The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta

by Gary Ecelbarger

  Dodge’s only other division on the field was dispersed. One brigade of the 4th Division, under Colonel John W. Sprague, was 3 miles behind the Union line at Decatur, where they had remained to cover the wagon park in the absence of appreciable numbers of cavalry, which Sherman had sent off on a mission deeper into Georgia. The other brigade, under the leadership of division commander Brigadier General John W. Fuller, occupied a reserve position half a mile behind (east of) the left of General Frank Blair’s XVII Corps. Fuller’s men, separated from the army line by a substantial body of woods, bivouacked in the rolling fields that drained into Sugar Creek east of them.23

  The fact that a Union infantry brigade was stationed at Decatur already threw an unexpected obstacle into Hood’s plan, for the adjustment that then would place only Wheeler’s cavalry at Decatur increased the chance that Wheeler would have to fight for that position (compared to the original plan with Hardee and Wheeler together at Decatur that guaranteed an easy brush-back of that overmatched opponent). The adjustment still favored Hood’s attackers because the left flank of the XVII corps was certain to be overwhelmed by simultaneous assaults in flank and rear. Nevertheless, Hood was about to be victimized by the same circumstances that upset the grand plans of greater and lesser generals: His opponent was about to change the appearance of his flank.

  General McPherson was never comfortable with the position of his left flank. According to his assistant adjutant general, Lieutenant Colonel William E. Strong, “McPherson was confident our army would be attacked.” He repeated that concern several times that morning, convinced that he was vulnerable behind his flank from an attack from the woods and would only be satisfied if he did something about it. McPherson rode a line from the rear of his XVII Corps, traversing the tiny cart paths running eastward. He neither saw nor heard any evidence of Wheeler’s and Hardee’s flanking movements (the Confederates were quiet enough and deep enough in the woods not to give away their intention). The silence failed to quell McPherson’s uneasiness.

  Riding 2 miles north to Dodge’s headquarters, McPherson told his corps commander that he had a better place for Sweeny’s division than the reserve spot they currently occupied near the Georgia Railroad. Dodge received the verbal order to move Sweeny’s men eastward down the railroad, turn right, and march southward on a road that passed by the Clay house and across the west branch of Sugar Creek, and there occupy a position east of Fuller’s men. McPherson’s adjustment essentially would turn his fishhook formation into an “L” with a substantial gap at the junction of the two lines of the letter. Once Dodge’s men reached their new destination, McPherson’s new line would mollify him somewhat about the safety of his flank and rear.24

  As eleven o’clock came and went, Sweeny’s division began its hour-long march to its newly assigned positions. If General Sherman had the final say, as his rank suggested he would, McPherson’s L would be turned into a sideways T. Sherman scribbled a message to McPherson, instructing him to abandon his new formation and leave the original line with the XV and XVII Corps in their current formations. “Instead of sending General Dodge to your left,” wrote Sherman, “I wish you would put his whole corps at work destroying absolutely the railroad back to and including Decatur.” That would place Fuller’s lone brigade and Sweeny’s two brigades, about 5,000 men, along the 3-mile length of Georgia Railroad from the XV Corps to the position of Sprague’s brigade at Decatur. Sherman’s priority was to twist every heat-softened rail (dubbed “Sherman’s Neckties”) around the young trees and burn every rail tie. Sherman unknowingly assured Hardee his best opportunity to roll up the army with the rear of Blair’s XVII Corps completely open for the hidden Confederate assault.25

  That was exactly what McPherson feared even without the knowledge of 17,000 Confederates moving around that flank. McPherson did not reverse his orders to Dodge, nor did he halt them from the mission he had put them upon. Instead he allowed Sweeny’s division to continue its march and he rode northward to Sherman’s headquarters to argue his intention. Neither the district commander nor his subordinate army general realized that the threat upon the flank of the Army of the Tennessee was not only real, it was imminent.26

