Private Celathiel Helms of the 63rd Georgia agreed with these assessments. “The men is all out of heart and say that Georgia will soon have to go under and they are going to the Yankees by the tens and twenties and hundreds almost every night,” Helms wrote to his wife in early July. “Johnston’s army is very much demoralized as much as an army ever gets to be for all the newspapers say that Johnston’s army is in fine spirits but the papers has told nothing but lies since the war commenced. I see that the Officers is down in the mouth and their faces looks very long and some of them say that they are fearful that all their men will go to the Yankees.” Private Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee, who wrote one of the finest memoirs of the war, asserted of Johnston: “He could fall back in the face of the foe as quietly and orderly as if on dress parade.”20
Atlanta resident Lieutenant Andrew Neal of the Marion Light Artillery was also despondent about the steady retreats under Johnston’s tenure. “I do pray we may never march with our face turned southward again,” he wrote to his family on July 17. “There was not an officer or man in this Army who ever dreamed of Johnston falling back this far or ever doubted he would attack when the time came. But I think he has been woefully outgeneraled and though he has inflicted loss on the enemy only precedented by Grant’s losses in Virginia he has made a losing bargain.”21
On May 21, Johnston’s chief of staff Mackall wrote in his journal that a recent withdrawal had “impaired confidence” in the army, and that there was “great alarm in [the] country around.” The town of Marietta, Mackall recorded, was “full of stragglers,” over 1,000 men were barefoot, and “some dissatisfaction” was noticed among the troops.22
After the war in 1874, W. J. Byrne, surgeon of the 9th Kentucky Infantry (part of the famous Kentucky “Orphan Brigade”) wrote to Hood about the effects Johnston’s policy had on the army:
The campaign from Dalton to Atlanta was a terrible one in the shape of losses by desertions, and I [well] remember the disappointment of the army generally in not undertaking a movement in the rear of Genl. Sherman after he had entered what was known to us as Rocky Face Gap, at which time Genl Johnston moved off through Dalton south. In fact before we crossed the Chatahoochie river, it was estimated, from despondency and our retrograde movement, the army had lost between 17,000 and 20,000 men by desertion, the most of us regarding the movement as inexplicable from the fact that if we were not able to meet the Federal forces in a broken mountainous country where we had the advantage of position, how could we properly be benefitted by a move to a level [campaign] country, where a superior force could more easily pass around us, with much less danger and more ease to themselves.23
Disapproval of Johnston’s repeated withdrawals was also recorded by those outside the Army of Tennessee. Josiah Gorgas, the Confederate chief of ordnance stationed in Richmond, wrote in his diary in late May that “Johnston verifies all our predictions of him … he is falling back as fast as his legs can carry him … Where he will stop heaven only knows.”24
S. J. Fleherty, a Federal soldier from the 102nd Illinois Infantry, ridiculed Johnston’s strategy: “It is said that after Gen. Johnston had followed his retreating policy several weeks, the rebels declared that their army was commanded by ‘Old Billy Sherman,’ that they invariably moved when Sherman gave the command and Johnston only superintended the details of the movement.”25
Sherman’s soldiers also remarked about the fighting spirit of Southerners, which seemed to diminish during Johnston’s persistent retreating. After the battle of Resaca in mid-May, a Northerner wrote that, for the first time, he had seen Rebels who could have escaped allow themselves to be captured. “They were all thoroughly discouraged,” he concluded. Another Yankee wrote on June 6 that “nearly all” captured Confederates declared their discouragement and intention to “shirk rather than fight” if sent back into their ranks. Later that month, another Federal observed Rebel defenders who not only failed to fire their guns, but also allowed themselves to be taken prisoner. Some Federals also noted decreased fighting spirit among some Confederates after Hood took command, but it was no more common than under Johnston. According to Army of Tennessee historian McMurry, “There is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the Confederates fought any better under one commander than the other.”26
