The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta

by Gary Ecelbarger

  “Susan” Woods received verbal orders and advanced the two brigades of his division southward into the fray. His order came from General Morgan L. Smith, who received his orders from none other than General Sherman, who was overseeing the deployment of Schofield’s batteries on the hill that housed his headquarters one-half mile north of De Gress’s guns. Woods’s seven regiments—all but two from Iowa—descended one hill, crossed the marshy ground in its creek valley, and ascended the contested height on which stood the Troup Hurt house and opposing forces on each side of it.30

  Woods’s 2nd Brigade, commanded by Colonel James A. Williamson, struck the flank and rear of Clayton’s line at the earthworks, held tenuously by the 36th and 38th Alabama of Johnson’s brigade and the three Alabama regiments of Higley’s brigade. The three attacking Iowa regiments matched the numbers of the five Alabama regiments on the Confederate left flank, but their advantageous position, with Union guns supporting them, gave them the upper hand.

  As Williamson’s men struck the works, Colonel Milo Smith’s brigade rushed in from the northeast, closing upon the Confederate position like a huge hinge. Driving all vestiges of Confederates away from the works, the Iowans, Missourians, and Ohioans swarmed around De Gress’s battery, apparently abandoned by most of the 81st Ohio who had seized it earlier. The 1st Division soldiers claimed their capture, sparking a decades-long debate about who deserved the credit for possession of those contested cannons. Woods would insist in his official report and in his postbattle and postwar writings that his men recaptured De Gress’s Battery, a claim that holds no water given the opposing accounts—including Captain De Gress’s—that award the 81st Ohio and Adams’s (Mersy’s) brigade with that honor. At a cost of 77 men out of 2,000 engaged, Woods’s division effectively mopped up that portion of the battlefield.31

  No longer in dispute was the possession of the earthworks and the region earlier held by the XV Corps. It was back in Union hands, secured by 5:00 P.M. Both Confederate division commanders—Brown and Clayton—saw that their cause was lost. General Cheatham, whose presence throughout the hour-long fight has never been ascertained, had all but one brigade of his corps committed into the fight. For a diversionary assault, Cheatham’s men certainly accomplished their mission but could stay no longer. He ordered his men back to their works.

  For the 10th South Carolina, the order to withdrawal was painful to bear. “It did seem hard,” lamented one of the Gamecocks. “We had built these breastworks, given them up to the enemy, re-taken them at a very heavy sacrifice and now we had to give them up again.” The unsettling feeling that all of the sacrifice “had been for nothing” haunted them as they worked their way back to the safety of the works they had created a mile to the rear. The Carolinians and the rest of Cheatham’s corps had inflicted more than 500 lethal and nonlethal wounds upon the XV Corps, captured 500 hundred others, and then owned 2 of their cannons, but the cost to the Confederates was horrifying. Close to 2,000 Southerners were killed, wounded, or captured in Cheatham’s corps. Furthermore, the lines were back in the same appearance and position they held at the midmorning.32

  Hood’s corps-sized diversion had ended, partly because Hood sent it with a diversion in mind. Hood had always intended for Hardee’s corps to carry the responsibility of rolling up the Union army, expecting that to be accomplished in the morning of July 22. Yet at 5:00 P.M. on Friday, with three hours of daylight remaining, another lull on the battlefield indicated that the battle of Atlanta was over.

  It was an incorrect assumption, for General Pat Cleburne had one more act to perform before the curtain closed on that stage.

  10

  DESPERATION

  The XV Corps—with more than a little help from the resurgent Adams’s (Mersy’s) brigade—successfully restored its original line by 5:00 P.M., a feat that was not even attempted by the Union army on the southern end of the line. General Hardee’s three-hour assault against the XVI and XVII Corps had not swept those corps from the field, but it did force them to accept the loss of a large portion of their line. This was particularly true for General Giles Smith’s division of Blair’s XVII corps. Both of Giles Smith’s brigades were rocked by Cleburne’s attack and sent northward where they had intermingled with General Leggett’s division for two hours. Nearly the entire extent of the XVII Corps line was gone; only its northern anchor on Bald Hill remained. Three quarters of a mile of Union earthworks were lost to the Confederates or sat in a tenuous position between Bald Hill and the Confederate line.