  During the final hour before noon, General Hardee finished aligning his corps for the assault that Hood was hoping would change the momentum of the Atlanta campaign. The march had been one of the most annoying endeavors for the Southerners and their commanders, particularly during the six hours that transpired since the break of dawn. Wheeler’s cavalry vedettes assured General Hardee that his advance was in the rear of McPherson’s left flank. Apparently, Wheeler’s patrols had spied Fuller’s lone brigade just west of Sugar Creek oriented southward toward the woods. By 11:00 A.M. on the northeast Fayetteville Road Wheeler’s cavalry separated from Hardee at the Widow Parker’s house. Although the Confederate cavalry served as decent guides for Hardee’s infantry, their separation and subsequent advance to Decatur was universally welcome, for reinforcing companies and regiments of horse soldiers had been constantly trotting down McDonough Road and the Fayetteville Road and forcing the infantry off the paths. After the cavalry had passed the foot soldiers stepped back onto a churned up line of march marred by the annoying hoofprints and refuse created by half-ton horses.27

  Some scattered companies of cavalry remained behind to guide Hardee’s advance northwestward from the roadbed to the rear of the enemy. The corps was ordered to “dress to the left” and guide upon General Cleburne’s division, whose left was anchored upon the Flat Shoals Road angling directly toward the curved fish hook in Blair’s formation. General Walker’s division extended the corps line eastward, followed by Bate’s division and Maney’s men, representing the right side of Hardee’s line as it extended across the Fayetteville Road. Hardee ordered his 2-mile double line forward and they stepped northwestward to battle an unsuspecting enemy 2 miles away.

  The Confederates were forced to fight a battle merely to maintain cohesion as they attempted to negotiate through all the intervening oaks and thick underbrush overgrown with briar patches. Worse than that was the combination of man-made and natural disaster confronting Walker, Bate, and Maney: Mrs. Terry’s Mill Pond. Hardee had been alerted to its presence back at Cobb’s Mill, but he was clearly undersold about that dammed-up segment of Sugar Creek. It looked more like a small lake than a pond. It jutted across their path for nearly 500 yards at its base and ran northwest for half a mile. The center of the pond was 10 feet deep and although the muddy banks were much shallower, they were covered with debris and brushwood embedded into the muck and mire.28

  The abominable obstacles throughout Hardee’s front tried his patience. He decided upon another major adjustment. Hardee ordered Maney’s division to shift from the extreme right to the left of his corps. With them would move most of a brigade of Bate’s division, reducing the latter to fewer than 2,000 officers and men. Left of Bate advanced Walker’s division, a portion of it stalled by a tremendous thicket of briars. Walker rode up to Hardee to get permission to bust the alignment in an effort to skirt the obstacle, but before he could complete the request, Hardee curtly interrupted. “No, Sir! This movement had been delayed too long already. Go and obey my orders.” Walker rode away boiling over in a rage over how roughly he was dressed down in front of his staff and subordinates. Hardee must have recognized that and quickly tried to neutralize the aftermath when he sent a staff officer to Walker with verbal regrets for his “hasty and discourteous language,” promising to meet up with Walker for a face-to-face apology once he was freed up from immediate corps duties. Walker, however, was hardly placated. A staff officer heard him mumble through clenched teeth about Hardee’s behavior, “He must answer for this.”29

  Walker’s rage that forenoon was hurled at his luckless guide, Case Turner, who failed to inform Walker about a 300-yard bulge in the mill pond as they traversed the western side. Not willing to hear any explanation about that surprise from Mr. Turner, Walker drew his pistol and threatened to shoot
the poor guide. A staff officer intervened and the column continued. The incidents and arguments underscored the strain endured by Hardee’s infantry as it finally neared the point of attack at 11:30 A.M. It would attack at much less strength than intended. At least a quarter of the infantry had straggled deep in those woods and was not with their companies as they began to align for the assault. Making matters worse was the repositioning of Maney’s division from east to west. They would not be able to participate in the initial assault as they shifted to the left of Hardee’s line (it was enough for them just not to get in the way of Cleburne’s and Walker’s men). With Maney’s division temporarily out of the formation, Hardee would have no more than 9,000 ready for the opening attack out of a corps with 14,000 officers and men present for duty the previous evening.30