Hood replaced Johnston on July 17—an event often described as causing universal outrage among the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee. A study of contemporary records, however, reveals that the army did not unanimously disapprove of the change. General William Bate, a division commander under Johnston and then Hood, wrote to Braxton Bragg on August 13, 1864:
I think our Army is now convinced of the ill effects of our long “backslide” and that it might have been avoided by delivering battle north of the Etowah. With few exceptions, Gen. Hood has grown in favor with his command. As I told you, I had some apprehensions to the effect of the removal of Gen. Johnston for he was popular with his troops but the opinion is gradually gaining lodgment in the popular mind of the army and country that in all such matters the President knows what is best and is generally correct.27
Some who did not populate the senior command structure also approved of Hood’s appointment. “Since Hood assumed command of this army,” explained an officer from Mississippi, “its policy has been changed from a defensive to an offensive attitude. I hope and believe that there will be no more retreats, but that we will move upon the enemy’s line at any and all times when practical.” One Arkansan concluded in late July, “This army seems cheerful and confident of victory.” “The change of Commanders no doubt caused the death or capture of those near and dear to us,” wrote Sgt. Joel Murphree in late August, “but I do believe it was the best for the success of our cause.” Colonel Irvine Walker of the 10th South Carolina Infantry wrote on July 26 that General Hood “intends fighting for Atlanta.” The Palmetto State officer continued, “I have no doubt Johnston would have allowed himself flanked out of it before he risked a general engagement.”28
After sifting through these sources and countless others, Richard McMurry reached this conclusion:
Many, perhaps most, Southerners maintained their confidence in Johnston right up to the time he was relieved. A large number undoubtedly were demoralized by Hood’s appointment to command and by the tactics that he used against Sherman. However, as one reads more and more letters of the men who were in the campaign, it becomes obvious that the evidence is so mixed that no simplified explanation of Confederate morale is possible. Feelings were nowhere near unanimous one way or the other.29
By mid-July 1864, most of Atlanta’s civilian population had evacuated and much of its industrial machinery had been transferred to other Southern cities. Although still a transportation hub, Atlanta was, as one historian explained it, “a city that had been reduced to a symbol, not a place that was itself any longer of value.” Symbolic as it might be, Atlanta retained its critical importance to the political fortunes of the Confederacy as Jefferson Davis fought to deny Abraham Lincoln any significant and definitive military successes before the November 1864 national election. Lincoln’s opponent was the widely popular, if not militarily successful, Gen. George McClellan, whose Democratic Party advocated peace negotiations with the Confederacy. Davis hoped that war weariness in the North would, as historian Larry E. Nelson wrote, “result in the election of a presidential candidate amenable to Confederate independence.” The capitulation of Atlanta was a military victory Davis had to deny Lincoln.30
In an attempt to bring the war to a swift conclusion, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant launched five nearly simultaneous campaigns in the spring of 1864: Franz Sigel and David Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley, Nathaniel Banks along the Red River in Louisiana, Benjamin Butler on the Virginia peninsula, Sherman in Georgia, and his own offensive against Robert E. Lee in northern Virginia. Throughout these engagements, Lincoln anxiously awaited the major victories he knew he needed to win reelection. However, to the Northern president’s dismay, vigorous Confe
derate efforts rebuffed the campaigns guided by Sigel, Hunter, Banks, and Butler. Grant, meanwhile, fought a bloody overland slog from the Rapidan River south to the James, and then beyond to Petersburg and Richmond, where a stalemate ensued with Lee’s embattled Army of Northern Virginia. Sherman had spent most of April and all of June pressing Johnston closer to Atlanta. During this time frame, Northern casualties skyrocketed to their highest rate of the entire war. Sherman’s steady progress against Johnston’s Army of Tennessee offered the only positive news available to the increasingly impatient and discouraged Northern populace.
