Volume II Part 44 (2/2)
a.s.signment of General J. E. Johnston to the Command of the Army of Tennessee.--Condition of his Army.--An Offensive Campaign suggested.--Proposed Objects to be accomplished.--General Johnston's Plans.--Advance of Sherman.--The Strength of the Confederate Position.--General Johnston expects General Sherman to give Battle at Dalton.--The Enemy's Flank Movement via Snake Creek Gap to Resaca.--Johnston falls back to Resaca.--Further Retreat to Adairsville.--General Johnston's Reasons.--Retreat to Ca.s.sville.-- Projected Engagement at Kingston frustrated.--Retreat beyond the Etowah River.--Strong Position at Alatoona abandoned.--Nature of the Country between Marietta and Dallas.--Engagements at New Hope Church.--Army takes Position at Kenesaw.--Senator Hill's Letter.-- Death of Lieutenant-General Polk.--Battle at Kenesaw Mountain.-- Retreat beyond the Chattahoochee.--Results reviewed.--Popular Demand for Removal of General Johnston.--Reluctance to remove him.-- Reasons for Removal.--a.s.signment of General J. B. Hood to the Command.--He a.s.sumes the Offensive.--Battle of Peach-tree Creek.-- Death of General W. H. T. Walker.--Sherman's Movement to Jonesboro.--Defeat of Hardee.--Evacuation of Atlanta.--Sherman's Inhuman Order.--Visit to Georgia.--Suggested Operations.--Want of cooperation by the Governor of Georgia.--Conference with Generals Beauregard, Hardee, and Cobb, at Augusta.--Departure from Original Plan.--General Hood's Movement against the Enemy's Communications.-- Partial Successes.--Withdrawal of the Army to Gadsden and Movement against Thomas.--Sherman burns Atlanta and begins his March to the Sea.--Vandalism.--Direction of his Advance.--General Wheeler's Opposition.--His Valuable Service.--Sherman reaches Savannah.-- General Hardee's Command.--The Defenses of the City.--a.s.sault and Capture of Fort McAlister.--The Results.--Hardee evacuates Savannah.
On December 16, 1863, I directed General J. E. Johnston to transfer the command of the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana to Lieutenant-General Polk, and repair to Dalton, Georgia, to a.s.sume command of the Army of Tennessee, representing at that date an effective total of 43,094. My information led me to believe that the condition of that army, in all that const.i.tutes efficiency, was satisfactory, and that the men were anxious for an opportunity to retrieve the loss of prestige sustained in the disastrous battle of Missionary Ridge. I was also informed that the enemy's forces, then occupying Chattanooga, Bridgeport, and Stevenson, with a detached force at Knoxville, were weaker in numbers than at any time since the battle of Missionary Ridge, and that they were especially deficient in cavalry and in artillery and train-horses. I desired, therefore, that prompt and vigorous measures be taken to enable our troops to commence active operations against the enemy as early as practicable.
It was important to guard against the injurious results to the morale of the troops, which always attend a prolonged season of inactivity; but the recovery of the territory in Tennessee and Kentucky, which we had been compelled to abandon, and on the supplies of which the proper subsistence of our armies mainly depended, imperatively demanded an onward movement. I believed that, by a rapid concentration of our troops between the scattered forces of the enemy, without attempting to capture his intrenched positions, we could compel him to accept battle in the open field, and that, should we fail to draw him out of his intrenchments, we could move upon his line of communications. The Federal force at Knoxville depended mainly for support on its connection with that at Chattanooga, and both were wholly dependent on uninterrupted communication with Nashville. Could we, then, by interposing our force, separate these two bodies of the enemy, and cut off his communication from Nashville to Chattanooga by destroying the railroad, both conditions were fulfilled. Of the practicability of this movement I had little doubt; of its expediency, if practicable, there could be none. I impressed repeatedly upon General Johnston by letter, and by officers of my staff and others, sent to him by me for the purpose of putting him in possession of these views, the importance of a prompt aggressive movement by the Army of Tennessee. The following were among the considerations presented to General Johnston, at my request, by Brigadier-General W. N. Pendleton, chief of artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia, on April 16, 1864:
1. To take the enemy at disadvantage while weakened, it is believed, by sending troops to Virginia, and having others still absent on furlough.
2. To break up his plans by antic.i.p.ating and frustrating his combinations.
3. So to press him in his present position as to prevent his heavier ma.s.sing in Virginia.
4. To defeat him in battle, and gain great consequent strength in supplies, men, and productive territory.
5. To prevent the waste of the army incident to inactivity.
6. To inspirit the troops and the country by success, and to discourage the enemy.
7. To obviate the necessity of falling back, which might probably occur if our antagonist be allowed to consummate his plans without molestation.
General Johnston cordially approved of an aggressive movement, and informed me of his purpose to make it as soon as reenforcements and supplies, then on the way, should reach him. He did not approve the proposed advance into Tennessee. He believed that the Federal forces in Tennessee were not weaker, but if anything stronger, than at Missionary Ridge; that defeat beyond the Tennessee would probably prove ruinous to us, resulting in the loss of his army, the occupation of Georgia by the enemy, the ”piercing of the Confederacy in its vitals,” and the loss of all the southwestern territory. He proposed, therefore, to stand on the defensive until strengthened, ”to watch, prepare, and strike” as soon as possible. As soon as reenforced, he declared his purpose to advance to Ringgold, attack there, and, if successful, as he expected to be, to strike at Cleveland, cut the railroad, control the river, and thus isolate East Tennessee, and, as a consequence, force his antagonist to give battle on this side of the Tennessee River. Simultaneously with, and in aid of, this movement, General Johnston proposed that a large cavalry force should be sent to Middle Tennessee, in the rear of the enemy.
