John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General
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Some authors have asserted that Hood intentionally kept his superiors uninformed of the condition of the army after Franklin, and that this explains why neither Beauregard nor the Confederate War Department ordered Hood to withdraw. This is not true. On December 3, Hood wired Beauregard the results of Franklin, including, “We have to lament the loss of many gallant officers and brave men,” and listed the names of the dozen generals wounded, killed, and captured. On December 11, Hood sent a longer dispatch to Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon informing him that the army had lost 4,500 men at Franklin. Although that figure is lower than the broadly accepted number of 6,300 casualties, many slightly wounded men returned to the ranks after the army entrenched at Nashville. In any event, Hood reported this information, including that he had lost some 15 percent of his army, to the Confederate War Department. This is indisputable proof that he was not trying to conceal anything.3
It is fair to ask what Confederate commander would have abandoned a crucial campaign with a fully equipped army of 26,000 veterans at such a desperate point in the war. Robert E. Lee faced a much more perilous state after the fall of Richmond and Petersburg. By that time there was no doubt that the war had been utterly lost (which was not as clear in early December 1864). However, rather than surrender the Army of Northern Virginia, he headed west. His intent was to continue fighting in an effort to unite his dwindling army withJoe Johnston in North Carolina. By this time Lee’s army was not that much larger than was Hood’s army before Nashville. By the time Lee reached Appomattox, the Army of Northern Virginia had been reduced to fewer than 7,800 effectives. Even Johnston attacked Sherman’s larger army at Bentonville on March 19, 1865, in an effort to slow or halt the Federal drive through the Carolinas. Sherman’s 60,000-man army was roughly the size of Thomas’s at Nashville, while Johnston’s motley command of some 20,000 was smaller than Hood’s at Nashville.4
Like Lee in Maryland in 1862 and in Pennsylvania the following year, Hood did not abandon the Confederate offensive until his army had been depleted to the point where he deemed victory impossible. After losing about one-third of his army at Sharpsburg, Lee remained in place for one full day before abandoning his invasion and retreating from Maryland. The following year, Lee withdrew from Pennsylvania only after losing about 37 percent of his army at Gettysburg, a loss similar to what Hood sustained at Franklin and Nashville.5
Hood elaborated upon his reasons for the movement to Nashville in Advance and Retreat. After the failure of his plan to destroy Schofield’s army before it reached the relative security of Nashville, Hood, with an effective force of approximately 26,000 infantry and cavalry, believed that a northerly movement bypassing Nashville was unwise without reinforcements. Admitting that he could not expect to attract recruits from Tennessee and Kentucky “in the absence of the prestige of complete victory” over Thomas, “the only remaining chance of success at this juncture was to take position, entrench around Nashville, and await Thomas’s attack, which, if handsomely repulsed, might afford us an opportunity to follow up our advantage on the spot, and enter the city on the heels of the enemy.” At the risk of destroying the morale that remained in the army, a southward movement was not an option. “In truth,” explained Hood, “our army was then in that condition which rendered it more judicious the men should face a decisive issue rather than retreat—in other words, rather than renounce the honor of their cause, without having made a last and manful effort to lift up the sinking fortunes of the Confederacy.” Hood wrote to an acquaintance after the war, “The capture of Nashville and regaining so much lost territory, I was quite certain would give new life to our people, recruit our thinned ranks, and give that tone to the army I had been so long accustomed in Virginia would ensure victory to our arms, and finally secure our freedom.” Hood also knew that the possibility of receiving reinforcements, timely or otherwise, was essentially impossible: “Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia & the Carolinas having no men at the ready and that could be sent to my aid,” required that he act on his own. He declared his unwillingness to abandon Tennessee “as long as I saw a shadow of probability of assistance from the Trans-Mississippi Department or of victory in battle.”6
Why would Hood allude to a “shadow of probability” (an 18th century term for “possibility”) of “assistance” from the Trans-Mississippi? Hood had been requesting reinforcements from any quarter since the fall of Atlanta— including the Trans-Mississippi—and had at some point (the record is unclear when) received indications that reinforcements might be able to cross the Mississippi River. When Hood learned that no crossing of any size was likely, he awaited Gen. E. Kirby Smith’s decision regarding Richmond’s request that Smith feign a threat against St. Louis, Missouri, to force Thomas to return Federal reinforcements that had left the Trans-Mississippi to help defend Nashville. Hood took note of the transfer away from St. Louis of 15,000 Union troops and believed that their movement created an opportunity that might allow the crossing of Confederate troops from the Trans-Mississippi. The record on all these points is instructive.