  Still, 9,000 should be more than enough to swallow up an unsuspecting flank with far fewer men to protect it. Confident that his position matched with what was discussed with General Hood the previous night, Hardee wrote out the dispositions of his divisions and sent a courier galloping back to Atlanta to give that message to General Hood. The aide found Hood temporarily headquartered east of the Atlanta Hotel in the large open square near the depot of the Georgia Railroad. Hood read the dispatch from Hardee, found the position on his map, and pointed to it as he turned to Brigadier General William W. Mackall (his chief of staff) and proclaimed, “Hardee is just where I wanted him.”31

  At least that is what Hardee maintained was told to him by General Mackall. Regardless, Hardee was finally in the right spot but certainly at the wrong time. Yet chances were still so good for the Confederacy that the time might not matter after all. Noon approached as did two opposing forces from two different directions. Sweeny’s men continued their march southward toward the fields east of Sugar Creek. Hardee’s Corps struggled to keep its alignment as its right flank also approached the Sugar Creek valley from the southeast while its center guided along the banks of the stream. Between those moving forces was high open ground; it was an outstanding position to align infantry and artillery. The success of Hood’s plan and the outcome of the Atlanta campaign depended upon which side was first to claim and hold that ground.

  4

  BEHIND THE LINES

  The blazing Georgia sun rose steadily overhead as General McPherson and his staff dismounted at district headquarters at the Augustus Hurt house on the knoll half a mile north of the unfinished brick summer home of Hurt’s brother. The white, double-frame house was General Sherman’s headquarters and was rarely recognized by his army group as the Hurt home. Instead, it had taken on the name of its current resident, Thomas Howard, whose distillery stood nearby. Sherman occupied the house ostensibly to be centrally located within his three armies and indeed he was, for the Army of the Tennessee was entrenched to his right, south of the house; the Army of the Ohio surrounded him and was also in front of the house while the Army of the Cumberland extended off to his right, west of the home.

  McPherson found Sherman on horseback in front of the “Howard house” shortly past 11:00 A.M. The two walked back to the home, stood on the steps, and discussed the prospects of battle that Friday. McPherson’s mission was to convince Sherman to rescind his order for the XVI Corps troops to tear up the Georgia Railroad. He convinced Sherman that his pioneers could accomplish that task and that he needed Dodge’s troops to protect his left flank and rear that he was convinced was going to be attacked. Sherman chose not to argue or override his subordinate. “We agreed that we ought to be unusually cautious,” remembered Sherman of that meeting, recognizing that Hood was inevitably going to strike them somewhere along his lines. He permitted McPherson to use those troops to cover the flank with the agreement that they would be dispatched to tear up several miles of the railroad later in the afternoon if the attack did not take place.1

  The two parted company after that brief meeting ended around 11:15 A.M. McPherson conducted a spirited ride from Sherman’s headquarters southward down the lines of his army, briefly talking to brigade and division commanders as he conducted his personal inspection. At 11:30 A.M. McPherson returned to the right flank of the Army of the Tennessee. Coalescing around him were Generals Logan and Blair, a few of their division commanders and their respective staff personnel—close to 20 mounted soldiers. They all dismounted for lunch in a small grove of oaks just south of the railroad, several hundred yards behind the line occupied by the northernmost divisions of the XV Corps. McPherson had come to the conclusion that it was then safe to comply partially with Sherman’s request. He had orders written out to General Dodge of the XVI Corps to send one of his three available brigades northeastward to tear up the Georgia Railroad halfway between Decatur and the current Union line.2