These operations, he thought, would result in forcing the Federal army to evacuate the Tennessee Valley, and make an advance into the heart of the State safely practicable.
The irreparable loss of time in making any forward movement as desired having sufficed for the combinations which rendered an advance across the Tennessee River no longer practicable, I took prompt measures to enable General Johnston to carry out immediately his own proposition to strike first at Ringgold and then at Cleveland, proposing that General Buckner should threaten Knoxville, General Forrest advance into or threaten Middle Tennessee, and General Roddy hold the enemy in northern Alabama, and thus prevent his concentration in our front. This movement, although it held out no such promise as did the plan of advance before the enemy had had time to make his combinations, might have been attended with good results had it been promptly executed. But no such movement was made or even attempted. General Johnston's belief that General Grant would be ready to a.s.sume the offensive before he could be prepared to do so, proved too well founded, while his purpose, if the Federal army did not attack, that we should prepare and take the initiative ourselves, was never carried out.[105]
On the morning of May 2, 1864, General Johnston discovered that the enemy, under the command of General Sherman, was advancing against him, and two days subsequently it was reported that he had reached Ringgold (about fifteen miles north of Dalton) in considerable force.
At this date the official returns show that the effective strength of the Army of Tennessee, counting the troops actually in position at Dalton and those in the immediate rear of that place, was about fifty thousand. When to these is added General Polk's command (then _en route_), and the advance of which joined him at Resaca, the effective strength of General Johnston's army was not less than 68,620 men of all arms, excluding from the estimate the thousands of men employed on extra duty, amounting, as General Hood states, to ten thousand when he a.s.sumed command of the army.
Army at Dalton, May 1, 1864, according to General Johnston's estimates[106] ... ... ... ... 37,652 infantry.
2,812 artillery.
2,392 cavalry.
Mercer's brigade, joined May 2d ... ... ... 2,000 infantry.
Thirty-seventh Mississippi Regiment, _en route_ 400 ”
Dibrell's and Harrison's brigades in rear, recruiting their horses ... ... ... ... . 2,336 cavalry.
Martin's division at Cartersville ... ... . . 1,700 ”
------ 49,292 Polk's command ... ... ... ... ... ... 19,330 ------ Total effective ... ... ... ... ... . . 68,620
To enable General Johnston to repulse the hostile advance and a.s.sume the offensive, no effort was spared on the part of the Government.
Almost all the available military strength of the south and west, in men and supplies, was pressed forward and placed at his disposal. The supplies of the commissary, quartermaster, and ordnance departments of his army were represented as ample and suitably located. The troops, encouraged by the large accessions of strength which they saw arriving daily, and which they knew were marching rapidly to their support, were eager to advance, and confident in their power to achieve victory and recover the territory which they had lost. Their position was such as to warrant the confident expectation of successful resistance at least. Long mountain-ranges, penetrated by few and difficult roads and paths, and deep and wide rivers, seemed to render our position one from which we could not be dislodged or turned, while that of the enemy, dependent for his supplies upon a single line of railroad from Nashville to the point where he was operating, was manifestly perilous. The whole country shared the hope which the Government entertained, that a decisive victory would soon be won in the mountains of Georgia, which would free the south and west from invasion, would open to our occupation and the support of our armies the productive territory of Tennessee and Kentucky, and so recruit our army in the West as to render it impracticable for the enemy to acc.u.mulate additional forces in Virginia.
On May 6th the Confederate forces were in position in and near Dalton, which point General Johnston believed that General Sherman would attack with his whole force. This belief seems to have been held by General Johnston until the evening of May 12th, when, having previously learned the proximity of the advance of Lieutenant-General Polk's command, and that the rest of his troops were hurrying forward to reenforce him, but discovering that the main body of Sherman's army was moving round his left flank, via Snake-Creek Gap to Resaca, under cover of Rocky-Face Mountain, he withdrew his troops from Dalton and fell back on Resaca, situated on the Western and Atlantic Railroad, eighteen miles south of Dalton on a peninsula formed by the junction of the Oostenaula and Conasauga Rivers. The Confederate position at this place was strengthened by continuous rifle-pits and strong field-works, by which it was protected on the flanks on the above-named rivers, and a line of retreat across the Oostenaula secured. Information, on May 15th, that the right of the Federal army was crossing the Oostenaula near Calhoun (four miles south of Resaca), thus threatening his line of communications, induced General Johnston to fall back from Resaca toward Adairsville, thirteen miles south on the railroad. General Johnston, in accounting for his abandonment of his strong position at Dalton, and of his subsequent position at Resaca, states that he was dislodged from the first position--that in front of Dalton--by General Sherman's movement to his right through Snake-Creek Gap, threatening our line of communication at Resaca; and from the position taken at Resaca to meet that movement, by a similar one on the part of the Federal General toward Calhoun--the second being covered by the river, as the first had been by the mountains.
After abandoning Resaca, General Johnston hoped to find a good position near Calhoun; but, finding none, he fell back to a position about a mile north of Adairsville, where the valley of the Oothcaloga was supposed from the map to be so narrow that his army, formed in line of battle across it, could hold the heights on both flanks. On reaching this point, however, it was found that the valley was so much broader than was supposed, that the army, in line of battle, could not obtain the antic.i.p.ated advantage of ground. Hence a further retreat to Ca.s.sville was ordered, seventeen miles farther south, and a few miles to the east of the railroad. Here, supposing that the Federal army would divide, one column following the railroad through Kingston and the other the direct road to the Etowah Railroad Bridge through Ca.s.sville, General Johnston hoped that the opportunity would be offered him to engage and defeat one of the enemy's columns before it could receive aid from the other, and, as the distance between them would be greatest at Kingston, he determined to attack at this point. The coming battle was announced in orders to each regiment of the army.
<script>