John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General

by Hood, Stephen

  Contrary to popular belief, the movement into Tennessee had a positive impact on the army. “The army is a unit,” Col. E. J. Harvie informed the Confederate War Department in Richmond, “and buoyant with hope.” Dr. Charles Quintard agreed. A chaplain in the Army of Tennessee, Quintard recorded in his diary on October 17, 1864, that “The spirit of the Army has been greatly improved by this forward movement.” Dr. Urban Owen wrote on November 19, 1864, just before the invasion, “Our whole army is eager to move onward… . Our army is very confident and in fine health.” General Henry Clayton was also in good spirits and wrote about it on November 8: “We have the brightest anticipations—our march so far has been entirely satisfactory. Our troops are perfectly jubilant. They are well clad and in all respects we are ready to move forward, or do whatever else our General may order.” Clayton continued: “I had a review of my Division today & it looked finely. Whatever our people at home may do or say I do not believe our army can ever be conquered. We may suffer temporary defeat, but will rally and fight on.” Private Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee Infantry later recalled how “every pulse did beat and leap, and how every heart did throb with emotions of joy” as the invasion commenced and the army approached Tennessee.14

  In contrast to the cynical and often belittling portrayal of Hood’s Tennessee Campaign set forth by most modern authors, the tone of earlier historians toward both Hood and the concept of the offensive move north was much different. Typical of the more composed and reasoned tone of early 20th century commentators was David S. Muzzey’s 1922 assessment of Hood’s movement:

  General Hood, who had replaced Johnston when Sherman was approaching Atlanta, left Georgia to take care of itself as best it could and struck across the Tennessee River to crush Thomas. If he succeeded it would mean the undoing of Chattanooga, the reoccupation of Tennessee, and the opportunity for Hood with his victorious army to move eastward and cooperate with either the Confederate troops in the Carolinas or Lee’s hard-pressed army near Richmond. The anxiety of the men in high position, from Lincoln down through Stanton, Grant and Halleck, was great. Grant repeatedly urged Thomas to attack and even went so far as to designate General Logan to supersede him. But Thomas knew his ground and coolly waited until he was ready. On December 13 [sic] he completely shattered Hood’s force before Nashville. The Southern army, which had numbered 53,000 when Johnston had faced Sherman, melted away and Hood was relieved from the service at his own request.15

  Impartial and objective observer Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley, adjutant general of the British army, described Hood’s Tennessee Campaign not as a reckless, vain attempt by an incompetent general, but as a legitimate military campaign he labeled “dashing in the extreme.” Another early commentator, George Henderson, wrote in The Science of War in 1908 that “Hood’s scheme offered some chances of success if he moved fast enough, and executed his plan effectively. The Federal forces in Tennessee were not united . .. and vulnerable to defeat in detail.”16

  Thomas Hay published the earliest major study of the Tennessee Campaign in 1929. Like so many authors of the era, Hay informed his readers with a mature, factually complete explanation of the political and military circumstances confronting the Confederate government in the fall of 1864; he did so without conjecture, hyperbole, and melodramatic commentary. “Even by the fall of 1864 the Southern people and their leaders were not prepared to admit that their task consisted in prolonging what had patently become nearly a hopeless defense,” explained Hay, who continued as follows:

  There was still the hope that a bold and aggressive campaign would splendidly retrieve the situation in the west and relieve the pressure on Lee’s embattled front. It was a desperate remedy for a desperate military and political situation, and Hood, by the logic of his appointment to command of the army in place of J. E. Johnston, was the one called upon to lead in this forlorn hope. That he came so near to success is a tribute to his indomitable faith and courage, and to the real ability played in a campaign that on several occasions put him within reach of victory… .