For example, less than a week after the fall of Atlanta, Hood asked Braxton Bragg in a dispatch dated September 7, “Is it not of the first importance … to get as soon as possible all the troops over from Kirby Smith?” Apparently having been informed that some Trans-Mississippi troops were en route, Hood wired Gen. Richard Taylor on September 8, “How many of your cavalry crossed the river as yet? If not, when will they be over?” The next day Taylor sent two replies. The first was a three-word message: “None—expect none.” The second, via Bragg, read: “General Taylor informs me, in reply to my dispatch on the subject of troops crossing the river, that none have crossed, and believes no effort is being made to cross over.” On September 11 Hood continued to press for reinforcements, telegramming Taylor, “Why is no effort being made to cross your troops?” Two days later Taylor responded, “I will have to refer you to Genl E. K. Smith for answer to your inquiry of 11th.” Hood again wired Taylor on September 24, “How many troops crossed to this side of the Mississippi River? The newspaper so reports.” Taylor answered, “Your telegram of yesterday received. None have crossed, & I believe no effort is being made to cross any at this time.”7
When his battered Army of Tennessee began taking up a position just south of Nashville on December 2, Hood was fully aware of the heavy odds facing him. His knowledge that defeating Thomas would be difficult accounts for the contingency plans he made for retreat, not once but on two occasions. In a circular issued on December 10, Hood mentioned the high probability that a battle would be fought “before the close of the present year,” but not necessarily at Nashville. However, “should it occur in front of Nashville,” Hood stated, his corps commanders were to immediately “send all wagons … except artillery, ordnance and ambulances” 10 miles south to Brentwood, Tennessee. Early in the morning of December 16, during the second and final day of the battle of Nashville, Hood sent A. P. Stewart special instructions in case a serious reversal occurred. Taking note of Thomas’s newly gained reinforcements and the hard results of the previous day’s fighting, Hood told Stewart:
Should any disaster happen to us today… you will retire by the Franklin Pike, and Lee is directed to hold it in front of his large ridge that you may pass to his rear. After passing Brentwood you should again form your corps in the best position you can find, and let the whole army pass through you. There are some narrow gorges beyond Brentwood toward Franklin. At all times the roads must be left open for artillery and wagons, [with] the men marching through the fields and woods.8
Although Franklin adversely affected the morale of the army, a solid fighting spirit persisted within many of the soldiers. Colonel Virgil S. Murphey, who had been captured at Franklin and was being held in Nashville, wrote in his diary that when his fellow prisoners learned that Hood’s army was advancing on Nashville, “About 300 Yankee bounty jumpers and prisoners in the yard yelled with delight and declared their readiness to rejoin Hood.”9
Early authors struggled with Hood’s movement to Nashville after Franklin. Thomas Hay wrote in Hood’s Tennessee Campaign, “Hood’s rashness in following after Schofield was characteristic and, in a sense, was made necessary by the desperate condition of the Confederacy. It imposed on the country, North and South, the appearance of confidence and success and tended to deceive his opponents as to his real strength and resources. Thomas was no doubt influenced … by this bold front. Another impelling motive for Hood was the hope, born of necessity, that the army might be recruited by the illusion of success… . Hood might have retired, but he elected to fight.” Yet, concluded Hay, “Thus was a brilliant strategical conception marred, first by tactical failures and blunders and then precipitated into an unnecessary deluge of blood and suffering, which finally ended in complete defeat and rout.” It seems as though Hay could not decide whether Nashville was an unnecessary bloodbath, or a final justified gamble made necessary by the military and political plight of the Confederacy.11
