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

by Hood, Stephen

  Chapter 16

  “Historians have powerful imaginations, which are both essential and dangerous.”

  — Robert Stinson

  Hood to His Men: “Boys, It is All My Fault”

  John Bell Hood is often accused of blaming others for his failures and never accepting responsibility for his defeats. Although Hood indeed voiced his displeasure and disappointment with the performance of some of his subordinates—most notably William Hardee in the fighting around Atlanta—he accepted ultimate responsibility for his defeats there and in Tennessee, and praised the common soldiers of the Army of Tennessee. As is typical in the present-day historical portrayal of Hood, his words are often misinterpreted, and in almost every case his praise of his troops is not shared with readers.1

  Without listing a source, Stanley Horn wrote that on the morning after the failure at Spring Hill, Hood “lashed out viciously at his subordinates, placing the blame everywhere but where it belonged—on himself.” Hood, continued Horn, possessed a “strongly developed unwillingness to take responsibility for his own errors.” Thomas Connelly picked up on this theme when he wrote, “Although Hood enjoyed imitating Lee’s tactics of 1862-63, he did not display that general’s willingness to accept blame.” According to Nathan Bedford Forrest biographers Daniel Foxx and Eddy Davison, “Hood blamed everyone but himself” for the failure at Spring Hill. Sam Elliott, A. P. Stewart’s modern biographer, helped to further cement this idea when he wrote that “Hood was never averse to casting blame.” Even the most sympathetic of the modern Hood scholars, Brian Miller, claimed that, “After the war, Hood would blame everyone except himself for the disasters at Franklin and Nashville.” For reasons known only to them, these authors consciously decided to ignore evidence to the contrary, including Hood’s acceptance of blame when he wrote in his memoirs, “I failed utterly to bring on battle” at Spring Hill.2

  Hood was not unlike many other Confederate commanders when he engaged in a postwar debate regarding specific defeats and the loss of the war. Examples abound, including Jubal Early versus James Longstreet; Joseph E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard versus Jefferson Davis and Braxton Bragg; Davis versus Louis Wigfall and P. G. T. Beauregard; and of course, Johnston versus Hood. In his postwar writings, Hood placed much of the blame on Hardee for the failure to hold Atlanta, and on Johnston, whose persistent retreating Hood believed negatively affected the offensive effectiveness of the Army of Tennessee. Hood’s official report of his operations as commander of that army is often represented as the initial salvo in the Hood-Johnston feud. Oft-ignored evidence suggests otherwise. Hood visited Mary Boynton Chesnut, the famous Southern diarist, in Chester, South Carolina, where she had the time to personally discuss a variety of matters with him. During that visit on April 5, 1865, she wrote in her journal: “He [Hood] calls his report self-defense; says that Joe Johnston attacked him and he was obliged to state things from his point of view.” Hood’s official report and his memoirs are commonly cited as examples of his placing blame on others for his failures, when in fact they were a part of an ongoing debate with Johnston with each blaming the other for negatively affecting the Army of Tennessee. Commentators were incorrect in asserting that Hood blamed the individual soldiers of the Army of Tennessee for the defeats at Atlanta and in Tennessee, and in claiming that he did not accept personal responsibility for his defeats.3

  When casting Hood as an army commander who held others responsible for his failures, critics often overlooked or ignoreed the poor performance turned in by certain units of his army, or the lack of aggressiveness demonstrated by certain regiments and brigades, as noted not just by Hood but by others as well. Hood did indeed blame Johnston and Hardee for negatively influencing the army’s aggressiveness, but as detailed elsewhere in this book, he was neither incorrect nor alone in his assessment. Hardee, described by historian Stephen Newton as “the most thorough-going mediocrity and back-stabbing subordinate ever to be nicknamed ‘Old Reliable,’” was involved in three of Hood’s four major battles around Atlanta; it is difficult to find scholars who describe his performance at any of the battles as praiseworthy. (Likewise, it is virtually impossible to find a commentator who describes Frank Cheatham’s performance at Spring Hill as laudable.) An army commander is allowed to point out the failure of a subordinate when the subordinate indeed failed in the field.4

