The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta

by Gary Ecelbarger

  No further attacks would emanate from the woods west of Rice’s brigade. The artillery blasts had been so effective as to neutralize the two active brigades of Bate’s division. Minutes after noon—barely half an hour after they made their appearance—Bate’s division was out of the fight. They had the opportunity to roll up a weak flank of the Army of the Tennessee. Sweeny’s defense consisted of four infantry regiments—no more than three of them in the line at one time—in a high open field without protective entrenchments. At full strength, Bate’s three brigades would have outnumbered Rice’s brigade by two to one, but Bate’s division was hampered by straggling and by history. Nine weeks was not enough time to erase the appalling memory of the Battle of Dallas where the Kentucky and Florida brigades were chewed up in front of Union works at the cost of more than 1,000 casualties. The third brigade of the division, Brigadier General Thomas B. Smith’s command of Tennessee and Georgia regiments, found a way to escape the assault at Dallas and appears to have done so again. It appears most of them never left the woods, reducing Bate’s entire attack to as few as 1,200 armed soldiers—numbers barely exceeding those of Rice’s lone brigade. The anemic and uncoordinated assault by two weakened Confederate brigades was so efficiently repulsed by Blodgett’s and Laird’s batteries that the casualties incurred by Rice’s infantry amounted to a mere 3 percent of his entire command.32

  Adding to the problems of that Confederate division was the disintegration of the relationship between the soldiers and their commander, one that had dissolved into a mutual distaste and distrust. Worse than that was that the unit no longer had pride or confidence. A mere four days after their failure to roll up the XVI Corps, Lieutenant Hugh Black of the 6th Florida could no longer control his bitterness. “Old General Bates [sic] has not made anything by keeping me here,” he railed, “for him and his Division has the name of being the poorest fighters in the Army—which they are.”33

  The hard-luck battle history of General William Bate had added another sorry chapter on that field 3 miles east of Atlanta. Not long after their failure to roll up the Union left, one of his soldiers revealed the understated cause for their failure in the campaign. “Strange to say Gen. Bate possessed neither the affection or respect of the men and undoubtedly has the falsest reputation of anyone I know,” surmised Sergeant Washington Ives of the 4th Florida Infantry. “He is always applauded by men of his own staff and no one else. The Floridians and Kentuckians despise him on account of the [way] in which he acted at Dallas on the 28th of May.” No commander on the Atlanta battlefield was more hated by his men than William Bate by his division; whether deserved or not, the quick retreat of Bate’s assaulting brigades against Rice’s line was the product of that toxic relationship.34

  MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM BRIMAGE BATE, C.S.A.

  As the division commander who opened the battle of Atlanta, Bate attacked General Sweeny’s division of Dodge’s XVI Corps with a Kentucky and a Florida brigade. His quick repulse initiated a series of piecemeal Confederate failed assaults against the Union left and rear. (Courtesy of MOLLUS-Massachusetts, USAMHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.)

  No one in Dodge’s corps knew of the troubles brewing in Bate’s division, but they did know that they had been at the right place in the nick of time. There was no time for back-slapping congratulations. Bate’s attack was indeed a quick one and a weak one, but he merely initiated a battle that would be waged for eight more hours, one marked by several more attacks—all of them deadlier and longer in duration that the noontime fight behind the Union line.

  5

  REPULSE

  As the weak noontime assault against the Union left ebbed back to the woods 800 yards east of the Yankee line, the Battle of Atlanta shifted 90 degrees on its axis to a north-south contest. The remaining two brigades of Dodge’s XVI Corps on the Atlanta battlefield west of Decatur were not blessed with the same serendipity as Rice’s brigade of Sweeny’s division. Both of those brigades faced southward, forming a right angle with Rice’s brigade as they extended westward across the open field. (Laird’s 14th Ohio Light Battery formed the apex.) Sweeny’s other brigade was commanded by Colonel August Mersy, whose command consisted of three available regiments from Illinois and Ohio, while the only brigade on the field from Fuller’s division was his former brigade, one he commanded less than a week prior, but was then led by Colonel John Morrill. That brigade was slightly larger than Mersy’s with four regiments from Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio. Together, those two brigades contained 3,000 officers and men present for duty.

