting, Hardee’s corps began to pull in to Atlanta and initiate the march southward through the town toward the flank. As Major General William H. T. Walker’s division passed down Peachtree Street, its commander stopped at Hood’s headquarters to pay the commanding general a visit. Walker was described by a contemporary as “a fierce and very war-like fireater” who wore his passions on his sleeves. He was a proud Georgian, telling an Atlanta newspaper reporter that he would prefer to die than to see Atlanta fall without a desperate fight to defend it. He went on to add that he “would hang his head in shame to see Georgia overrun by the enemy, and her men failing in their duty.”11

  Rail thin and appearing as pale as well as frail, Walker’s acerbic nature was an offshoot of his sickly appearance. He had a good reason to appear that way. Few participants in the campaign, North or South, had survived as many severe bullet wounds as Walker had over a twenty-seven-year career since graduating West Point in 1837. He was—according to a witness—“literally shot to pieces” in the Seminole War and took two more bullets in the Mexican War. Walker still carried much of the pain of those war wounds (and some of the lead), well deserving his nickname: “Shot Pouch.” He hated some of his peers and superiors seemingly as much as he hated the North. He was one of the few officers in the Army of Tennessee who reserved judgment on Hood’s replacement of Johnston, merely stating that time will tell if Hood has “the capacity to command armies.” That time had come and despite the setback at Peachtree Creek, Walker was pleased at Hood’s aggressiveness, a trait that matched his own mindset. He entered Hood’s headquarters to tell him so. Hood remembered the conversation well. He recalled that Walker “wished me to know before he entered the battle that he was with me in heart and purpose and intended to abide by me in all emergencies.” Walker’s brief visit instilled him with vigor, an enthusiasm he neither could, nor would, attempt to suppress. His aide claimed that when Walker returned to his command from Hood’s headquarters, he “was aglow with martial fire from that moment.”12

  Hood received a second set of visitors to his headquarters. Between 10:00 P.M. and midnight, General Hardee, General Cheatham, and (probably) General Wheeler paid Hood a visit for a vital mission—to alter Hood’s plan. Hardee had arrived at the conclusion that the late start and the requisite distance conspired against Hood’s plan to reach Decatur by dawn. The head of the column could make it there by dawn, but several hours after that would be required for the tail of the army to complete the mission and for the entire column of 17,000–18,0000 soldiers to deploy for the big attack. It was readily apparent to Hardee that Hood’s plan was much too ambitious. Hardee advised Hood to shorten the march for the foot soldiers in an effort to save time while still accomplishing the objective to strike the army from behind—but from the southeast instead of directly east.

  The commanding general had no choice but to change his plan based on the location and condition of the flanking troops and the late hour. Hood agreed with the adjustment but strove to maintain the element of surprise by stressing to attack as close to dawn as possible. He gave Hardee discretion to shorten the length of the flank destination and strike the flank and the rear of McPherson’s army. Wheeler would continue to extend to Decatur for the purpose of a rearward surprise and to bag the Union supply wagons.13

  Hood was hardly satisfied with making that concession, but in doing so he not only rendered the impossible plausible, he also improved the chances for the outcome he sought. By focusing on the southern flank of McPherson’s army, Hardee was equally as likely to surprise it as he did by striking it directly from behind. Hitting the rear of the flank at nearly the same time that Wheeler struck the supply wagons at Decatur improved the chances of success for both directions. More than that, Hardee’s new position would certainly force the Union defenders northward, the direction Hood relied upon to send Sherman’s entire department to the banks of Peachtree Creek. If the rout was not immediate and McPherson chose to fight, the flank strike prevented an enfilading fire on each side of Hardee’s attacking lines; that overlapping musketry and cannon fire on the Confederate flank
s was more likely to occur if he had driven directly into McPherson’s center from the rear. It also minimized the initial resistance that could possibly be formed against an attack that angled in behind the flank. In its conception, the adjusted plan was nearly perfect.

