The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta
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As the 18th Missouri penetrated in front, the 64th Illinois assailed the woods from the northeast, driving over 500 yards and capturing at least 40 Confederates, including a couple of men from the 5th Confederate Infantry who had some of General McPherson’s belongings in their possession. The Illinois men advanced as far as McPherson’s body, allowing an ambulance to swiftly rush in and remove it from the woods to carry northward to Sherman’s headquarters, but they could not hold their new advanced line. Lieutenant Colonel Michael W. Manning, commander of the 64th, deemed his position untenable. “About this time,” he reported, “the enemy was in my front, flanks, and rear, pouring upon the regiment a deadly and galling fire.” The 64th Illinois was 350 strong when they rushed into the woods; but in less than ten minutes they were down 83 men, including half of their officers. Colonel Morrill, the 1st Brigade commander (4th Division) and former head of the regiment, had personally led his former command into the woods before he was forced off the field with his second wound of the afternoon. Down 1 out of every 4 men who had charged into the gap, the Illinois men retreated pell-mell beyond their original line and tried to reform in a wood lot a quarter of a mile to the rear.25
James A. Smith’s men were unable to take advantage of the new gap in Fuller’s line. Laird’s 6-gun battery rolled an iron surf over the Texans and Tennesseans before they could possibly renew an assault upon Fuller’s weakened line. Then aided by Captain Andrew Hickenlooper, the chief of artillery for the Army of the Tennessee, Laird’s battery continued its dominance over the Southern infantry. As Fuller’s men flattened themselves on the field, the Ohio battery lofted shells over them, exploding into the woods housing Cleburne’s men and raining terror upon them. “And here let me say,” stressed General Fuller in his official report of the action, “this Ohio battery … did more toward defeating the enemy than is often accomplished by six guns.”26
Dodge did not know the fact that the threat against his thin blue line would be the last serious one posed by Hood’s army on July 22. Elements of four Confederate divisions had attacked or tested his position and his men had held firm, primarily from the support of artillery, but Dodge did know that the head of the army was dead and the weight of Cleburne’s division—a force that had proved one of the most devastating in 1864—was aiming in a different direction.
7
TWO-SIDED FIGHT
John Bell Hood shifted to his third location in twelve hours during the early afternoon of the Battle of Atlanta. After briefly fielding dispatches in the park across from the Atlanta Hotel just north of the great depot in the center of the city, Hood and his staff rode out eastward toward the fairgrounds. On a hill near the City Burial Place stood the elegant estate of Lucius J. Gartrell, a former Georgia colonel and a member of the Confederate Congress. There, one mile from General Hardee’s assault, General Hood settled into his new headquarters and listened to the continuous rumble of battle.1
The attack began several hours later than planned, which allowed McPherson to reposition troops of the XVI Corps to protect against the rearward assault that had surprised the attackers of Bate’s and Walker’s division perhaps more than the defenders in the three brigades under Sweeny and Fuller. The delay was less the fault of the commanders conducting the flank movement than it was of the abominable terrain that sapped time and manpower from Hardee’s corps, but that was unacceptable to Hood, and Hardee was the obvious culprit for the delay.
As the second hour of the afternoon and of the battle neared its close Hood was unaware of two factors that worked in his favor. He had not been informed of General McPherson’s death, which had decapitated the enemy army—at least temporarily. He was also unaware that adjustments in the flanking column had somehow allowed for simultaneous assaults against the Union defense from nearly opposite directions: the southwest and the east. Better yet for the Confederates was that the movements for those attacks were commencing simultaneously from the woods south of the Union position. The recipient of those attacks would be the XVII Corps of McPherson’s army, the same corps that had lost several hundred men attacking Bald Hill the day before and the same corps that had one of its brigades routed from its trenches at 1:30 P.M. with the loss of hundreds more killed and wounded, and two batteries and an entire regiment—the 16th Iowa—captured. General Blair’s corps was down nearly 1,200 men in less than thirty hours, and he had no idea that the blows that would strike him over the next six hours would double those losses.2
General Hardee’s readjustment of General George Maney’s Tennessee division set the stage for those multidirectional attacks. Hardee decided to shift Maney’s four brigades, originally designed to attack in line with General Cleburne, from the right and rear of Cleburne to his left. The repositioning had been costly, for it separated one brigade (Lowrey’s) in Cleburne’s division from the other two and guaranteed a delayed assault by it, but it also gave Cleburne strong support on his left as well as presenting a new front from which to harass the Union army.