Hay offered additional contradictory observations in the same book. “After his defeat at Franklin,” he continued, “Hood had small chance of accomplishing anything by pushing on to Nashville,” and that the movement was simply a “vainglorious gesture.” In further conflict with his own earlier words, Hay stated that Hood might have become mentally unhinged after Spring Hill, the subsequent events at Franklin and Nashville having occurred because he was “perhaps temporarily unbalanced,” and that the Spring Hill fiasco “so warped his judgment and distorted his conception of conditions that he could see no alternative course.”12
In addition to what has already been noted, Hood had good reason for continuing the campaign. A major consideration for launching an offensive was the declining morale of the Army of Tennessee. The decline had existed to some degree even before Hood assumed command back in July. Notwithstanding assertions by some authors that Johnston’s army unanimously approved of his tactics in Georgia, many officers and men were displeased and disheartened by his constant retreating from north Georgia all the way to Atlanta’s gate.13 At West Point, Hood and his fellow cadets were taught Napoleon’s military maxims. In 19th century warfare, these were considered to be the most fundamental of military tactics. Maxim VI reads as follows:
At the commencement of a campaign, to advance or not to advance is a matter for grave consideration; but when once the offensive has been assumed, it must be sustained to the last extremity. However skillful the maneuvers in a retreat, it will always weaken the morale of an army, because in losing the chances of success these last are transferred to the enemy. Besides, retreats always cost more men and materiel than the most bloody engagements; with this difference, that in a battle the enemy’s loss is nearly equal to your own—whereas in a retreat the loss is on your side only.14
Although many modern scholars considered Hood’s invasion of Tennessee a fool’s errand, Ulysses S. Grant felt otherwise. Writing of Hood’s army at Nashville, he 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.” In fact on December 6, 1864, Grant, besieging Lee in Richmond and Petersburg, was so disturbed by Hood’s threat that he ordered Thomas to launch an immediate attack. Thomas had yet to comply with the order by December 11, so Grant sent the following urgent message: “If you delay attacking longer, the mortifying spectacle will be witnessed of a rebel army moving for the Ohio.” Worried and exasperated, Grant decided to relieve Thomas—who is universally recognized today as one of the finest Union generals of the entire Civil War—and take command himself. First, however, he sent Gen. John A. Logan to Nashville. “Knowing him as a prompt, gallant and efficient officer,” Grant wrote of Logan, “I gave him an order to proceed to Nashville to relieve Thomas… . After Logan started, in thinking over the situation, I became restless, and concluded to go myself.” When he learned of Thomas’s attack on December 15, Grant recalled Logan. By that time Grant was en route to Nashville and had traveled as far as Washington, D.C. He returned to the Richmond-Petersburg front.