  Assaulting that southward-facing Union force was Major General William H. T. Walker’s division, approximately 4,000 butternut-clad soldiers in three brigades of fourteen regiments, all but two of them from Georgia. Brigadier General Hugh W. Mercer led four Georgia regiments for the entire campaign as did Brigadier General States Rights Gist, but he led a mixed brigade of Georgians and South Carolinians. The third brigade had lost its commander (Brigadier General Clement H. Stevens) to a mortal wound at the Battle of Peachtree Creek. That left Colonel George A. Smith of the 1st Georgia (Confederate) Infantry as the ranking officer, forcing him from a regiment of fewer than 200 officers and men to handle a brigade five times as numerous.1

  If Walker’s attack was intended to be in concert with Bate’s assaults, the terrain killed that plan. The woods threw out the alignment of the division so that it not only would attack after Bate was repulsed, it would also advance with each brigade moving independently of the other two. Colonel George A. Smith’s brigade was the only one of Walker’s prepared to attack. Gist’s brigade still had not arrived upon Smith’s left flank and General Mercer’s brigade lagged in the rear. That reduced the firepower to about 1,200 rifles toted by the Georgians in Smith’s six regiments.

  “We had orders to push through a swampy branch to reform under the hill and charge a battery,” recalled Colonel James Cooper Nisbet of the 66th Georgia years after the fact. The swampy branch was a tributary of Sugar Creek, the moat that separated Blue from Gray in that sector of the field. The battery was Laird’s Ohio battery, which had not been oriented in Walker’s direction, but rather had been pummeling the Floridians of Bate’s division for the past fifteen minutes. Fortunately for the Georgians, all of the rounds belched from the barrels of Blodgett and Laird had spewed east and southeast, away from Colonel George Smith’s line of attack. Smith’s men, formed in two lines for battle, stretched east to west for nearly a third of a mile. The 66th Georgia marched at the western end of the line and the 1st Georgia Confederate—George Smith’s own regiment—anchored the right flank closest to Laird’s cannons.2

  Even so, the attack by the Georgians would receive the complete attention of General Dodge, General Fuller, and General Sweeny. All were on the field inside the angle formed by the three brigades of the XVI Corps. Dodge would take no chances with his corps, personally aligning the regiments of Sweeny’s division. Years afterward a captain in the 52nd Illinois noted that Dodge performed “as if he was [sic] a brigade commander or a mere colonel, cutting red tape all to pieces.” It was Dodge who shifted regiments within Rice’s brigade to the heavily pressed section on the right of the command, and it was Dodge who aligned Mersy’s brigade perpendicular to Rice’s, posting from east to west the 66th Illinois, the 81st Ohio, and then the 12th Illinois—all to the east of the southward flowing branch of Sugar Creek. General Fuller extended the line on the opposite side of the creek with three of his regiments in front and one in reserve.3

  Dodge was worried; he had every reason to be. Notwithstanding the successful repulse of Bate’s division, Dodge fretted that the Confederates east of him would renew their assault. They had progressively moved northward, threatening the northern (left) flank of Rice’s brigade, anchored by the 52nd Illinois. A more ominous threat emerged on his right, beyond the western flank of Fuller’s 1st Brigade under Col. John Morrill. Dodge could sense Confederates massing in the woods (likely viewing the brigade commanded by States Rights Gist) and knew wel
l he had not enough troops to fill the yawning half-mile gap between his corps and the XVII Corps. “Where I stood just at the rear of the Sixteenth Army Corps,” recalled Dodge decades later, “I could see the entire line of that corps, and could look up and see the enemy’s entire front as they emerged from the woods, and I quickly saw that both of my flanks were overlapped by the enemy.” Dodge sent a courier off to find General Giles A. Smith near Bald Hill and deliver his request for Smith to fill the gap between the XVI and XVII Corps by refusing his flank, i.e., bending the defensive line backward to consolidate his forces to prevent an outflanking maneuver. Until that was done, Dodge was determined to hold his ground with his three brigades and two batteries.4

