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

by Hood, Stephen

  Hood’s losses for the entire Tennessee Campaign were reported as 11,823. This sizeable figure, however, was not comprised of just the dead, wounded, and/or captured, but also included losses from desertions. According to S. A. Cunningham, after the retreat ended it was discovered that “nearly all the Tennesseans were gone home. They either had written furloughs or took ‘French leave [deserted].’” Federal Gen. James Wilson, in a December 17, 1864, dispatch to George Thomas during his pursuit of Hood’s beaten army, confirmed Cunningham’s recollection when he informed his commander that Confederate prisoners reported “all the Tennesseans are deserting.” Tennessean Sam Watkins elaborated on another form of desertion when he explained that many soldiers “had stopped and allowed themselves to be captured” during the retreat. Thomas himself confirmed reports that many “captured” Rebels were actually looking to desert and go home when he recorded that nearly one-half of the approximate 4,400 prisoners taken during and after Nashville took the oath of allegiance and went home.2

  Despite access to these (and other) concise and readily available records, historians repeatedly exaggerated Confederate casualties in the Tennessee Campaign. For instance, in The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, Wiley Sword inflated Confederate losses by an astounding 11,000 when he wrote, “Hood had suffered during the campaign perhaps 23,500 casualties.” Grasping for a forceful superlative, Sword continued, “This appalling loss of nearly two-thirds of a major American army as the result of actual fighting was unprecedented. Never had there been such an overwhelming victory during the Civil War—indeed, never in American military history.”3

  Inflating the casualties the army suffered while under Hood’s command is a common theme among many writers. Elsewhere, when writing about the Confederate defense of Atlanta, Sword claimed: “Hood had in little over a week squandered nearly 20,000 men in fruitless attacks”—notwithstanding the fact that campaign records report Hood’s losses during that period at 9,855, or fewer than one-half of the number Sword reported. The Army of Tennessee totaled 50,414 effectives on July 10, one week before Hood took command, and 40,559 on August 31, after the three battles cited by Sword.4

  Sword’s source for his near-total exaggeration of Hood’s casualties in the defense of Atlanta appears to be drawn from Thomas Connelly’s Autumn of Glory, whose own casualty numbers are bewildering and contradictory. Connelly, who relied upon William T. Sherman’s inflated estimates of the battles of Peachtree Creek, Atlanta (Decatur), and Ezra Church, concluded that those casualties “brought Hood’s losses thus far in the campaign to over twelve thousand.” In the very next paragraph, however, citing the Official Records as his source, Connelly contradicted himself when he wrote that Hood’s losses in those same battles totaled 8,000. (“By August 10, Hood’s total effective strength in both infantry and artillery had slipped to 35,371, a drop of almost 8,000 since the first of July.”) Other authors, such as Joseph Wheeler’s recent biographer Edward Longacre in A Soldier to the Last, regurgitated these mistakes, seems to have ignored official reports, and simply used the higher of Connelly’s two unsubstantiated and erroneous figures.5

  Even more perplexing was Sword’s decision to inflate Hood’s casualties by using the sum of Connelly’s two contradictory numbers. After citing the page in Connelly’s Autumn of Glory that provides both the 12,000 and 8,000 casualty estimates, Sword apparently totaled these two figures and declared that Hood lost 20,000 troops. Although Sword routinely cited the official reports in his books, and in so many ways is a careful and meticulous researcher, he seems to have ignored official reports when calculating Hood’s casualties during the Atlanta and Tennessee campaigns in favor of the inflated figures presented by another author—and then inflated even those numbers.6

  This trend of relying upon incorrect figures (and other people’s work) continues to this day. Producers of the documentary film “The Battle of Franklin” relied heavily on Sword’s book and included in its narration the 20,000 casualty number for the Atlanta battles. According to Sword’s casualty summation, Hood lost 43,500 troops during his six-month tenure as commander of the Army of Tennessee—an astounding 20,345 more than specified in the Official Records.7