  In the postwar “blame game,” Joe Johnston and William Hardee also cast blame on Hood. Hardee excused his own defeat at Jonesboro by admitting that the loss was due to the lackluster effort of his troops, and then went on to blame Hood for ordering too many attacks after assuming army command. Hardee, who complained that the previous battles were either lost or “dear-bought and fruitless” victories, had been delegated independent command at Jonesboro and deflected guilt to Hood rather than accept responsibility for the defeat that doomed Atlanta. The point, of course, is not whether Jonesboro was a winnable battle for the Confederates; given the heavy disparity in numbers, it likely was not. The issue is that Hardee, as its commander, blamed others for the defeat.5

  As is common in Civil War scholarship and literature, Hood is held to a much harsher standard than other Civil War notables. After the fall of Atlanta, Hood told Jefferson Davis in a brief letter, “According to all human calculations, we should have saved Atlanta had the officers and men of this army done what was expected of them.” That sentence in Hood’s letter often appears in Civil War literature. What historians routinely excluded are the words that followed, which as we will later see, distorts the context of the oft-repeated sentence: “It has been God’s will to be otherwise. I am of good heart and feel that we shall yet succeed.” In a letter to James Seddon on Sept 21, 1864, after expressing confidence in his army and his plan to force Sherman out of Atlanta and “give me battle,” Hood accepted personal responsibility for the loss of the important city, admitting simply, “I lost Atlanta.”6

  It is important to understand that expressions such as the one Hood penned to President Davis were common during the Civil War. Robert E. Lee said of George McClellan’s impending escape near the end of the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, “Yes, he will get away because I cannot have my orders carried out.” Lee wrote this immediately after the failure to catch the Union Army of the Potomac while in motion at Glendale/Frayser’s Farm. Lee may have been referring, at least in part, to Stonewall Jackson’s poor performance on June 30. After the surrender at Appomattox in April of 1865, Lee wrote to Davis, “The operations which occurred while the troops were in the entrenchments in front of Richmond and Petersburg were not marked by the boldness and decision which formerly characterized them. Except in particular instances, they were feeble; and a want of confidence seemed to possess officers and men.” No reasonable person would misinterpret Lee’s words as blaming the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia for McClellan’s escape in 1862, or for the loss of Richmond and Petersburg in 1865. Unfortunately, such misinterpretations are promulgated with noticeable regularity by Hood’s many detractors.7

  William T. Sherman also eluded criticism for blaming subordinates for his defeats. Here is what Sherman wrote about his bloody repulse at Chickasaw Bayou in Mississippi during the Vicksburg Campaign: “I have always felt that it was due to the failure of General G. W. Morgan to obey his orders, or fulfill his promise made in person.” Sherman added that a Federal victory would have been attained, “had he [Morgan] used with skill and boldness one of his brigades.”8

  Some of Hood’s own subordinates occasionally held each other culpable for poor performances, and some blamed Hood; they, too, evade the disparagement of historians. Corps commander A. P. Stewart, for example, blamed Hood for the failure at Spring Hill by claiming repeatedly after the war that Hood was in command and should have personally ensured that his orders had been obeyed. Cavalry commander James Chalmers openly criticized infantry general John C. Brown for the lost opportunity at Spring Hill, while Nathan Bedford Forrest faulted multiple commanders—but never himself. Nor
is Hood’s division commander William Bate condemned for criticizing Chalmers’s weak attack against the Federal right at Franklin, or his complaint that Forrest’s cavalry failed to support his flanks at Murfreesboro. Forrest, in turn, criticized Bate’s infantry at Murfreesboro. Neither Forrest, Bate, nor Chalmers have been accused of blaming others for the failures at Spring Hill, Franklin, and Murfreesboro.9

  S. D. Lee, another of Hood’s senior officers, strongly criticized the performance of his own corps during the defense of Atlanta; rarely is he condemned for blaming his own commanders for his failures. Lee wrote in his official report, “The majority of the officers and men were so impressed with the idea of their inability to carry even temporary breastworks, that when orders were given for attack, and there was a probability of encountering works … they did not generally move to the attack with that spirit which nearly always assures success.”10

  One of the most unfair and disappointing aspects of the modern literary portrayal of Hood is the almost complete absence of the unambiguous praise he heaped upon his troops. Since Hood’s words of respect and appreciation for his soldiers reside in the same body of historical evidence commonly cited by scholars and other authors, it is difficult to argue that the absence of his laudatory words is unintentional.