  And yet a silent factor of no little importance, which undoubtedly influenced Davis in connection with his agitation for a movement into Tennessee, was the approaching Northern election. Lincoln was standing for reelection and for a vindication of his policies and conduct of the war, while McClellan and the Democrats, accused of being allied with the Southern sympathizing Copperheads, had declared the war to be a failure and sought to replace Lincoln and his party in the Northern leadership. A bold stroke by Hood, even if uncompleted by the election time, Davis probably felt would strengthen the opposition to the Lincoln government and might even force it from office and thus, it was hoped, lead to the opening of peace negotiations or of foreign recognition. Considering the uncertain state of Northern opinion, at the time, as evidenced in the daily press, there is much to be said in favor of such an attitude on the part of Davis. A move by Hood into Tennessee would be positive rather than negative. The Confederacy had everything to gain and no more to lose than was actually lost. The existing political situation, in its foreign and domestic aspects, and the military situation both made such a move seem worth a trial.17

  Endorsing Hood’s ascension to command of the Army of Tennessee, Hay quoted Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s description of the necessary qualities of a successful military commander: “No victory is possible without a vigorous commander, ready for responsibility, eager for daring enterprises, himself possessing, and inspiring in others, the determination and energy that will go through to the end. Nothing will be won without his personal action, based on will, judgment, and freedom of mind in the midst of danger. These are the natural qualities of the gifted man, the born general.”18

  Stanley Horn, a Middle Tennessee native and grandson of a Southern soldier, wrote of Hood’s campaign in his influential 1941 book The Army of Tennessee: “It was an entrancing dream—and it was by no means impossible.” Three years later Horn penned the following in The Decisive Battle of Nashville:

  Some military experts, with the priceless advantage of hindsight, have therefore felt free to describe (Hood’s) plan as “fantastic.” It cannot be emphasized too strongly, however, that nobody seemed to think it fantastic at the time. Grant’s almost hysterical telegrams to General George H. Thomas, as Hood’s threat developed, revealed a very genuine fear that this “fantastic” plan of campaign would be successful—an apprehension that was shared by Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and President Lincoln.19

  Nonetheless, later authors remained unimpressed with both the concept of an offensive thrust north into Tennessee by the Confederacy’s Western army, and the ability of its young commander to conduct such a difficult campaign. Eric Jacobson, the most judicious of modern Tennessee Campaign authors, suggested that the invasion was irrational and referred to a postwar statement made by Jefferson Davis that Hood’s movement was “ill-advised” as proof. Unfortunately, the usually inquisitive Jacobson did not challenge the credibility of Davis’s disingenuous comment.20

  In both his contemporary and postwar writings, Davis expressed the desire of the Confederate government to recover Tennessee in early 1864. Referring to instructions he gave to Joseph Johnston in February 1864, Davis confirmed that Johnston “was informed of the policy of the Government for his army. It was proposed to reinforce him largely, and that he should advance at once and assume the recovery of at least a part of the State of Tennessee.” Later, immediately after the fall of Atlanta, Davis made public pronouncements alluding to an impending invasion of Tennessee, and during the invasion exchanged correspondence with Beauregard regarding the progress of Hood’s campaign. When he visited the Army of Tennessee in Palmetto, Georgia, on September 26, 1864, the president encouraged the troops with the following words: “Be of good cheer, for within a short while your faces will be turned homeward and your feet will press Tennessee soil.” The following week in Augusta, Georgia, Davis alluded to the Army of Tennessee “treading Tennes
see soil” and “pushing on to the Ohio.” Davis’s public proclamations about a movement into Tennessee at Palmetto and earlier in Macon were noted by Union spies in the audiences, who promptly informed Sherman. “He [Davis] made no concealment of [his] vainglorious boasts,” Sherman wrote in his memoirs, “and thus gave us the full key to his future designs.”21

  The most convincing and detailed primary evidence explaining the rationale behind the Tennessee Campaign, rarely provided by authors to their readers, is Beauregard’s December 6, 1864, letter to President Davis. The lengthy excerpt is powerful proof that Hood’s superiors, both military and political, knew of and gave their blessings to his northward movement, and that other alternatives were simply unviable:

  I did not countermand the campaign in Tennessee to pursue Sherman with Hood’s army for the following reasons:

  1st. The Roads and creeks from the Tennessee to the Coosa River across Sand and Lookout Mountains had been, by the prevailing heavy rains, rendered almost impassable to artillery and the wagon trains.

  2nd. General Sherman, with an army better appointed, had already the start of about two hundred seventy five miles on comparatively good roads. The transfer of Hood’s army into Georgia could not have been more expeditious by railway than by marching through the country, on account of the delays unavoidably resulting from the condition of the railroads.