  Sword also appears to have misread the numbers regarding prisoners of war. In The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, he included in the casualties suffered by Hood’s Army of Tennessee during the Tennessee Campaign all 13,189 prisoners processed by George Thomas during Hood’s post-Atlanta tenure (September 7, 1864, through January 15, 1865). For his number to be correct, every Confederate prisoner processed through Nashville during that time frame—whether captured in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, or western Virginia—had to have come from Hood’s command. Of course, that was impossible. If Sword’s number is correct, nearly one-half of the post-Atlanta Army of Tennessee was captured during the Tennessee Campaign alone! For his part, Thomas reported 4,462 Confederates captured during the battle at Nashville and the subsequent retreat, with perhaps a few hundred more prisoners taken during the other actions of the campaign.8

  Historian Eric Jacobson recently discovered that Sword double-counted as many as 3,800 Confederates wounded on November 30. Hood had to leave these injured men at Franklin when he moved the army north to Nashville. Many of these wounded were captured on December 18 when the Federals pursued Hood’s retreating army through Franklin. Sword counted these troops as both wounded at the battle of Franklin and among the captured at the battle of Nashville.9

  Unfortunately, like other genres of history, an error persuasively written and published in Civil War literature is often repeated in subsequent books and magazine articles. Even the most alert academicians can fall prey to these mistakes. For instance, Anne J. Bailey wrote in her otherwise excellent and informative book The Chessboard of War: Sherman and Hood in the Autumn Campaigns of 1864, “In Tennessee alone, Hood had lost 13,189 men taken prisoners; more than 2,000 deserted to Federal lines, and the killed and wounded totaled about 8,600, a total of 23,789.” Bailey’s source was not the readily available reports and correspondence in the Official Records, but Wiley Sword’s inflated numbers published nine years before her own work appeared.10

  Unfortunately, Bailey is not alone. Many other respected scholars have accepted these erroneous calculations. For the July 20, 1864, battle of Peachtree Creek, Hood’s first combat in defense of Atlanta, conscientious scholars Steven Woodworth and Richard McMurry seemed to accept Sherman’s inflated estimate of 4,800 total Confederate casualties, even though official battle reports filed by Confederate commanders and the Army of Tennessee medical director put the casualty figure at roughly one-half that oft-cited number. Commanders of four of the six engaged Confederate divisions reported 1,728 casualties. A fifth division under William Bate became lost in dense woods and sustained few if any injuries. The losses sustained by the sixth division, led by Gen. William H. T. Walker, must be estimated because of a lack of contemporary records, but only two of his three brigades were engaged. Even a liberal estimate of 1,000 casualties for Walker’s division (500 per engaged brigade) only elevates the total Confederate losses at Peachtree Creek to roughly 2,700.11

  Sherman estimated Rebel losses for the July 22, 1864, battle of Atlanta at nearly 8,500. This figure has been widely accepted in Civil War scholarship by Woodworth and others. However, official reports suggest Sherman’s figure was at least 3,000 too high. General William Hardee, the commander of the most heavily engaged of the two Confederate corps that fought that day, reported his losses at 3,299. Records for the other engaged corps under Gen. Benjamin Cheatham are incomplete, with written reports available for only some of his divisions and brigades. Using specific reports and estimating others, a reasonable approximation of casualties for Cheatham’s corps is 2,000. Adding a few hundred casualties for Confederate cavalry and the Georgia militia brings Hood’s total losses for the battle of Atlanta to about 5,600—significant, but no where close to the commonly accepted figure of 8,500.12

  Mistakes a
lso abound related to casualty figures for the July 28 battle of Ezra Church, the third of Hood’s major efforts to defend Atlanta. Atlanta Campaign scholars McMurry, William Scaife, Thomas Connelly, James McDonough, and others disregarded more credible records and claimed that the Army of Tennessee incurred about 5,000 casualties—the inflated number reported by Sherman. A close examination of reports filed by the Confederate division commanders engaged in the battle—Brown, Walthall, and Clayton— demonstrate that actual Confederate losses were almost one-half that, or around 2,900.13

  Reports filed by Army of Tennessee medical director Dr. A. J. Foard corroborated the accounts prepared by Hood’s subordinate commanders. For example, Dr. Foard recorded Confederate losses for Peachtree Creek, Atlanta, and Ezra Church of 1,756 killed and 10,267 wounded, for a combined total of 12,023. Sherman, however, estimated Southern losses for these same three battles at 20,000. While the medical corps records did not include captured Confederates, Dr. Foard’s reports closely approximated the 11,000 losses reported by Hood’s subordinates. It is also important to note that Dr. Foard’s report did include all Confederate casualties sustained during the last half of July, even those incurred in other cavalry operations, skirmishing, and the Federal bombardment of Atlanta fortifications unrelated to the three large battles.14