Attrition over the course of the campaign had forced a consolidation of twelve of Maney’s smallest regiments into six larger ones. Eleven other regiments retained their original identity, but were likely much smaller than the consolidated units. The four brigades made Maney’s the largest Confederate division of Hardee’s corps, a force nearing 4,000 officers and men.3 The regiments were led by veterans, but General Maney himself was new to his command. Ascending from supervision of one brigade to four due to the promotion of General Benjamin F. Cheatham to command Hood’s old corps, Maney’s constant change of direction by Hardee’s early morning realignment was difficult for a general used to handling a force a quarter of the size he was leading on July 22. He had previous battle experience with those men two days earlier at Peachtree Creek where his division had crossed Tanyard Branch near the center of the Confederate line, yet “escaped” with 277 killed and wounded men, about a tenth of Hood’s total losses even though they represented a quarter of the Confederate brigades on the battlefield that day. Two of those brigades took 90 percent of Maney’s losses that day, suggesting the other two were generally held in reserve. Still, the frontline brigades had proven tentative that day, deciding the cost was too heavy in human lives to rush headlong against the enemy line.
Those casualty figures at Peachtree Creek could lead to suspicion about the lack of aggressiveness by Maney on the tactical offensive. Killed and wounded men are a crude gauge of the fighting nature of troops since many factors contribute to battlefield casualties. Given that his men had advanced on low marshy ground, unprotected, as they worked their way toward the Union center that day, the loss of barely 5 percent of his attacking force (about 15 percent in the two heaviest-engaged brigades) is nearly impossible to conceive. Hardee’s success against the XVII Corps on Friday, July 22, would require a more spirited assault by the Tennesseans east of Atlanta than they exhibited two days earlier north of the city. Working against them were the stark and solid memories of six battles over the previous thirty months where they had rushed into maelstroms of certain death. The Tennesseans had to fight those awful memories as well as human nature in order to do it one more time that Friday afternoon.4
General Maney’s division essentially aligned in an arc south of the Union line, concave to the north. One brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Otho French Strahl, worked into position southwest of Giles Smith’s line of the XVII Corps. To their right (east) aligned the pivot of the division, Colonel Michael Magevney’s brigade, two of its regiments set to swing northeastward against the Federal fortifications, and the remainder of the brigade positioned to do likewise from the right side. Colonel Francis M. Walker’s brigade and Colonel John C. Carter’s brigade continued shifting behind them.
No one ever indicated whether all brigades of Maney’s division had been ordered to attack at the same time. If that was the intention, Strahl’s brigade on the left violated the plan. Ohio born and bred, General Strahl had been practicing law in Tennessee at the outb
reak of the war and had led a regiment in the brigade in 1862. A series of promotions followed, leading him to command his brigade for a year. His brigade was in the back line at Peachtree Creek and had been spared the casualties that marred two other brigades of the division. Strahl’s Tennesseans were in position and moved off at 1:45 P.M., just after General Govan’s successful rout of Hall’s Iowans from their trenches. Advancing in three lines of battle, Strahl led 1,000 Tennesseans in their first assault since the Battle of Chickamauga ten months earlier (a battle where Strahl had been cited for gallantry).5
The tormented division of Giles Smith would be the recipients of Maney’s initial attacks. The Iowans of Hall’s brigade, along with the small force comprising Potts’s brigade, had just reformed on the west side of the breastworks across the Flat Shoals Road and were facing eastward toward Govan’s Arkansans. “Skirmishers were immediately ordered out,” reported General Giles Smith, “who discovered the enemy not far back, but apparently in no condition to renew the attack.” The relief was short-lived; Strahl’s Tennesseans were discovered advancing toward them—from behind. With an enemy then on two fronts and already having absorbed close to 1,000 casualties in the past two days—with only seven regiments—Smith’s 4th Division faced their greatest threat at that moment.