  3rd. To pursue Sherman, the passage of the Army of Tennessee would, necessarily, have been over roads with all the bridges destroyed, and through a devastated country, affording no subsistence or forage; and, moreover, it was feared that a retrograde movement on our part would seriously deplete the army by desertions.

  4th. To have sent off the most or the whole of the Army of Tennessee in pursuit of Sherman, would have opened to Thomas’s force the richest portion of the State of Alabama, and would have made nearly certain the capture of Montgomery, Selma, and Mobile, without insuring the defeat of Sherman… .

  Under these circumstances, after consultation with General Hood, I concluded to allow him to prosecute with vigor his campaign into Tennessee and Kentucky, hoping that by defeating Thomas’s army and such other forces as might hastily be sent against him, he would compel Sherman, should he reach the coast of Georgia or South Carolina, to repair at once to the defense of Kentucky and, perhaps, Ohio, and thus prevent him from reinforcing Grant. Meanwhile, supplies might be sent to Virginia from Middle and East Tennessee, thus relieving Georgia from the present constant drain upon its limited resources.22

  Two weeks earlier on November 24, Beauregard had written to Davis from Macon, Georgia: “Have ordered Gen. Hood to take active offensive in Middle Tennessee to relieve Gen. Lee.” In reply, Davis urged Hood onward, “Until Hood reaches the country proper of the enemy, he can scarcely change the plans of Sherman’s or Grant’s campaigns.” (The “country proper” was doubtless a reference to Kentucky.)23

  Authors routinely ridicule Hood for thinking he could invade Tennessee, secure a major victory, and then determine a proper course of action based upon contemporary circumstances. The historical record, however, proves that Hood was not only in favor of the idea, but was also ordered by the Confederate government to do exactly what he did. Historians consider Hood’s stated goal to reach Kentucky, and in a long-shot, perhaps Virginia, quixotic, grandiose, and delusional—even though his immediate superior Beauregard and the Confederacy’s president both approved the plan and encouraged the movement.

  Many of the Civil War’s most respected scholars completely ignore the goals of Hood’s Tennessee invasion, despite their explicit documentation by Davis and Beauregard. Stanley Horn proposed several options after Hood’s failure to destroy Schofield at Franklin, including the admission of defeat and retreat back into Alabama. It is doubtful that any Confederate commander (except perhaps Joseph Johnston) would have abandoned a critical campaign after having lost none of his artillery or assets and with 80 percent of his original troop strength in hand. Horn also suggested that “a more artful strategist” might have overpowered the garrison at Murfreesboro, “entrenched himself there, and restored the status quo of late 1862 [emphasis in original].” Davis’s and Beauregard’s stated campaign goals were to help relieve Robert E. Lee and force a retrograde movement by Sherman. A restoration of the 1862 status quo in Middle Tennessee would have had little if any influence on Sherman’s determined march to the Atlantic coast.24

  Wiley Sword’s 500-page anti-Hood polemic on the Tennessee Campaign included voluminous tales of romances, myths, legends, political intrigue, Southern belles and beaus, and melodramatic Richmond society gossip—but mentioned little of Davis’s and Beauregard’s involvement in the conception and planning of the campaign. According to Sword, “P. G. T. Beauregard was thoroughly shocked [that] Hood had unilaterally decided on a new plan to force Sherman to pursue his army into mid-Tennessee.” Sword spared no ink on details of melodrama and romance, yet kept readers in the dark by failing to discuss the political and strategic rationale of the Tennessee invasion as detailed by Beauregard and Davis in numerous readily available sources.25

  Stanley Horn provided some balance to the Confederate dilemma as it stood in late 1864 by presenting a quote from Hood’s adversary: “General Thomas, writing in later years after mature deliberation, said of Hood’s plan of campaign, ‘Though a failure in the end, who will say that it was not the best plan that could have been adopted by the enemy?’” Indeed, Thomas’s conclusion justifies Beauregard’s decision-making, as set forth in his December 6, 1864, letter to President Davis (earlier quoted). To summarize Beauregard, what other alternatives offered a better chance for success? Horn also revealed that General Grant, the supreme commander of the Federal armies, viewed the Confederate invasion as a very serious threat. “Grant was keenly aware of the dire consequences to the Federal cause if Nashville should fall, thereby freeing Hood’s Army of Tennessee to operate offensively through Kentucky to the north and east,” wrote Horn. “He not only did not consider Hood’s plan impracticable or foredoomed to failure, but in discussing the matter after the war he attributed its failure to Hood’s lack of enterprise.” Horn’s assessment was correct. Writing about Hood’s army at Nashville, Grant observed: “The country was alarmed, the administration was alarmed, and I was alarmed lest the very thing would take place which I have just described—that is, Hood would get north.”26