Grant, who had been locked in a bloody six-month stalemate with Robert E. Lee, considered Hood’s threat at Nashville so great that he was willing to leave Lee to his subordinates so that he could personally deal with the Tennessee invasion. After the carnage at the Wilderness, Grant did not retreat and regroup as his predecessors had done. Instead, he slogged on mile after mile in his determined drive to defeat Lee’s army. He eventually reached the outskirts of Richmond and Petersburg. Hood, after the heavy fighting and well-planned attacks around Atlanta, invaded Tennessee, nearly bagged Schofield’s army at Spring Hill, suffered heavily at Franklin, and then continued moving north to Nashville. It is possible that Grant may well have recognized in Hood the same determined resolve he himself possessed.15
Author Thomas Hay utilized Beauregard’s opinion to describe Hood’s movement to Nashville. On January 9, 1865, Beauregard claimed in a letter that, after Franklin, Hood should not have invested Nashville. Instead, argued the general, he should have seized Murfreesboro and wintered there with the “prestige of success.” Hay does not challenge Beauregard, who had written to Richmond only a few weeks earlier that the Tennessee Campaign was being conducted exclusively to force a retrograde movement by Sherman, and had exchanged letters with Jefferson Davis, each alluding to Hood acting boldly to relieve Lee in Virginia and the importance of Hood reaching “the country proper of the enemy.” The loss of Murfreesboro would not have concerned Sherman, and certainly would not have compelled Grant to ease his noose around Richmond and Petersburg. How the “prestige” of occupying Murfreesboro would have strengthened the fragile morale of the Army of Tennessee is left unspoken.16
Misinformation on Hood’s actions at Nashville is relatively common in Civil War literature. In fact, some historians have incorrectly asserted that Hood attacked Thomas at Nashville, when in fact it was Thomas who launched the assault against Hood’s fortified troops on December 15. Even respected historian William C. “Jack” Davis wrote that at Nashville Hood “launched an attack” on Thomas and that after his defeat, “Hood could do nothing but pull his shattered divisions back into Georgia [sic].” Thomas Hay contrasted Thomas’s methodical behavior with Hood’s “rash and aggressive” actions at Nashville, when in fact Thomas was by far the more aggressive of the two generals at Nashville.17
The perception of Hood’s movement to Nashville as sensational still exists at the highest levels of scholarship. Disregarding the 2,500 casualties inflicted on Thomas’s attacking army, Tennessee state historian Walter T. Durham described Hood’s investment of Nashville as “reckless” and “a suicidal move”—completely ignoring why Hood was there in the first place. Although driven from the field, Chaplain James McNeilly of Quarles’s brigade wrote that the battle of Nashville “was very disastrous to us in the loss of guns and prisoners captured from us, but we lost comparatively few in killed and wounded.”18
Too many historians and students of the war have concluded that Hood moved his army to Nashville and simply waited to be attacked. A careful examination of the record suggests otherwise.
A
s part of his overall strategy, Hood dispatched Nathan Bedford Forrest on December 2 with two cavalry divisions and Gen. William Bate’s infantry division to Murfreesboro, a move that historian Thomas Connelly called “ignorant.” Connelly went on to inquire, “Why did [Hood] … detach Bate’s division, Forrest with two cavalry divisions … to seize the Federal garrison at Murfreesboro?” Author Stanley Horn also deemed the move worse than a wasted effort, labeling the detachment of Forrest and Bate a “suicidal” mistake and “a blunder of colossal proportions.” Contemporary author Eric Jacobson also questioned Hood’s decision, writing, “Hood once again played with his cavalry, leaving his right flank at Nashville completely unprotected.”19
Why did Hood detach this substantial force of horsemen and foot soldiers? Did he really ignore his right flank? As will be seen, the facts are straightforward and the circumstances that convinced Hood to make the movement more than justified. In fact, it was prudent. Murfreesboro, just 25 miles to the east, was garrisoned by Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau’s 8,000 Federals. Rousseau posed a very real threat not only to Hood’s right flank at Nashville, but also to the Army of Tennessee’s supply line and retreat route.
Initially, Hood believed the Murfreesboro garrison was smaller. He sent Forrest and Bate in early December to attack Rousseau in the hope that Thomas would send reinforcements to save the beleaguered garrison. Hood planned to attack the Federal relief troops en route from Nashville. When he learned the true strength of the Murfreesboro garrison, Hood changed his plan and replaced Bate’s division with a single infantry brigade and recalled one of Forrest’s two cavalry divisions, leaving Forrest in command of the smaller force to keep Rousseau in check. Hood changed his instructions to Forrest on December 8—six days after the initial detachment—by directing the cavalryman “not to construe the order as meant to attack the enemy’s works.” If the Federals moved out of their works, advised Hood, “you will endeavor to drive them back to Murfreesboro.” In other words, Hood was endeavoring to protect his right flank and the army’s logistical lifeline and route of retreat.20