  On December 6, 1864, outside Nashville, for example, Hood issued a general order seeking to recognize and honor the troops for their actions at Franklin: “Commanding officers will forward, with as little delay as possible, the names of those officers and soldiers who passed over the enemy’s interior line of works at Franklin, on the evening of the 30th of November, that they may be forwarded to the War Department and placed upon the roll of honor.”11 Two days later on December 8, Hood sent a dispatch to Forrest, who was commanding a detached force at Murfreesboro: “General Hood is fully satisfied that you have done all that could be done in the case.”12

  Hood is almost universally criticized for not accepting responsibility for the failure of the Tennessee Campaign, when in fact, he did just that. Near the end of the Nashville retreat on December 21 near Shoal Creek, Alabama, W. G. Davenport of the 10th Texas Cavalry wrote, “General Hood came and looking worn and tired but with kindly words to all, saying to the soldiers, ‘Boys, it is all my fault, you did your best.’” In his letter of resignation from the Army of Tennessee, Hood accepted full responsibility for the outcome of the Tennessee Campaign: “I am alone responsible for its conception,” and in his memoirs added, “I alone was responsible” for the failed campaign. In an effort to deflect criticism away from his superiors Beauregard and Davis, Hood wrote that the Tennessee Campaign was “my own conception,” even though Beauregard and Davis assisted in its planning and approved the invasion.13

  Mary Chesnut’s acclaimed A Diary From Dixie mentioned Hood’s personal lament and his acceptance of blame. Although authors frequently cited Chesnut on a wide variety of topics, her words of admiration and respect for Hood, as well as his words of contrition, are rarely reproduced for readers. Chesnut, who recalled Hood visiting her home after his resignation as commander of the Army of Tennessee, wrote: “He said he had nobody to blame but himself.”14

  Notably absent in all of the major books on the Army of Tennessee or the Tennessee Campaign is Hood’s eloquent tribute to the soldiers who fought at Franklin when he compared them to his namesake Hood’s Texas Brigade—some of Robert E. Lee’s most accomplished and acclaimed soldiers. “The attack [at Franklin], which entailed so great a sacrifice of life,” began Hood, “had become a necessity as imperative as that which impelled Gen. Lee to order the assault at Gaines’s Mill, when our troops charged across an open space, a distance of one mile, under a most galling fire of musketry and artillery, against an enemy heavily entrenched. The heroes in that action fought not more gallantly than the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee upon the fields of Franklin.”15

  When considering Spring Hill, his limited options at Franklin, and other challenges, Hood’s best explanation for his failure in Tennessee may have appeared in a letter to an acquaintance in 1867: “Accidents however, perhaps beyond human control caused the campaign to fail at a time the fruits of victory were seemingly within our grasp.”16

  1 This chapter is intentionally similar to Chapter 13, “Did John Bell Hood Accuse his Soldiers of Cowardice?”, with additional information that required a separate chapter of its own.

  2 Horn, The Army of Tennessee, 394; Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 430; Davison and Foxx, Nathan Bedford Forrest, 358; Elliott, Soldier of Tennessee, 234; Miller, John Bell Hood and the Fight for Civil War Memory, 239; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 287.

  3 Chesnut, A Diary from Dixie, 376.

  4 Newton, “Overrated Generals,” North and South, 15.

  5 OR 38, pt. 3, 702.

  6 Ibid., 38, pt. 5, 1,023; John Bell Hood letter to James Seddon, September 21, 1864, Compiled Service Records, A. P. Mason, National Archives.

  7 Dowdey and Manarin, The Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee, 938; Emory Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 241.

  8 Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, vol. 2, 224.

  9 Elliott, Soldier of Tennessee, 234; Young, “Hood’s Failure at Spring Hill,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 16, 25-41; OR 45, pt. 1, 743, 746.