  General James H. Wilson, the Federal commander of the Cavalry Corps of the Military Division of the Mississippi, figured prominently in opposing Hood’s Tennessee invasion. Wilson’s recollections counter the popular critical slant on the entire Tennessee Campaign. “Fortunately for us, Hood lost a whole month at Gadsden, waiting for ammunition, supplies and recruits, while Forrest was making a senseless raid toward the Cumberland River,” explained the accomplished Union cavalryman. “It was this delay and this raid … that gave Thomas time to assemble all his forces for a sturdy defense… . Had Hood advanced at once with his three corps of infantry and his cavalry in better condition … he must have overthrown Thomas and overrun both Tennessee and Kentucky.”27

  Grant, Thomas, and Wilson were not alone in their apprehension of Hood’s army marching north. From the Federal perspective in the fall of 1864, the situation was potentially perilous. Hood was threatening an invasion and there was precious little on hand to stop him. One of Schofield’s corps commanders, Gen. David Stanley, was deeply concerned with the task of defending Tennessee against Hood. “Thomas was expected to beat Hood with one corps and two divisions,” wrote Stanley. “Sherman had failed to do this with six additional corps during an entire summer.” Indeed, in the early fall when Hood was plotting his strategy, all that stood in the way of a Confederate advance was the meager Union garrison at Nashville—a single corps and two divisions. Stanley concluded, “If Hood succeeded, Nashville, Louisville, Cincinnati, and possibly Chicago were doomed.”28

  John N. Beach, a surgeon with the 40th Ohio Infantry, fully agreed with these Federal assessments. “E
ven after the Battle of Franklin, in which Hood lost one-fifth of his army, the anxiety in the North was hardly lessened, and his presence in front of Nashville was a menace that was looked upon with solicitude,” confirmed the surgeon. “The campaign was disastrous to Hood’s army to a degree not paralleled by any other of the war, hence it has been criticized as ill planned and badly managed, but it was so nearly a success that we should credit him [Hood] with judgment in its planning as well as audacity in its execution.”29

  Colonel Arthur MacArthur of the 24th Wisconsin Infantry, a veteran of the battle of Franklin and Medal of Honor winner (and the father of World War II hero General Douglas MacArthur), wrote the following about Hood’s campaign:

  General Sherman was in Georgia, rapidly approaching Savannah, but still without a base; General Grant had no troops to spare from the front of Petersburg and Richmond; in New Orleans and other places in the far South and West we had only a few thousand men. Hood’s success at Franklin, therefore, meant Confederate supremacy over Tennessee and Kentucky, with the numerical strength of his army raised probably to at least 100,000 men. With such a force it was possible for him to sweep up to the Ohio River, and thereby oblige General Grant to detach largely from his army for the protection of the West, thus exposing General Sherman in Georgia to a concentrated attack by Lee before he could reach his new base. In a word, had Hood entered Nashville sword in hand at the head of a victorious army, which would have resulted from defeat of the Union army at Franklin, the civil war in all its subsequent scenes might have been essentially varied.30

  Whether Hood could have ever fielded an army of 100,000 is doubtful, and it is also irrelevant. His thrust was dangerous, and it was taken very seriously by the Federal high command. If the Federal authorities in 1864 treated Hood’s invasion with apprehension, sobriety, and a genuine threat with devastating ramifications, why do modern historians and writers deride Hood’s objectives as rash and impractical? Horn, who as noted earlier judged Hood’s campaign “by no means impossible” wrote, “If Hood had been able to move with just a little more celerity, if on just one or two occasions Fortune’s balance had tilted in his favor instead of against him, his daringly conceived plan might well have succeeded. And then perhaps the little village of Appomattox Court House might have slept on forever in its dusty obscurity.”31