  No officers of the XVI Corps dined at McPherson’s mess. Shortly after 11:30 A.M., Major General Grenville Dodge felt confident and comfortable enough with his repositioned corps to share a meal with one of his subordinates. Of the three corps commanders of the Army of the Tennessee, Grenville Dodge was the only one who could claim a military education. He was a graduate of Norwich University in the late 1840s (a military academy in Vermont considered the V.M.I. of the North) where he endured the tough training of a military cadet while obtaining a top-notch education in civil engineering. Dodge’s reputation in engineering and railroads had quite an impact on Abraham Lincoln who had met with Dodge in 1859 and early in 1863 about where to run the Transcontinental Railroad. Dodge influenced Lincoln to set the terminus at Council Bluffs—close to where he lived—and Dodge’s reputation and experience were destined to place him as the chief engineer in charge of the Union Pacific Railroad.3

  The war, however, got in the way of any significant progress on the railroad, and Dodge, who was commissioned major general one month earlier in June of 1864, was dedicated to the Union cause more than the Union Pacific. He rode to the tent of General Fuller, who commanded the 4th Division of the XVI Corps, and the two sat down for an early lunch, the canvas above shielding them from a scorching midsummer sun. They had barely begun their meal when their ears picked up the sound of distant skirmish fire. Both generals dropped their utensils to listen. “There must be some rebel cavalry raiding in our rear,” surmised Dodge.4

  MAJOR GENERAL GRENVILLE MELLEN DODGE, U.S.A.

  Promoted one month before the Battle of Atlanta, Dodge bore the brunt of the first ninety minutes of the battle with his XVI Corps, an undersized unit with only three brigades positioned behind the main army line and an additional brigade detached at the town of Decatur. After the war, as the chief engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad, Dodge had an instrumental role in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  The rattling of musketry was much closer to Dodge’s troops than to Dodge himself. His men had just completed their movement from the main line to the rear of the XVII Corps as instructed. Fuller’s lone brigade had just stopped in their position when they heard the scattered shots emanating from the woods east and south of them. Convinced the sporadic gunfire was intended for game animals, an Ohioan remarked that someone would have fresh meat for dinner. James Thompson of the 39th Ohio knew better. “Yes,” he responded to his naïve friend, “you will find it is two-legged meat in a few minutes.”5

  Members of Brigadier General Elliott W. Rice’s brigade (one of two brigades in General Thomas Sweeny’s division) had just completed their 2-mile march from the right flank of the XV Corps line. They halted in the byroad in the brush, waiting for orders to tell them where they were to be placed, when enemy bullets whistled across the road. Without any protection against that unexpected enfilade fire, those that had knapsacks and blankets dropped them in the roadbed and then crouched behind that makeshift breastwork. No casualties were recorded here, but an Iowan worried that the bullets “began to come thick and fast.”6

  The regiments of Rice’s brigade were hustled into an empty field, open ground bordered on the west and south by a wide belt of timber. The dom
inant features of the field were a ridge and a stream. The ridge dropped westward and southward to the treeline of the woods while Sugar Creek coursed southward in an impressive valley. The Iowans and Indianans of Rice’s brigade negotiated across the creek and aligned on the far side, facing the woods 800 yards east of them.7

  Confederate soldiers crowded those woods. General Bate’s division conquered the dense undergrowth and the undulating landscape those woods carpeted. He had maneuvered around and through Mrs. Terry’s millpond, an obstacle that had cost the command an additional hour to clear. Ordered to shift to the Confederate right “resisting every impediment and, if possible, overrun the enemy,” Bate complained of no time to reconnoiter and a dangerously short field of vision. “I was ignorant of what was in my front but believed the enemy was without defenses,” he explained, deciding to move as rapidly as possible to strike the Federals before they had time to dig in. Near the western edge of the woods, Bate’s skirmishers announced their presence with small arms fire wreaking havoc on Dodge’s unprepared men.8

  Bate did not expect to encounter any infantry here; that was the Union rear, but Dodge’s corps had interposed between the Confederate attackers and the backs of the XVII Corps at the most serendipitous moment. Perhaps Bate was unaware of the unexpected prize if he was successful at brushing away the 4,000 men of the XVI Corps. Some of the Army of the Tennessee’s wagon train was here. Those wagons had just begun to roll northward with the arrival of Dodge’s men, but were still easily within striking distance of Bate’s division.9