  No one disputes the fact that the Army of Tennessee was severely depleted during Johnston’s long retreat from Dalton, Hood’s vigorous defense of Atlanta, and the battles waged in Tennessee. However, it is simply not true to state that the fighting destroyed the army. A large number of cannon were lost at Nashville, but 21,000 effectives returned to Mississippi along with most of the army’s other equipment and assets. “It is true that we were sadly repulsed at Nashville,” wrote surgeon Samuel Thompson of the 41st Tennessee, but Hood “brought off the larger portion of the army with Quartermaster, Commissary, Medical and Ordnance trains.”15

  After Hood’s resignation on January 23, 1865, Richard Taylor was placed in temporary command of the Army of Tennessee. Brigades were sent to Alabama and North Carolina, where Joseph E. Johnston was restored to theater command in the Carolinas on February 25, 1865. Johnston, in turn, elevated Gen. A. P. Stewart to lead what was left of the Army of Tennessee, which together with other troops under Johnston’s command attacked Sherman at Bentonville, North Carolina, on March 19, 1865, at the cost of more than 3,000 casualties. A comparison of the Confederate orders of battle at Nashville and Bentonville reveals that 23 corps, divisions, and brigades from the Army of Tennessee participated in both battles.16

  Compared with how they treat other Confederate generals, many historians applied a double standard when analyzing Hood’s tenure in command. Few, if any, writers of Civil War history asserted that Kirby Smith or Robert E. Lee destroyed their armies. Smith himself, however, addressing his disintegrated Trans-Mississippi “army” on May 30, 1865, wrote, “I am left a commander without an army, a general without troops.” How did this disintegration come about? Surely Kirby Smith was responsible for it? In an April 10, 1865, letter to Jefferson Davis, Lee detailed just how thoroughly the retreat to Appomattox had decimated the Army of Northern Virginia:

  At the commencement of the withdrawal of the army from the lines on the night of the 2d, it began to disintegrate, and straggling from the ranks increased up to the surrender on the 9th. On that day, as previously reported, there were only seven thousand eight hundred and ninety-two (7,892) effective infantry. During the night, when the surrender became known, more than ten thousand men came in, as reported to me by the Chief Commissary of the Army. During the succeeding days stragglers continued to give themselves up, so that on the 12th of April, according to the rolls of those paroled, twenty-six thousand and eighteen (26,018) officers and men had surrendered.

  Men who had left the ranks on the march, and crossed James River, returned and gave themselves up, and many have since come to Richmond and surrendered.17

  If the same logic and statistical interpretations were applied to Lee’s final campaign as are routinely applied to Hood’s Tennessee Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia would be defined as “destroyed,” and Lee would have been held accountable for destroying his army. After all, fewer than 8,000 troops were on hand when he surrendered the army he had withdrawn from Richmond and Petersburg. Lee lost about seventy-three percent of his troops on his final campaign, a sum that includes deserters, stragglers, captured, and those who voluntarily surrendered.

  Historians commonly used the word “defeated” rather than “destroyed” when discussing the final fates of Kirby Smith’s and Robert E. Lee’s armies. Hood, it seems, has been held to a different standard.

  1 Cheatham’s Corps 10,519, S. D. Lee’s Corps 8,632, Stewart’s Corps 8,708, cavalry 5,000 (approximate as of November 16 after Forrest’s forces had arrived) for a total effective force of 32,859; OR 45, pt. 1, 678, 664; Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. 2, 491, 579. Although historians almost always offer only an estimate of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s troop strength after the Tennessee Campaign, President Davis set it at the very specific number of 2,306.

  2 Watkins, Company Aytch, 208; Cunningham, Reminiscences of the 41st Tennessee, 107; OR 45, pt. 2, 238; ibid., 5, pt. 1, 48.

  3 Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 425-426.

  4 Ibid., 34.

  5 Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 455; OR 38, pt. 3, 679, 682-683; Edward G. Longacre, A Soldier to the Last: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler in Blue and Gray (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2007), 168.

  6 Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 34; Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 455. The only calculation that reaches 20,000 is the addition of the 12,000 and 8,000 numbers.

