The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta

by Gary Ecelbarger

  Grenville Dodge’s XVI Corps, half a mile east of Bald Hill, had suffered more than 500 casualties in the first two hours of the battle. With Sprague’s brigade still licking its wounds at Decatur, Dodge remained in position with 4,000 soldiers in three brigades from Sweeny’s and Fuller’s divisions. All of the Union batteries supporting those three corps had been hard tested throughout the afternoon. Four batteries—19 cannons—had fallen into Confederate hands, leaving 1,000 artillerists to man the 77 cannons of the army still in position on Friday afternoon.

  General Hood was at a tremendous advantage to modify a plan that could achieve the same result that he forecasted twenty-four hours earlier: the complete rout of the Army of the Tennessee with a possibility still alive for the subsequent removal of Sherman’s entire district from the Atlanta side of the Chattahoochie River. The two attacking corps of his army were still intact. General Hardee’s corps had suffered nearly 3,000 losses at that stage of the battle, but his stragglers were entering the ranks and reassembling for another attempt at the XVII Corps position. Two of his divisions were ineffective, but Cleburne and Maney still had fight left in their divisions. General Cheatham’s corps had suffered much less than Hardee by 4:30 P.M., with almost 13,000 men available in the ranks. The two Confederate corps numbered close to 22,000 officers and men, certainly strong enough to exploit weakness at the Union left flank and to widen the breach of the right flank.

  Hood still had the services of his uncommitted corps under General Alexander P. Stewart, a force of 12,000 that stood just north of Atlanta, an hour’s march from the contested field. Hood had been wary of an attack by General Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland throughout the day, but with four hours of daylight remaining (the sun set at 7:49 P.M., with less than an hour of working light for an army after that), the possibility of an attack from the north waned with each passing minute. If General Hood committed 10,000 men from Stewart’s corps against the Army of the Tennessee, he reasonably would have an army approaching 35,000 against an opponent numbering less than 20,000.

  Hood never pulled that trigger. Stewart stayed in position north of Atlanta for the remainder of that Friday, perhaps for no other reason than the fact that Hood never appreciated the huge advantage he held at 4:30 P.M. “On the 22d we were ordered to be in readiness to attack the enemy … following the corps on our right [Cheatham’s],” reported Stewart, “but for reasons unknown to me the battle did not become general.” Still, even without the participation of Stewart’s men, Hood’s army had sufficient time, men, and momentum to accomplish what had not been realized to date in the Civil War—the complete destruction of a major field army. A XVI Corps soldier in the rear of all the swirling action still could appreciate the dire situation of his army. Noting the death of McPherson, the rout of the XV Corps, and the appearance of mass confusion in the supply and ammunition trains near him, the soldier took a moment to confess to his diary, “the day at this time looks gloomy for us.”38

  The Army of the Tennessee was on the verge of collapse and annihilation. The consequence of that potential Union disaster could ultimately affect the most important presidential election in United States history.

  9

  A HUMAN HURRICANE ON HORSEBACK

  For a body of troops that never reached even half the numbers of the famous Army of the Potomac, the Army of the Tennessee boasted skilled and successful commanders unmatched by any Union army during the then three-year course of the Civil War. First led by Ulysses S. Grant, succeeded by William Tecumseh Sherman, and most recently by the protégé of both, James McPherson, the army had to endure the death of its latest commander in the midst of a harrowing fight, a martyrdom experienced by a major army just once earlier in the war when the first commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, General Albert Sydney Johnson, bled to death at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. That contributed to the eventual defeat of his army in that two-day battle. (Brigadier Nathaniel Lyon, in charge of a division-sized Union army, was the first commander killed in battle on August 10, 1861, at Wilson’s Creek, Missouri.) In the first two and a half hours that followed General McPherson’s death, his army had been bent but never broken by the seemingly relentless assaults of Cleburne’s division. Nevertheless, at 4:30 P.M. on Friday, July 22, 1864, not only was the Army of the Tennessee broken, it was about to collapse under the weight of the penetrating assaults of Cheatham’s corps against its right flank with a pending resurgence of Hardee’s corps against the left.