  The remnant of the XVI Corps also was forced to adjust its position, pulling back northward to a position where its commander, General Grenville M. Dodge, could make the best use of the two brigades remaining in the Union rear. The new position, plus the arrival of Wangelin’s brigade from Woods’s division of the XV Corps between the two corps and the divisions of the XXIII Corps (Army of the Ohio) made the new Union line change from a fish hook appearance to three sides of a square, each three quarters of a mile long, with the Decatur road and the Georgia Railroad topping off that box. That determined Union defense was then designed to prevent any Confederate troops from entering the box and disintegrating its sides. With the successful repulse of Cheatham’s Confederate corps in the west, the chief threat to the integrity of the defense would emanate from the south.1

  General Blair was responsible for the lower left side of that box. Bald Hill protruded from the corner, a vision of carnage unseen in most previous battles of the Civil War. Blair’s men had shed gallons of blood to retain possession of the hill and their commander was determined not to relinquish it. He tapped General Leggett to hold the hill with the handful of regiments comprising his 1st and 3rd brigades (Colonel George E. Bryant’s and Colonel Adam G. Malloy’s) facing westward, the 30th Illinois of Bryant’s brigade serving as the corner regiment of the division, facing southward. Leggett shifted the three Ohio regiments of his 2nd Brigade (commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Greenberry F. Wiles) to extend eastward from the left flank of the 30th Illinois. In a cornfield at the base of the hill, Wiles positioned the 68th Ohio to the left (east) of the 30th Illinois, following farther eastward with the 78th Ohio and then the 20th Ohio. The remnants of Hall’s Iowa brigade (Giles Smith’s 3rd Brigade) completed the XVII Corps formation. The 11th Iowa took a position on Bald Hill, facing southeast. The 13th and 15th Iowa anchored the left flank of the southward-facing line, positioned off the left flank of the 20th Ohio. The regiments of Potts’s 1st Brigade took the reserve position behind the Iowans and Ohioans.2

  The six regiments in the frontline of the southward-facing portion of the corps prepared for the inevitable attack against their position. According to one of the soldiers, “Logs, rails or anything that could stop a Rebel bullet were hastily piled in line and every man with a tin plate and bayonet soon had a slight breastwork.” Adding to the Union protection was artillery. The Black Horse Battery and the howitzers of Battery D, 1st Illinois Light Artillery, stayed on Bald Hill, prepared to sweep the field between the opposing lines.3

  Additional focus on Bald Hill was directed at the protection on its crest. The prominent breastwork was originally constructed and held by Cleburne’s men on July 20 and was constructed with a crescent moon shape oriented to the south and east. Since captured by Leggett’s men, the additional walls were constructed to face west and southwest, all areas made thicker and higher than the original primitive structure. Thus, the works then looked like a fort with walls 8 feet high, “perpendicular on the outside and an inclined plane on the inside.” Open only on the north, the horseshoe-shaped structure housed Buckeyes and Hawkeyes, primarily companies from the 11th Iowa Infantry. Surrounding the fort and facing away from it were the Union protectors, most from the Old Northwest Territory: Wisconsin men to the west and north (under Bryant), Illinoisans (Bryant’s men), and Ohioans (Wiles’s men), stationed southwest and south, and Iowans (under Hall) to the east, with artillerists from Illinois and Michigan reinforcing the entire knoll. “I claim no more
for our regiment than that our position took us to the key to the hill,” explained a member of Bryant’s 12th Wisconsin, “but if it had not been for Hoosiers, Suckers, Hawkeyes, Buckeyes and Badgers, our stay there would have been short.” The collective mission for the troops atop Bald Hill was never to lose possession of it.4

  General Blair wished he had more men for his line, but he did not appear overly concerned about it. At 4:30 P.M. he had a dispatch sent directly to General Sherman. After notifying Sherman in writing that his two divisions had been “repulsing Hardee’s corps with heavy loss,” Blair made a most interesting request. “The enemy have become quiet,” Blair revealed, “and if I had a fresh brigade I would recover all that I have lost and drive the enemy easily.” General Blair did not expect to be attacked again, believing a handful of regiments was all the infusion he needed to recover the ground relinquished by Giles Smith. It is also apparent that by sending his request to General Sherman, General Blair did not know that Black Jack Logan was in charge of the army—evidence that Logan and Blair had not had a chance to communicate since the death of General McPherson.5