  The generals departed headquarters and returned to their moving columns to transform the concept into reality. The first two divisions of Hardee’s corps, Major General William Bate’s three brigades followed by Major General William H. T. Walker’s three brigades, had followed Wheeler’s horse soldiers out of Atlanta close to 9:00 P.M., having already marched 3 miles from the northern environs to clear the last houses of the city in the southern sector (a distressing march due to the Union shells continuously lobbed into the city). All singing and chatter dissipated once the soldiers left Atlanta, replaced by determined if not tired men “bent forward silently to the all night march before us.”14

  As the column snaked down McDonough Road it lengthened considerably. A clear night with a waning but nearly full moon provided little succor to men marching blindly into the wilderness, forced to trust their side-by-side partners and the cadence of the tramping feet in front of them as they marched four abreast down McDonough Road. The only advantage noted by the disappearance of the sun was that the march was not conducted in uncomfortably hot weather, but a late afternoon shower the previous day still failed to tamp down the road dust that eventually found its way onto the faces, into the eyes, and between the teeth of the rearward soldiers in the column. Not until the vanguard reached Cobb’s Mill almost six hours later was most of the flanking force on the road—a gray serpent more than 8 miles long.15

  The pace of one and a half miles per hour seemed very slow for soldiers and their officers accustomed to cover twice that distance over the same period in daylight, but it actually was admirable considering that the overnight march thus far was conducted at the same speed as the daytime one led by the immortal Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. Nonetheless it was too slow to comply with Hood’s mission for the entire column to be in position at daybreak. Hardee realized that by 3:00 A.M., if not sooner. His leading division under General Bate had halted at Cobb’s Mill with the rest of the infantry strung out 8 miles behind him. Most of Wheeler’s men were farther advanced than Hardee’s corps. They could reach their Decatur destination according to the timetable of the original instructions, but the infantry was not going to strike at daylight or even three hours after daylight. The rear of the infantry column—Cleburne’s exhausted division—had not been able to free itself from its fifteen-hour contest with the XVII Corps until 10:00 P.M. and had not begun to march out of Atlanta until 1:00 A.M. The rear of Cleburne’s division was less than 2 miles from Atlanta and some of the artillery batteries slated to partake in the flank attack had not left Atlanta yet. Most of those men were in no condition to fight without some rest.16

  Hardee ordered Bate to halt near the crossing of Intrenchment Creek at Cobb’s Mill. The entire column lurched and completely stopped, inducing soldiers to drop along the roadside and sleep. Hardee allotted them a two-hour respite while he and his generals labored to improve the chances for success. They gathered at the house of the mill proprietor, William Cobb. There they talked to Cobb and a neighbor—a mill worker named Case Turner—and impressed them as guides for their column. Here the generals first learned of the obstacles that stood between them and the enemy army: expansive woods, a thick underbrush of briars, and a huge millpond northeast of them.17

  Dawn had already begun to break across the Georgia landscape when Hardee commenced moving his men forward again. They remained hidden in the woods south of McPherson’s left flank. As Bate resumed his division’s march northeastward along the Fayetteville Road toward Decatur his men were beginning to gain the rear of the unsuspecting Army of the Tennessee, but the Confederates then could see each other and the inescapable consequence of trudging on dusty roads. “When morning came,” recalled a Kentuckian, “we looked like the imaginary Adam ‘of the earth earthy,’ so completely were we encased in dust.” The head of the column was then guided by Case Turner, who led Walker and Bate northeastward on the Fayetteville Road, while William Cobb remained with Cleburne’s division near his mill.18

  Hardee moved on for 3 miles from Cobb’s Mill on an arrow-straight and very level segment of the Fayetteville Road. As the flank commander felt his way cautiously up the road, his army was constantly slowed and annoyed by lurches and abrupt stops. “Halts came,” complained an artillerist in the van, “the men jamming up against each other each time (for they were sleepy) just like cars on a freight train.” Hardee continued on in that fashion until he reached the house of a widow of a man named Parker, who was murdered on the streets of Decatur the previous summer. Parker’s little farmhouse stood on the right of the road near a grove of peach trees. A soldier noted, “How sweetly tranquil the little home seemed in dewy, dusky dawn. No sound, no moving thing, not even a dog, all like within it and around it, wrapped in peaceful slumber.” The residence marked the end of the road march of Hardee’s infantry and artillery through the wilderness southeast of Atlanta.19