In a letter to Illinois congressman Elihu Washburne on August 16, 1864, Grant, the commanding general of all the Union armies, expressed the need for the North to remain resolute: “I have no doubt that the enemy are exceedingly anxious to hold out until the presidential election,” explained Grant. “They have many hopes from its effects.” When he learned that Hood had replaced Johnston, Grant asserted that the Kentuckian might be overly aggressive, but that he was “not destitute of ability.” Just eight days after Grant penned his letter, Henry Clayton, one of Hood’s division commanders, wrote to his wife on August 24, “I really feel encouraged that the war is soon to terminate. The Northern press is getting very decidedly for Peace.” Referring to Grant’s campaign against Richmond, Clayton added, “Grant has failed—Oh if we can only succeed in driving Sherman from Georgia!”31
For his part, Jefferson Davis knew well that war weariness was a double-edged sword that could lead to Lincoln’s defeat—but also weaken Confederate resolve. A letter to Davis from a friend in Mississippi written after Lincoln won reelection illustrated the problems Southern civilians encountered as the war dragged on, and the general despair that prevailed. “Many soldiers are writing home from Hood’s army that if Lincoln is reelected, they will fight no longer, but will return home, and that such is the general sentiment and resolve of the army,” explained Robert Hudson, who went on to add, “they will not fight four years longer,” and that the soldiers “meet with favor at home in these propositions.” Sherman’s successes in Georgia strengthened Lincoln’s hand while weakening Davis’s ability to keep his armies in the field.32
Davis’s distrust of Johnston’s ability to successfully lead an army in the field stretched back to the earliest months of the war. In Virginia, the general consistently refused to engage the Federals in battle on the peninsula. Instead, Johnston retreated up the neck of land to the outskirts of Richmond, where he finally launched an offensive. The bungled attack at Seven Pines/Fair Oaks failed and Johnston fell seriously wounded at the end of the first day. His penchant for persistently refusing to communicate his plans to Davis, his commander-in-chief, strained their relationship to the breaking point. The unreliability of what information Johnston was willing to share only further exacerbated the situation. When it came to military matters in general, as far as Davis was concerned, Joe Johnston was not to be trusted.
In his postwar memoirs, Johnston claimed that he had incurred only 9,972 losses in Georgia from Dalton to the outskirts of Atlanta, while inflicting some 60,000 casualties on Sherman’s three armies. “From the observation of our most experienced officers, daily statements of prisoners, and publications we read in the newspapers of Louisville, Cincinnati and Chicago,” Johnston wrote, “the Federal loss in killed and wounded must have been six times as great as ours.” In an attempt to corroborate this astounding contention, Johnston wrote that Sherman’s losses in the battles of Kennesaw Mountain and Pickett’s Mill alone “exceeded ours by more than ten to one.”33
On June 28, Georgia’s troublesome governor Joseph Brown wrote to President Davis, “[Atlanta] is to the Confederacy almost as important as the heart is to the human body. We must hold it.” Unwilling to surrender the important city, Davis relieved Johnston of command on July 17. Considering the president’s long and contentious relationship with Johnston, it is clear that the general was relieved solely because of his consistent failures in previous commands and his unwillingness to cooperate with the Confederate War Department.34
On February 18, 1865, Davis wrote a detailed 4,000-word letter intended for the Confederate Congress. In it, Davis explained why he could not accede to political and public demands to restore Johnston to command of the Army of Tennessee in the late winter of 1865. (The president ultimately acquiesced to Robert E. Lee’s request that he reappoint Johnston.) His letter (see Appendix 3) was never formally submitted to Congress, but he did send a copy to his friend, Mississippi Senator James Phelan, on March 1, 1865.35
Davis began his letter by expressing his early admiration for Johnston, voicing respect for the Virginian’s personal gallantry and professional abilities while both men had served in “the former Government.” The president went on to explain that he had assigned Johnston to three important army commands during the war, and that in all three instances he had failed, revealing “defects which unfit him” for further commands.36