  7 The Battle of Franklin, Wide Awake Films; Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 426.

  8 OR 45, pt. 1, 48; Sword, The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 426.

  9 Jacobson, For Cause and For Country, 450.

  10 Anne J. Bailey, The Chessboard of War: Sherman and Hood in the Autumn Campaigns of1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 168.

  11 Davis, “A Reappraisal of the Generalship of John Bell Hood in the Battles for Atlanta,” 69; Woodworth, Civil War Gazette interview; McMurry, John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence, 128.

  12 OR 38, pt. 3, 877, 883, 895, 902, 931, 938, 942; Benjamin Franklin Cheatham papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.

  13 Davis, “A Reappraisal of the Generalship of John Bell Hood in the Battles for Atlanta,” 72 (Davis discusses these authors in his essay).

  14 Hood, Advance and Retreat, 222. Hood reproduced the reports and other sources verbatim in his memoirs.

  15 Cunningham, Reminiscences of the 41st Tennessee, 117-118.

  16 Johnston’s new command encompassed two military departments (South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida and North Carolina and Southern Virginia).

  17 Lizzie Cary Daniel, Confederate Scrap Book, (Richmond, VA: J. H. Hill Printing Company, 1893), 5; Dowdey and Manarin, The Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee, 938.

  Chapter 13

  “Perhaps in general footnotes should be held guilty unless proven innocent.”

  —James G. Randall

  Did John Bell Hood Accuse his Soldiers of Cowardice?

  In virtually all the modern books on the Army of Tennessee or the 1864 Tennessee Campaign, John Bell Hood is said to have blamed his failures on others, called the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee cowards or otherwise questioning their bravery. Nowhere in the historical record is there any primary source evidence to support these assertions. Notwithstanding the absence of evidence, these accusations continue. The charges have been repeated so often they are now part of the public consciousness and accepted as fact—not only by amateur Civil War enthusiasts but also by many professional historians.

  No one who served with Hood, from the lowly rank of private to the elevated rank of general, ever wrote or claimed that he accused any soldier of cowardice or questioned the bravery of his troops. No diary
, letter, or memoir by any soldier, officer, public official, or private citizen contains a word accusing Hood of insulting anyone for lack of valor. Even his rivals and harshest critics claim nothing of the sort. In fact, just the opposite is true.

  Contrary to popular belief, and completely ignored by most modern authors, Hood spoke frequently of the valor and gallantry of his fellow soldiers, Confederate and Federal alike. In addition, the man often falsely portrayed as being critical of his own troops was described even by contemporary critics as cordial, congenial, and easily approachable by the rank and file and his fellow officers. Although caricatured during his relatively brief tenure as commander of the Army of Tennessee as rash and vindictive, an unbiased examination of the record reveals something altogether different.

  The earliest of the major Tennessee Campaign chroniclers, Thomas Hay, noted Hood’s comments in his memoirs about the negative effect Joe Johnston’s constant retreating had upon the aggressiveness of the Army of Tennessee. During his account of the Confederate army’s movement into Tennessee in the late fall of 1864, Hay made no mention of Hood accusing his army of any cowardice at Spring Hill. Subsequent authors, however, at first subtly and then more blatantly, raised that notion. Embellishment and repetition has cemented that falsehood firmly into place in today’s Civil War community.1

  The myth that Hood accused his troops of cowardice, and therefore ordered the attack at Franklin the next day to teach them a lesson in bravery—or to punish them for dashing his dreams of glory at Spring Hill—seems to have first derived from the pen of Stanley Horn. In his influential The Army of Tennessee, Horn made the following claim: “Worst of all, and most unfairly and unjustifiably, he blamed the soldiers.” To support this allegation, Horn provided partial quotations from Hood’s memoirs about his disappointment that Johnston had embedded a defensive attitude in the army, and that Hood had tried to renew the aggressive spirit of the army through the offensive movement into Tennessee. Hood believed that Johnston’s persistent retreating had negatively affected the aggressiveness of the Army of Tennessee, and that this lack of aggressiveness substantially contributed to the successful escape of John Schofield’s nearly trapped Federal army at Spring Hill; Horn described Hood’s factually accurate recollection as “blather,” even though Hood’s account was supported by the recorded firsthand observations of his contemporaries.2