  As 7:00 A.M. came and went General Hardee had clearly grown impatient with the slowness of the march. He ordered Bate to move by aligning with his back parallel to the Fayetteville Road. Here the formation commenced 2 miles southeast of Bald Hill, but only Bate’s men had begun to form over the next hour due to the position of the rest of the soldiers behind (southwest) of him. As the time approached 8:00 A.M. Hardee called in his division commanders and cavalry commander, General Wheeler, for a brief meeting. All were annoyed at how slow everything was developing as the time seemed to fly by, but they were certain that they had planted themselves behind McPherson’s flank.20

  As Hardee attempted to place his corps into battle formation in the woods, he was oblivious to impeding factors that conspired to delay his attack and interfere with its intended success. Although they were concealed in the woods, the light of morning penetrated between the trees for division, brigade, regiment, and company commanders to notice that their respective commands had shrunk considerably overnight. Straggling was atrocious; in some commands numerical strength was down by nearly half. The 13 miles covered by the troops in the front over the past twelve hours was not fatiguing enough to explain how so many men were missing from the ranks, particularly since the rearward ranks had marched less than 10 miles in eight hours. “I never saw as much straggling from our Corps since we have been moving,” wrote an appalled Tennessean in his diary. It appears that the combination of thick, deep woods and darkness yielded the opportunity for thousands of foot soldiers to fall out of line, sleep longer than the two-hour respite allowed, or shirk the inevitable battle by hiding behind trees or in the underbrush. Hardee’s column, which should have been able to put 14,000 officers and men into battle formation, was down closer to 11,000 troops readily available. When the sun disappeared the previous night so apparently did discipline and duty.21

  Despite the fact that the battle Hood wanted at dawn was late by four hours and counting, the flank march of Hardee and Wheeler had still gone undetected. However, each passing hour gave the Union defenders time to strengthen their hard-fought position from the previous day. Not only did the capture of Bald Hill secure a line on the Flat Shoals Road angling southeast from it, it also had rendered the defense created by Cheatham’s corps indefensible. Cheatham’s men had dug in on high ground bisected by the Georgia Railroad a mile north of Bald Hill. Shortly after dawn, Cheatham ordered the men back to a new line of defense a mile closer to Atlanta.

  The relinquished ground, along with reports that Hood’s army had headed down to the East Point station (XVII Corps pickets had inched close to Atlanta and had witnessed the southward movement shortly after midnight) misinformed General Sherman into believing that Atlanta had been abandoned. He sent orders to all three of his army commanders to pursue Hood and cut off his army before they reached the trains. Within an hour of sending the missi
ves, Sherman rescinded the instructions when the faulty intelligence was corrected and he became convinced that Hood had merely pulled back to a stronger ring of defense north and east of Atlanta. It had not dawned on him that the troops seen moving through Atlanta might actually be heading southeastward to turn his flank.22

  Once the ground north of Bald Hill was abandoned by Cheatham’s corps, XV Corps troops moved forward to claim it within the first daylight hours of Friday, July 22. They set about “reversing” the Confederate works by digging a ditch on the east side of the earthen walls (created by Confederates who had dug out a trough on the western side), strengthening the breastwork, and throwing abatises on the Atlanta side. South of Bald Hill, XVII Corps troops, who had taken up positions there the previous afternoon, strengthened the earthworks they began creating more than twelve hours earlier.

  As the morning waned, the position of the Army of the Tennessee morphed into a distinct fishhook shape. All but one brigade of General Blair’s XVII Corps occupied strong works from Bald Hill southward for half a mile with 9 cannons interspersed in the southern sector. Colonel Hall’s Iowa brigade formed the hook eastward across the Flat Shoals Road. North of Bald Hill, for 2 miles, stood the three divisions of Major General John A. Logan’s XV Corps. His men had been reversing works and digging in all the way across the Georgia Railroad with infantry and westward-facing artillery covering the north, center, and southern sector of his corps. Brigadier General Thomas Sweeny’s division of Major General Grenville Dodge’s XVI Corps had extended Logan’s right northward the night before, linking McPherson’s army with Major General John Schofield’s Army of the Ohio, but when the XV Corps moved half a mile closer to Atlanta, Sweeny’s men were squeezed out of their line; most of them had stood in reserve since daylight.