  No individual officer personified the Army of the Tennessee better than Major General John A. Logan, the fourth commander in the two-and-a-half-year history of the army and a man who had held the helm of the army for less than three hours. Logan was a homegrown product, entering the army before it was named for the river that coursed through the theater where the troops had gained their fame in 1862. Logan was General Grant’s political general, helping Grant succeed on the battlefronts at Fort Donelson, Raymond, and Champion Hill, and on the home front with a stirring series of patriotic speeches delivered in Illinois between military campaigns in the summers of 1862 and 1863. U.S. Congressman Logan had entered the war as a colonel without a military education or previous battle experience; his regiment consisted of his Southern Illinois constituents. In any case, General Grant was so impressed with Logan’s natural military instincts in the first months of action in 1861–1862, that he rammed through two successive promotions for Logan after President Lincoln had left the Democrat’s name off his list of recommendations.

  MAJOR GENERAL JOHN ALEXANDER LOGAN, U.S.A.

  Logan was the senior corps commander who replaced the late General McPherson as the head of the Army of the Tennessee. Three years after the war he nationalized a regional grave-decorating tradition and called it Memorial Day, an annual tradition that is his legacy today. (Courtesy of MOLLUS-Massachusetts, USAMHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.)

  Major General Logan’s star shone brilliantly throughout the Vicksburg campaign in 1863, so much so that he was rewarded with the prized command of the XV Corps at the end of the year. Logan led those troops in Georgia for eleven weeks, turning a corps that had a shaky record of accomplishment prior to the Atlanta campaign into one that broke a Union stalemate at Resaca, won a resounding victory on the Union right flank at Dallas, Georgia, and gamely assaulted the seemingly impenetrable Confederate defense at Kennesaw Mountain, all the while representing the fighting portion of the Army of the Tennessee for the first two months of the Atlanta campaign. Members of the XVI Corps were understandably irked at dropping out of newspapers because of the accomplishments of Logan and his corps, one of them railing that those newsmen had far too much “Logan on the brain.”1

  Those sniping comments, however, were rare and easily superseded by statements of awe and admiration, particularly in regard to Logan’s unique gift of inspiration. After observing Logan in action, an Iowan in the XVI Corps insisted, “I am satisfied that the biggest coward in the world would stand on his head on top of the breastworks if Logan was present and told him to do so.”2 A member of the 31st Missouri hailed Logan with a glowing tribute in an 1864 letter to his wife:

  I wish you could see him, riding along the lines on the eve of a battle … with his hat in his hand—his large dark eyes flashing like a glance of an eagle, his swarthy complexion relieved by his huge mustache, and his long, glossy, black hair falling, in tangled masses, about his neck—he is a picture for an artist’s pencil. Brave as a lion—heedless in personal danger—full of a patriot’s enthusiasm and fire; no wonder that his soldiers love and venerate the man!!3

  Indeed they did. General Mortimer Leggett admitted that Generals Grant and Sherman received the utmost confidence and respect when they rode down the lines while in charge of that army. “But when General Logan rode down the line,” continued Leggett, “every voice was heard [in] a shout. He seemed to have a power to awaken all the enthusiasm that was in the troops, to the extent that no other officer in the army seemed to possess. He would sti
r up their blood in battle. The manner in which he sat his horse, the manner in which he would hold his hat … seemed to have the power to call out of the men every particle of fight that was in them.” 4

  No more important time existed for Logan to call out every particle of fight than in the late afternoon of July 22. At the start of it, ironically, Logan perhaps felt at ease. At the time Brown’s division struck Lightburn’s Union position at 4:15 P.M., Logan was with General Dodge, overseeing the near-completion of the U-shaped army line with the placement of three brigades of Schofield’s Army of the Ohio to the left of the XVI Corps to extend Dodge’s flank and cover the road to Decatur, facing eastward toward the town that Wheeler’s cavalry had assaulted. Those very large XXIII Corps brigades of Schofield’s Army of the Ohio added 7,000 troops to the Army of the Tennessee line, but aside from deployment on the field, none of those troops would need to be engaged in battle that day. On Dodge’s right, the deployment of Colonel Hugo Wangelin’s brigade and the three regiments of Colonel James S. Martin’s brigade provided adequate filler for the gap that had existed between the XVI and XVII Corps for over three hours. Dodge had pulled his three brigades of the XVI Corps northward and re-formed them in a stronger position and to ease the connection with the XVII Corps near Bald Hill on his right. General Blair had also readjusted his line by bending back his left flank to complete the connection by flattening and squaring off the U shape in the Federal line. No heavy Confederate activity threatened any part of that portion of the field between 4:00 P.M. and 4:30 P.M.5