The capitulation of the 16th Iowa half an hour before further reduced Smith’s division to six regiments and two companies of another, a force reduced to 1,800 officers and men. Rather than gamble on which side of the earthworks to align his men, Giles Smith essentially abandoned that position. He aligned his men perpendicular to the earthworks in two lines, 75 yards apart. The southernmost line consisted of two regiments of Hall’s brigade, the 11th and 15th Iowa; behind them stood Potts’s men. Both lines anchored their left flanks upon the earthworks, leaving one Iowa regiment, the 13th, facing eastward against Govan’s brigade. Giles Smith had decided that Strahl’s brigade was his greatest threat as he aligned in a cornfield to meet it.6
Strahl struck Smith close to 2:00 P.M., enveloping the right flank of the 15th Iowa and driving the other Iowans in the frontline away within five minutes. That left Potts alone to face off against the Tennesseans with an equal force of about 1,000 men in an open field without cover of any kind between the opposing forces. Potts’s westernmost regiment, the 32nd Ohio, anchored the right flank of the brigade, bending the makeshift Union line from south to southwest to better confront the Tennesseans. Notwithstanding the immediate success against the frontline regiments of Iowans, Strahl could not drive Potts’s brigade away from the field. The Ohioans in particular proved to be pesky soldiers; a sound and solid embodiment of the Buckeye stalwartness was its “Fighting Chaplain,” Russell B. Bennett. Cautioning the regiment to “lie low” in the cornfield, Chaplain Bennett disregarded his own admonition and stood erect, firing the rifle of a nearby prone private at the approaching Tennesseans. The prone soldier reloaded the gun and handed it back up to the preacher who would aim and fire again. Bennett somehow escaped with his life, but the unfortunate soldier in charge of his weapon was struck by a bullet while lying in the field and was killed. “I cannot forget the brave conduct of Chaplain R. B. Bennett,” noted Colonel Potts in his official report of his brigade’s participation in the battle.7
General Strahl withstood mounting casualties in his brigade as he ordered three unsuccessful assaults against the 32nd Ohio and the other regiments of Potts’s brigade supporting them. According to a lieutenant in the 5th Tennessee, the volleys fired by Potts’s brigade appeared “too destructive.” That certainly proved the case for General Strahl who was wounded so severely as to not be able to lead his men. The only colonel in the brigade, John A. Wilson of the 24th Tennessee, was also out of the contest with a severe injury. That left Lieutenant Colonel James D. Tillman of the 41st Tennessee as the next ranking officer and he immediately ascended to brigade command. It was especially unfortunate for his regiment, for its commander, Major T. G. Miller, took a bullet in his leg (it required amputation) and had to turn the command over to a captain. Lieutenant Colonel Tillman proved a far cry from the experienced General Strahl. Not wishing to wage a protracted fight in the cornfield, Tillman withdrew Strahl’s brigade from the contest and headed back to the woods from where they initiated their attack.8
It is unlikely that General Maney was on the far left of his division at that time, for General Strahl was the only subordinate with the appropriate brigadier’s rank (the other three brigade commanders were colonels). Maney would have placed a greater emphasis on the center or right-side brigades, a sound command decision, but an unfortunate circumstance for the Confederates. Had General Maney been present to superintend Lieutenant Colonel Tillman in his new command, it is unlikely the Southerners would have left the field as early as they did.
The sudden disappearance of Tennesseans from the Atlanta side of the breastworks allowed General Giles Smith to realign his forces for a fourth time in forty-five minutes. Potts’s brigade remained in place perpendicular to the line of XVII Corps earthworks, while Colonel Hall attempted to re-form his Iowans to repulse an attack closer to the southwestern earthworks. That offensive was conducted by Colonel Michael Magevney’s Tennessee brigade, striking the XVII Corps flank from the south, over much of the same ground that General Govan’s Arkansans had cleared twenty minutes before. Govan’s men were re-forming in a safer region off to the east, clearing the way for Magevney’s men to continue to roll up the Iowans from their new position. Traversing the original works held by Hall’s men at noon that day, the 12th/47th and the 13th/154th Tennessee angled in from the east while the 11th and 29th Tennessee closed in from the west, pushing the Union flank northward as the flanks of Magevney’s brigade closed in on the center.