  10 Ibid., 39, pt. 1, 810.

  11 Ibid., 45, pt. 2, 654.

  12 Ibid., 666.

  13 Davenport, Incidents in the Life of W G Davenport, 7; OR 45, pt. 2, 805; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 287, 310, 311.

  14 Foote, The Civil War, vol. 3, 760.

  15 Hood, Advance and Retreat, 296.

  16 John Bell Hood letter to Sarah Dorsey, March 30, 1867, John Bell Hood Personal Papers.

  Chapter 17

  “The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”

  —Mark Twain

  John Bell Hood and Words of Reproach

  Although reasoned criticisms of John Bell Hood’s military decisions are appropriate, some authors seem also compelled to insult his character. Few Civil War figures have received the volume and depth of personal attacks as has Hood.

  Hood’s harshest critic is Wiley Sword, who used his considerable literary talents to literally assail Hood from cradle to grave in his books The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah and Courage Under Fire. He began by challenging Hood’s pedigree. “In the beginning,” posited Sword, “there was little in John Bell Hood’s background to suggest that he would become one of the more influential generals of the Civil War.” How Sword reached such a conclusion is puzzling. Both of Hood’s grandfathers were veterans of the American Revolution and the French and Indian War. Hood was surely influenced by these grandfathers, for his own father, Dr. John W. Hood, spent many months away from his family during his frequent visits to Philadelphia, where he studied and later taught medicine. For Sword to conclude that there was “little” in his background given Hood’s ancestry was strange indeed. Thankfully, more recent military writers did not affirm this bizarre conclusion. Eric Jacobson, for example, wrote in For Cause and Country that “John Bell Hood was born to be a soldier and the Civil War gave him every opportunity to unleash his instincts.” Biographer Brian Miller concurred, writing in John Bell Hood and the Fight for Civil War Memory that Hood “had a family lineage rich in military history.”1

  Sword described Hood as “an ill mannered hellion” who grew up “with a streak of wildness and nonconformity about him,” adding that he was “frequently in trouble.” The author’s sole source for the allegation is The Gallant Hood, John Dyer’s 1950 biography. There is no historical record whatsoever of any legal problems or issues of being “frequently in trouble” during John Bell Hood’s younger years. The absence of facts did nothing to stop Dyer from claiming that Hood proudly proclaimed that he had led other youths into trouble. Dyer’s only source is an oral statement made by one of Hood’s distant relatives, who was interviewed by the author a century after Hood’s childhood. A single-source oral de
scription of Hood’s adolescent personality, corroborated by no historical evidence of illegal, destructive, or rebellious conduct by Hood during his entire life—from infancy to adulthood, in his military and civilian affairs—is less than credible. Yet, both Dyer and Sword used it as a basis to draw bold and unflattering conclusions.2

  Sword also alleged that Hood’s father lacked confidence in his son, repeating the unverifiable word-of-mouth legend of Dr. Hood telling the boy, “If you can’t behave, don’t come home [from West Point]…. Go to the nearest gate post and butt your brains out.” There is no contemporary credible source to back this statement. Sword also failed to share with his readers that Hood was called home from Fort Mason, Texas, in March of 1856 to oversee the financial and personal affairs of his ailing father. At that time Dr. Hood’s wife, a daughter, and two other sons—one older and one younger than John Bell—were still in Montgomery County, Kentucky. Why would the senior Hood insist that his disruptive and irresponsible middle son, who was then serving in the army 1,500 miles away, seek leave and travel all the way back to Kentucky to administer to his affairs? In requesting the extended furlough in the spring of 1856, Hood explained to Washington authorities, “My father’s health is still very distressing… . His business is in the greatest confusion and I am the only child he will allow to attend to it for him.”3

  Many writers portrayed Hood, while a West Point cadet, as undisciplined and lacking in academic ability. Sword claimed that he managed to “prod and squirm his way” through the academy. Hood accumulated 196 demerits during his fourth year, but Sword’s research would also have shown that during the most difficult first (plebe) year, Hood accrued a mere 18 demerits—which placed him in the upper quartile of the entire cadet corps. Although he was four demerits short of expulsion by December of his final year, the young Kentuckian did not accumulate a single demerit over the next five months, an outstanding display of conduct and personal discipline.4