  At 4:15 P.M. Logan received Captain Horatio N. Wheeler, his assistant adjutant general, who galloped to him from the collapsing XV Corps line to inform his general of the catastrophe that developed on the Union right. Immediately, Logan sent H. N. Wheeler to Colonel Martin off to the east, where he had been positioned with the XXIII Corps detachment off Dodge’s left flank. Martin was ordered to return to the rest of his brigade with his three regiments. Knowing that would not be sufficient, Logan then directed Dodge to relinquish one of his brigades to him, advising him to borrow troops from the XXIII Corps on his left if his position was threatened. Dodge immediately ordered out Mersy’s brigade from his new line.6

  Mersy’s brigade, numbering close to 1,000 soldiers, and Martin’s three detached regiments, 750 officers and men, hustled northwestward as they converged toward the contested XV Corps line. They would arrive separately and independently, and both brigades were farther away from Manigault’s and Sharp’s brigades than their support. Confederate Major General Henry D. Clayton’s division prepared to enter the fight with four brigades extending for a mile from the Georgia Railroad northward. One of Clayton’s brigades, Brigadier General Randall Gibson’s Louisiana troops, was held in reserve, an unfortunate decision for the Confederates given that Gibson was the only general and the most experienced of all of Clayton’s brigade commanders that day. Still, Clayton was prepared to commit over 3,000 soldiers to the fight.7

  A distinct interval between the assaults of Brown’s and Clayton’s divisions existed at 4:30 P.M., the second moment of silence across the Atlanta battlefield in the past ninety minutes. All the while, Confederates within the Union works “processed” their spoils of war. South Carolinians pulled 2 cannons from the captured Battery A westward on the Decatur road back to Atlanta. Following behind the brass cannons were several hundred Union prisoners of war from the 2nd and 4th divisions of the XV Corps. The captives were destined to head deeper into Georgia where they would be interned at Andersonville prison. Lieutenant George W. Bailey, a staff aid to General Morgan L. Smith, was one of those Federals fortunate to escape death or injury, but not fortunate enough to escape capture by jubilant members of Cheatham’s corps. Escorted from the yard of the Troup Hurt house to Atlanta, Bailey observed the macabre nature of a battle:

  … we passed on the road through our works toward Atlanta. The cries and moans of the wounded arose through the thick smoke. Some Federal dead lay stretched in and near our works, but in front [west] of them was an awful scene. The ground for over one hundred yards was thickly strewn with the rebel dead and wounded. Many cries arose for “water”; some were struggling to extricate themselves from mangled heaps of dead, and calling for aid; some were vainly striving to stop the flow of crimson tide gushing from ghastly wounds; many were fitfully gasping their last breath. But the great majority were grim and cold in the strong embrace of death, lying in almost every conceivable position; some were riddled with rifleballs; some were torn with grape and canister shot, and at not infrequent intervals the bodies were literally heaped together. There were young and old countenances; some distorted, others calm. Stony eyes gazed meaninglessly at us as we picked our way; others stared wildly into space.8

  Most of the Union prisoners were treated well in Confederate hands, although the captors enjoyed moments to intimidate their prey. One of the Yankees, much frightened about falling into the hands of the 41st Mississippi, sheepishly asked Sergeant J. E. Neighbors, “Are you going to kill all of us?” The Mississippian’s response was harsh and ominous—but it may not have been serious. “That’s our calculation,” responded Neighbors. “We came out for that purpose.” Another member of the regiment prided himself on how he acted toward his prisoners. “It is a source of much gratification to me to know that during my three years in the Southern army I never treated a Union soldier unkindly, either by word or act,” he asserted. The same soldier also claimed to capture vehicles containing whisky near De Gress’s battery. If true, that capture delighted the captors more than the human prisoners did.9