  All of that personal attention by General Dodge did not sit well with Thomas Sweeny. It was Sweeny who had met the immediate threat by the Orphan Brigade just before Dodge trotted onto the contested field. Then with Dodge interfering within his division, Sweeny stewed at the impropriety and how weak that all made him look in front of his brigade commanders and the rank and file of his regiments. With a brewing distaste for General Dodge (one that rivaled the lack of respect Bate’s division held for their commander), as well as a malignant hatred of General Fuller—whose command was not tweaked as much by Dodge—Sweeny would never forgive either of them. An altercation between Sweeny and his Union nemeses was inevitable, but it would wait until the contest was over.5

  So with Sweeny relegated to the status of an unessential commander—called a supernumerary—Dodge and Fuller handled the assault on the southward portion of the command. Their frontline of five regiments covered half a mile, interrupted by the creek and its valley. Sweeny’s brigade commander, Colonel August Mersy, and Fuller’s brigadier, Colonel John Morrill, would have minimal impact on the performance of their men with Dodge and Fuller involved. The brigadiers also grabbed the attention of the highest command of the Army of the Tennessee as General McPherson witnessed the fight in the rear of his army from a knoll west of Dodge’s three deployed brigades.

  The six Georgia regiments were then matched against a nearly equal number of Union regiments, but the bluecoats outnumbered the Southerners here by nearly 50 percent. Even though Confederate Colonel George A. Smith’s men did not initially have to contend with artillery as had the Orphan Brigade and the Florida Brigade, one of the Union regiments—the 66th Illinois—carried an advantage over the Southerners. Two hundred and twenty members of the regiment used four months of a soldier’s salary to purchase sixteen-shot Henry repeating rifles; perhaps 180 of them faced off against the Georgians of Smith’s brigade. The best trained soldier with a single-shot rifle required half a minute to load, fire, and then reload his weapon. In the same time, the Henry-toting Illinois soldiers could empty their chambers of all the rounds they contained. By weaponry alone, one of those Illinois soldiers was worth 15 Georgians on the Atlanta battlefield.

  Two companies of the 66th Illinois fanned out in front of Mersy’s line. They contested every inch made by the eastern wing of George Smith’s brigade from the moment it left the cover of the woods. Making matters worse for Smith was how nature impeded cohesion of his regiments even on open ground. The southern flowing branch of Sugar Creek separated his regiment from the rest of the brigade, forcing it to advance without support on its left (States Rights Gist had yet to bring up his command). That bottomland also had its share of thickets and briar bushes, shredding the clothes and skin of the Southern foot soldiers.6

  The entire Georgia line halted in the field to fire. They did not keep up the advance as had Bate’s men, but were sent back to the wood line by the combination of Union infantry fire by Mersy’s and Morrill’s brigades, and from artillery fire from Laird’s gunners, who shifted some of their pieces from the southeast to the south to counter the new threat. It was then near 12:30 P.M., and Bate’s Southerners in the eastern woods no longer pressured the Union artillery, allowing a few precious minutes for Laird’s gunners to reorient their pieces to rake the advance of Walker’s division.7

  General Dodge had determined that the next advance by the Georgians would be their last. He ordered Mersy’s brigade, under Sweeny, and Morrill’s brigade, under Fuller, to “fix bayonets.” No longer would Yankees trade volleys with their Rebel opponents at a shouting distance; instead, they would be thrusting their weapons into the bodies of their enemy.