“The enemy Commenced retreating up thier [sic] works as soon as we Charged them,” crowed Captain Alfred Fielder of the 12th Tennessee, “and we having an enfilading fire upon them and they being in great Confusion & huddling together we mowed them down with awful havoc.” The Iowans were caught in a vise, desperately trying to escape the trap by jumping from one side of the works to the other to combat each side of Southerners harassing them. Colonel John Shane of the 13th Iowa admitted the disorderly state of his regiment “owing to the numerous detachments, independent commands, and stragglers which at that time thronged the road.” The Iowans re-formed just in time, reported Shane, “as the enemy were then within rifle-range and approaching our position from two directions in heavy force.” The 13th Iowa and its neighboring regiments of Hall’s brigade delivered ragged volleys at the Tennesseans by a tactic the Southerners had never seen before in a Civil War battle. “They would Jump first on one side of the works and then on the other,” noted a Tennessee soldier, “but we being on both sides and pouring upon them such a galling fire they continued steadily to give way firing back at us as they went.”9
Tennesseans pursued the hop-scotching Iowans as they pushed northward up the XVII Corps breastworks, some of the Southerners picking up loaded Yankee rifles left in the ditches. Magevney’s attack petered out due to his brigade’s loss of cohesion and the concentration of Hall’s brigade to repel them. The fighting for the 13th Iowa was not through for the day, but at 2:00 P.M. that Friday, they were perhaps the hardest luck regiment remaining on the field. Their casualties told the entire story. The unit had tallied 400 officers and men the previous morning but had been reduced to 150 soldiers since then due to casualties and captures. With no time to lick their wounds, the regiments of Hall’s brigade prepared to meet a renewed threat from the east. An inkling of that threat had already passed the position at the time that Strahl launched his attack from the southwest and Magevney’s brigade from the south. That threat emanated from some of the same troops who were forced from Bald Hill the day before. Soon they would attempt to reclaim that position from the same direction Blair’s Union troops drove from on July 21.10
Brigadier General James A. Smith’s brigade of Texans and Tennesseans had completely disrupted th
e Union command by killing the head of the Army of the Tennessee, General McPherson. Then they had an equal opportunity to deliver a devastating wound to the body of that army. Part of the Texas brigade had meandered and malingered in the wooded gap between the Union XVI and XVII Corps. That was particularly true for members of the Tennessee regiment in that brigade, the 5th Confederate, while scattered companies of Texans either helped Govan’s Arkansans or attempted to take another run at Fuller’s division. Still, General James A. Smith had most of his men in order—at least 1,000 soldiers under arms—as he pushed forward, northward through the gap and into a region that threatened the Union rear.11
“Occasionally, there is a terrible shooting to our right or left, and sometimes nearly behind us,” noted one of the Texans, “but the woods are so thick that we can’t see but a short distance.” The Texans thrust northward with a slight angle to the northwest. They advanced nearly parallel with the line of the XVII Corps earthworks 1,000 yards west of them. Unimpeded by enemy troops, the Texans raced forward with “ungovernable enthusiasm,” as described by their commander. Yet General James A. Smith stressed the “ungovernable” aspect in his report, for he lamented that his brigade line stretched too far across, which materially weakened it; still he raved about the “great spirit and vigor” of the Texans as they tumbled out of the woods at a point within a mile of the Georgia Railroad. Those Confederates, under the cover of the woods, had managed to position themselves north of the entire XVI Corps line to their right and the XVII Corps line to their left. A member of Blair’s corps recalled “a long line of rebels” passing through the woods east of their position, “as though we were beneath their notice.” The Union soldiers poured a volley into the left flank of the Texans—men they could not see—that had little effect on their northward foray.12