  The XV Corps prisoners were likely diverted southward as General Clayton’s men prepared to continue the attack. Clayton designed an en echelon assault; i.e., brigade-sized attacks from right to left, each successive brigade initiating its assault after the one on its right has made contact with the enemy. That method necessarily sacrificed the leading brigade to rifle fire from the front and flank, but while the enemy enfiladed the initial assaulters, they would be subjected to a surprise front attack from Clayton’s next brigade while their attention was diverted. Clayton directed his brigadiers to advance with the sun to their backs and to prolong the left flank by entering the fight in that staggered fashion.10

  The first of Clayton’s brigades to enter the fight were the six Georgia regiments under the overall leadership of Colonel Abda Johnson, formerly the commander of the 40th Georgia Infantry. Most of the regiments in that brigade were led by a newly promoted commander. John M. Brown, a lieutenant colonel and the brother of the governor, commanded the 1st Georgia State Line within the brigade, replacing the original colonel wounded at Peachtree Creek two days earlier. Captain Lovick P. Thomas found himself in charge of the 42nd Georgia for an absurd reason. Major William H. Hulsey had commanded that regiment since May, but had taken a nap that July 22 afternoon, sleep deprived from overnight duty. He left instructions to be aroused if his regiment was called into action, but the person charged with that simple task failed in his duty, leaving Hulsey in a deep sleep and Captain Thomas in charge of the entire regiment.11

  The Georgians of Johnson’s brigade slipped into the Federal works on the victorious heels of Manigault’s and Sharp’s brigades of Brown’s division. The 42nd Georgia swarmed around the Troup Hurt house, recently secured by the two successful brigades of Brown’s division. The 40th Georgia, farther south of the advance, encountered much more resistance. Sergeant B. J. McGinnis resorted to extraordinary means to fight off the Yankee threat to the Georgians. Without a loaded weapon in his possession, McGinnis watched in horror as one of the blue-clad soldiers bayoneted a Georgian near him. McGinnis picked up a spade in the freshly converted trenches and used it as his bayonet swinging it and spearing the man who wounded his comrade and another man next to him. An Alabaman in Coltart’s brigade also used a spade to incapacitate an Indiana soldier in Harrow’s division. One of McGinnis’s “spade victims” was found with a thigh broken by a pistol shot and three distinct cuts on his f
ace from the makeshift weapon.12

  Three Confederate brigades hovered within the XV Corps works in the region of the Georgia Railroad at 4:30 P.M., a penetration of more than 2,500 Southern soldiers (another 700 or so entered the Union line 1,000 yards south of them, where Coltart’s Alabamans came in at Reuben Williams’s old position). Behind Johnson’s Georgia brigade and off his left flank came the Alabama brigade commanded by Colonel Bushrod Jones, a command of roughly 900 officers and men, including the pickets posted in front. He was nearly a quarter of a mile behind the Georgians and by the time he closed the gap, Jones realized the difficulty of trying to force his brigade into the breach created by the Confederate brigades in front of him. He rode up to the white house sitting just to the west side of the works where he met General Manigault and Colonel Sharp. They pointed off Jones’s left flank to show him the folly of attempting to advance straight on as they had done before him, for the 1st Division of the XV Corps was massing troops north of the penetration point and preparing a counterassault. Jones trotted to his left, faced his regiments obliquely from east to northeast, nearly at a right angle with Manigault’s brigade. Manigault was quite impressed with how his new brigade commander handled his troops, commending Colonel Jones as “one of the coolest fellows I ever saw, handling his command with great ease and judgement.” At the time Jones likely did not have equal admiration for General Manigault. As Jones prepared to meet the threat northeast of him he was surprised to see that Manigault and Colonel Sharp had pulled off the regiments of Jones’s brigade closest to the railroad and sent them into the works without his knowledge or approval.13