  General Blair did not appreciate the foreboding sense within his ranks that the XVII Corps was about to be victimized by a huge attack commencing from the south, a Confederate assault larger and more devastating than the midafternoon attack they withstood three hours earlier. Shortly after the repulse of Lowrey’s brigade at 3:00 P.M., General Cleburne had been rounding up all of his available troops for a grand assault. Ostensibly under Hardee’s orders, Cleburne marked that mission with his signature. He rounded up fragments of his own spent brigades such as Lowrey’s, Govan’s, and James A. Smith’s (then commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert B. Young), as well as lightly or uncommitted forces from other divisions in Hardee’s corps to launch the largest coordinated attack of the day.

  MAJOR GENERAL FRANCIS “FRANK” PRESTON BLAIR JR. AND HIS XVII CORPS STAFF, U.S.A.

  Frank Blair, the bearded commander seated in the center of the front row, was a political general and a member of a very prominent family. His corps arrived in Georgia in the middle of the Atlanta campaign. Blair’s first big battle with the XVII Corps was Atlanta. He lost 2,500 men in two days of fighting, but his staunch defense against repeated attacks foiled Hood’s grand plan. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  General Lowrey aided Cleburne in his efforts to round up troops for the grand assault. Hampered in that his own brigade was essentially inoperative—“cut to pieces,” Lowrey later explained—Lowrey assumed the role of supporting the first line attack. He believed the opportunity for success came and went an hour or so earlier when he gained permission to attack with the Georgia brigade of Mercer’s division, commanded by Colonel William Barkuloo after Mercer took over the division upon the death of General William H. T. Walker. According to Lieutenant Hamilton Branch, “Lowrey then came galloping up to us and told us that we now had the yanks where we wanted them, and that now we would charge them and not leave one to tell the tale, and says he, I know that you are just the boys to do it.” Perhaps they were, but their commander was not. Recently recovered from a severe illness, the July Atlanta heat consumed Colonel Barkuloo, who was forced to relinquish command to Lieutenant Colonel Morgan Rawls.6

  As it turned out Lowrey’s and Rawls’s brigades would have to wait, for they literally bumped into Maney’s division while trying to work their way through the woods to the flank, which delayed them considerably. Lowrey considered the true opportunity lost by the slowness of Maney’s men, but as evening approached another opportunity arose and Lowrey was able to shift the brigades. Rawls’s brigade shifted several hundred yards westward, from a point opposite the center of Dodge’s XVI corps to one off the west flank of Blair’s XVII Corps. Coalescing in that region were portions of every other division of Hardee’s corps: two brigades from Maney’s Tennessee division, Thomas Benton Smith’s brigade of Georgians and Tennesseans from Bate’s division, and Lowrey’s and Govan’s and a small portion of James A. Smith’s brigade from Cleburne’s force. Although representatives from seven brigades were forming there, the total number of soldiers prepared to participate topped off at 6,000 officers and men. Cleburne organized the attackers in two lines. The front consisted of Colonel Francis M. Walker’s brigade on the left, Rawls’s Georgians in the center, and Govan’s men on the right.7

  By far the largest and healthiest Confederate brigade on that mission was the Tennessee brigade of Colonel Francis M. Walker, a brigade that claimed an additional regiment—the 19th Tennessee—as a stipulation for Colonel Walker taking the helm of General Maney’s former command. Colonel Walker was a sound replacement for General Maney. An experienced and gallant leader (and the nephew of Zachary Taylor), Walker commanded the only brigade in Hardee’s corps not to take casualties up to that point on Friday; the Tennesseans had spent the entire afternoon marching and countermarching. Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee Infantry noted that their position was barely 200 yards from where they commenced their march the previous night, a revelation that bothered him nearly twenty years later. “It was a ‘flank movement’ you see,” railed Watkins in 1882, “and had to be counted that way anyhow. When one army makes a flank movement, it is courtesy on the part of the other army to recognize the flank movement, and to change his base.”8

  Frustration, though, was the only ailment suffered within the ranks of Colonel Walker’s men. In fact, the long respite allowed stragglers to return to their respective regiments within his brigade. Colonel Walker’s brigade was back to full strength, perhaps 1,500 officers and men. Rawls’s brigade, having sustained only 15 casualties in front of the XVI Corps, likely carried 1,200 soldiers on the right of Colonel Walker. Cleburne probably roused up another 800–1,000 officers and men from the Arkansas (Govan) and Texas (Young) brigades of his division to represent the right flank of the Confederate attack line.9