During Johnston’s first service as commander of the Army of the Valley of Virginia, Davis recalled that he had promptly retreated from Harpers Ferry at the first appearance of the enemy, abandoning “a large quantity of materials and machinery for the manufacture of small-arms of the greatest value to the Confederacy.” The threat, according to Davis, had not been sufficient to withdraw the army, a fact that was later confirmed by the safe removal of the equipment by lightly armed Southern work parties.37 Davis also cited Johnston’s timidity and hesitation in moving his forces to Manassas to aid P. G. T. Beauregard’s imperiled army. Johnston “made serious objections” to the movement, explained Davis, “and only after repeated and urgent instructions did he move to make the proposed junction.” Johnston’s subsequent tardy arrival resulted in the absence and inability of a portion of his force to assist Gen. E. Kirby Smith who, acting without orders, “succeeded in reaching the battlefield in time to avert disaster.” Davis commented that Johnston (who after the Southern victory at First Manassas commanded his and Beauregard’s combined forces) “constantly declared his inability to assume offensive operations unless furnished with re-enforcements, which, as he was several times informed, the Government was unable to supply.” Moving his army to Centerville, Virginia, in the winter of 1861-62, Johnston “declared that his position was so insecure that it must be abandoned before the enemy could advance, but indicated no other line of defense as the proper one.” When summoned to Richmond in February 1862 and asked of his plans, Johnston replied that “his lines there were untenable, but when asked what new position he proposed to occupy, declared himself ignorant of the topography of the country in his rear.” Davis expressed shock at the native Virginian’s ignorance of the country he was charged to defend. Johnston, he declared, “had neglected the primary duty of a commander.” After he was provided engineers by the war department, Johnston announced that although his position was indeed favorable, he could not take the offensive unless he was again reinforced. Davis continued his letter intended for Congress:
The Government was soon afterward surprised by learning that General Johnston had commenced a hasty retreat without giving notice of an intention to do so, though he had just been apprised of the improved prospect of re-enforcing him, and of the hope entertained by me that he would thus be enabled to assume the offensive. The retreat was without molestation or even demonstration from the enemy, but was conducted with such precipitation as to involve a heavy loss of supplies. Some valuable artillery was abandoned, a large depot of provisions was burned, blankets, shoes, and saddles were committed to flames, and this great sacrifice of property was so wanting in apparent justification as to produce a painful impression on the public mind, and to lead to an inquiry by a committee from Congress, which began an investigation into the subject, but did not report before Congress adjourned.38
The Federal army gave up its brief pursuit, changed its base to Fortress Monroe, and Johnston’s army was eventually transferred to Yorktown near the tip of the Virginia peninsula to defend ag
ainst an anticipated Federal move from that sector upon Richmond. Although Gen. John Magruder had been constructing defensive fortifications for several months, the persistently apprehensive Johnston “soon pronounced the position untenable, and made another hasty retreat, with another heavy loss of munitions and armament.” He commenced his retreat before advising Richmond, which in turn led to the sudden loss of Norfolk, “and with it was lost large supplies of all kinds, including machinery which could not be replaced in the Confederacy.” Johnston pulled his army back to the Chickahominy River where, according to Davis, he “suddenly crossed that stream without notice to the Government and retreated upon Richmond.”39
Davis went on to complain that even though Johnston had remained idle in front of Richmond, he neglected to erect effective fortifications and had once again failed to conduct adequate reconnaissance; therefore, he remained ignorant of the topography of the countryside and was unable to ascertain enemy movements. Davis also detailed Johnston’s mistakes that led to the Confederate defeat at Seven Pines, where the commander was seriously wounded. Although he acknowledged Johnston’s personal courage, the president concluded, “His wound rendered him unfit for further service in the field for some months, and terminated his first important command, which he had administered in a manner as to impair my confidence in his fitness to conduct a campaign.”40
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