  A strong premonition of death overtook Captain Charles Lane of Company K, 81st Ohio. He asked his commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Adams, if the enemy was truly in force in those woods in front of them, and Adams affirmed that they were. Lane then pulled a picture of his little boy, Charlie, from his pocket and with tears tumbling down his cheeks he held the image in front of Adams’s face. Not knowing why Captain Lane, whom he deemed “one of our bravest and best officers,” chose that moment to show the picture of his namesake son to him, Adams merely complimented the boy, puzzled at the captain’s agitated and emotional state.8

  Tumbling out of the woods, the five Georgia regiments east of the creek surged toward the guns and the Yankee infantry protecting them. At that point they were coming uncomfortably close. A member of Laird’s battery complained that they had not the time to relish in the repulse of “the detestable grey jackets” from Bate’s division because Mercer’s division then “came rolling up in our front and to the right in three lines.” One of Mersy’s men admitted, “We saw their strength was not to be despised,” while another sensed those Confederates approached with “the purpose of overpowering us by mere brute force, and their impetuous or rather blind fury brought them within a few paces of our lines.” Riding to and fro behind Mersey’s prone men, Dodge looked for an opportunity to counterpunch. That opportunity arose in front of the western end of Mersy’s brigade where one or two Georgia regiments advanced too far in front of the others, exposing an inviting flank. Without hesitation Dodge bellowed for the 81st Ohio and 12th Illinois to rush forward and “strike the enemy.”9

  The timing of the Union counterpunch was perfect for them. The two Yankee regiments rose from their bellies to their feet and shocked the Georgians in front of them with a synchronized charge. Henry Van Sellar, the lieutenant colonel of the 12th Illinois, matter-of-factly reported that his regiment “drove them from the valley, killing and wounding a respectable proportion of them.” The 81st Ohio had equal success and a greater impact. Thomas J. Shelley of Company D stated, “Just then our troops raised a yell, rushed forward, and drove the enemy from the field in great disorder.” The Confederates were wholly unprepared for the old-style bayonet charge. Colonel Smith, the Georgia brigade commander, went down with a wound after his horse was killed from underneath him. Regimental and company commanders attempted to continue pushing their men forward, but to no avail.

  The Ohioans claimed to scoop up three flags during their charge, but it appears only one was taken. It belonged to the 1st Georgia (Confederate) and was brought back by a member of the 81st Ohio after he pried it from the hands of the dead Georgian, who had attempted to rally his regiment around it. It was quick, momentous, but devastating to the attackers as well as the recipients. Among the dead of the 81st Ohio was Captain Charles Lane, the father of “Charlie,” whose premonition of death was fulfilled when a bullet struck him in the head during the bayonet charge.10

  The sudden and unexpected rush of several hundred soldiers stunned the Georgians and sent them fleeing to the woods. The sight of it electrified Morrill’s brigade on the other side of Sugar Creek. After they had attached their bayonets, Fuller ordered the 39th Ohio and 27th Ohio to lie down in the open field, telling them to withhold their fire until the Rebels came within 60 yards. Enjoying an unobstructed, panoramic view east of him, General Fuller witnessed the desire of his division soldiers to emulate the success of Sweeny’s. “The cheer of this regiment [the 81st Ohio] and its gallant charge was so contagious,” explained Fuller, “that the men of the 39th Ohio rose to their feet, fired a volley and went for the Johnnies on the double-quick.” To the
right of the 39th Ohio, the 27th Ohio did likewise. The failure to wait for orders to charge dismayed General Fuller, who preferred the Georgians in front of him to be well into the fields before they were preyed upon. Instead, they had barely cleared the woods, well behind their advancing comrades east of the creek, when Morrill’s Buckeyes unleashed their surprise. “This movement was executed too soon to give us very many prisoners,” Fuller complained.11

  Notwithstanding the impetuous movement, the two Ohio regiments were initially as successful as Sweeny’s men across the creek. Colonel Nisbet and the 66th Georgia were the victims of that success. As the next ranking officer of the Georgia regiments, Colonel Nisbet inherited the brigade after Smith’s injury 500 yards east of him but he probably never was informed of that for he remained isolated with his regiment on the west side of Sugar Creek. Emerging from a thicket just as the Ohioans fired and charged, Nisbet and his Georgians were stuck and could not avoid the inevitable. They were surrounded by dozens of soldiers, all shouting “You are my prisoner!” Shocked and helpless, Nisbet surrendered. Scores of Georgians accompanied their colonel as prisoners of war.12