  At 6:00 P.M. Cleburne sent them all forward. Close to 3,500 frontline Confederates stormed the Union works; at least 2,000 more waited in a second wave of support behind them. The Tennesseans under Colonel Walker headed eastward, the Georgians under Rawls keeping pace in a northeastward path on their right, and Govan’s Arkansans charging due north over some of the same ground Lowrey’s brigade had captured three hours earlier. The Southerners reached the first set of earthworks, the old line once held by Giles Smith’s division earlier that day. General Cleburne personally led the Tennesseans from Colonel Walker’s brigade. With sword drawn, the general bellowed, “Follow me, boys.” Follow they did, keeping but a few paces behind Cleburne, who was distinctively attired in a bobtail coat. Except for a Union skirmish line, the earthworks were undefended and easily claimed by the Confederates. Nevertheless, the main Union line looked ominous a quarter of a mile ahead of them on top of Bald Hill, and it stretched eastward for more than 1,000 yards.10

  There were half as many defenders as there were attackers. Colonel Hugo Wangelin’s XV Corps Missouri brigade of 900 officers and men bridged the left flank of Blair’s XVII Corps with the right flank of Brigadier General John W. Fuller’s brigade of Dodge’s XVI corps. Those Missourians under Wangelin continued to escape any action by the sheer happenstance of their position. They would spend the rest of the battle witnessing a grand assault of Confederates against Blair’s new and improved line. Wangelin’s brigade was the only Union unit on the field not to be engaged. It registered a mere 5 casualties for its service on July 22. To their immediate right, the 13th and 15th Iowa also would view the action rather than participate in it, a circumstance of their deployed position that would benefit those decimated commands.11

  Cleburne’s point of attack was directed from opposite angles at the same regiments who had defended Bald Hill throughout the afternoon, however, the 11th Iowa was to get into the action as an additional deployed regiment on the knoll. For the second time in four hours, the Hawkeyes were struck by Govan’s Razorbacks, advancing over the same path previously used by Lowrey’s brigade. Ironically, the 11th
Iowa was the only XVII Corps regiment that had grown in numbers during the afternoon with the return of three detached companies and an additional 100 men who had been on fatigue duty. Govan would have envied the Iowans’ fortune, for his command suffered so much in their successful rout of Hall’s brigade from their entrenched flank early that afternoon that it was a wonder that his brigade could take the offensive again just a few hours later. Attacking with no more than 900 men in the entire brigade (plus scores of Texans from Young’s brigade on his right), Govan’s brigade was weakened by the incredible number of regimental and company officers killed and wounded in his first attack of the day. With the loss of three quarters of his field officers and likely an equal proportion of company officers from the gallant action on the Union flank, most of Govan’s companies and regiments entered the evening fight led by men alien to their new commands.12

  That was a time for stellar leadership to be displayed from the lowest ranks. Captain William F. Bourne stood out as one to meet that challenge. Bourne grew up in Memphis and captained a company originally called “the Young Guard,” which eventually became incorporated as Company B of the 3rd Confederate Infantry, a regiment of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee men led by a fellow captain throughout the Georgia campaign in 1864. The regiment was the only one in the brigade not consolidated with another, but it should have been because it carried a mere 70 men onto the battlefield. The 3rd Confederate missed the afternoon assault but came up in time to participate in the evening attack.13

  Captain Bourne and the rest of Govan’s men passed through the woods they had owned since the afternoon and swarmed into the open creek valley 300 yards south of Bald Hill. Govan made two quick and angst-filled discoveries that imperiled him much more than they had Lowrey: First, the Union defenders had protected the east and south sides of the hill with earthworks covering their front and flank; and second, additional angling works then threatened the Confederate attackers with a menacing enfilading fire. Govan shifted his men slightly westward to face off directly against the 11th Iowa, more specifically at the southern side of the fort housing about 100 of them and led by Captain John Anderson of Company A. Captain Anderson was conspicuous while under fire here; a witness on the hill called him “a host in himself” as Anderson loaded guns for the privates, pointed out important developments to fellow officers, yelled out words of encouragement to all, and was even seen firing loaded rifles at the Arkansans.