Volume II Part 45 (2/2)

”'I differ with your conclusion,' said General Johnston. 'I admit this is a strong line of defense, but I have two more strong lines between this and the river, from which I can hold Sherman a long time.'

”I was delayed _en route_ somewhat, and reached Richmond on Sunday morning week, which I think was the 9th day of July. I went to the hotel, and in a few moments was at the Executive mansion.

”This interview with Mr. Davis I can never forget.

”I laid before him carefully, and in detail, all the facts elicited in the conversation with General Johnston, and explained fully the purpose of my mission. When I had gone through, the President took up the facts, one by one, and fully explained the situation. I remember very distinctly many of the facts, for the manner as well as matter stated by Mr. Davis was impressive. 'Long ago,' said the President, 'I ordered Morgan to make this movement upon Sherman's rear, and suggested that his best plan was to go directly from Abingdon through East Tennessee. But Morgan insisted that, if he were permitted to go through Kentucky and around Nashville, he could greatly recruit his horses and his men by volunteers. I yielded, and allowed him to have his own way. He undertook it, but was defeated, and has retreated back, and is now at Abingdon with only eighteen hundred men, very much demoralized, and badly provided with horses.' He next read a dispatch from General Stephen D. Lee, to the effect that A. J, Smith had left Memphis with fifteen thousand men, intended either as a reenforcement for Sherman or for an attack on Mobile; that, to meet this force, he (Lee) had only seven thousand men, including the commands of Forrest and Roddy. He would like to have reenforcements, but anyhow, with or without reenforcements, 'he should meet Smith, and whip him, too.' 'Ah! there is a man for you,' said Mr. Davis. And he did meet Smith with his inferior force, and whipped him, too. He next read a dispatch from a commander at Mobile (who, I think, was General Maury), to the effect that Canby was marching from New Orleans with twenty thousand men, and A. J. Smith from Memphis with fifteen thousand, intending to make a combined attack on Mobile. To meet this force of thirty-five thousand men he had four thousand, and Lee, with Forrest and Roddy, seven thousand, making eleven thousand in all. He asked for reenforcements.

”After going fully through this matter, and showing how utterly General Johnston was at fault, as to the numbers of troops in the different commands, the President said, 'How long did you understand General Johnston to say he could hold Sherman north of the Chattahoochee River?' From fifty-four to sixty days I said, and repeated the facts on that subject as above stated. Thereupon the President read me a dispatch from General Johnston, announcing that he had crossed or was crossing the Chattahoochee River.”

”The next day (Monday), Mr. Seddon, the Secretary of War, called to see me. He asked me to reduce my interview with General Johnston to writing, for the use of the Cabinet, and I did so, and gave it to him. Mr. Seddon said he was anxious for General Johnston's removal, and he was especially anxious because, he said, he was one of those who was responsible for his appointment. He had urged his appointment very earnestly, but it was a great mistake, and he desired to do all he could, even at this late day, to atone for it. The President, he said, was averse to the removal. He made the appointment against his own convictions, but thought it a very hazardous thing to remove him now, and he would not do it, if he could have any a.s.surance that General Johnston would not surrender Atlanta without a battle.

”Other members of the Cabinet, I know, had views similar to those expressed by Mr. Seddon. The question, or rather the situation, was referred to General Lee, but he declined to give any positive advice, and expressed regret that so grave a movement as the removal of General Johnston, under the circ.u.mstances existing, should be found to be necessary.” [109]

”During all the time, a telegraphic correspondence was kept up with General Johnston--the object being to ascertain if he would make a determined fight to save Atlanta. His answers were thought to be evasive. Finally, the question was put to General Johnston categorically to this effect: 'Will you surrender Atlanta without a fight?' To this the answer was regarded as not only evasive, but as indicating the contemplated contingency of surrendering Atlanta, on the ground that the Governor of the State had not furnished, as expected, sufficient State troops to man the city while the army was giving battle outside. 'This evasive answer to a positive inquiry,'

said one of the Cabinet to me, 'brought the President over. He yielded very reluctantly.' I was informed of the result at once, and was also informed that Mr. Davis was the last man in the Cabinet to agree to the order of removal.”...

General Hood a.s.sumed command on the 18th of July. In his report of the operations of the army while under his command, he states that the effective strength of his force on that day was forty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty men of all arms.

Feeling that the only chance of holding Atlanta consisted in a.s.suming the offensive by forcing the enemy to accept battle, General Hood determined, on the 20th of July, to attack the corps of Generals Thomas and Schofield, who were in the act of crossing Peachtree Creek, hoping to defeat Thomas before he could fortify himself, then to fall on Schofield, and finally to attack McPherson's corps, which had reached Decatur, on the Georgia Railroad, driving the enemy back to the creek and into the narrow s.p.a.ce included between that stream and the Chattahoochee River. Owing to an unfortunate misapprehension of the order of battle and the consequent delay in making the attack, the movement failed. On the 21st, finding that McPherson's corps was threatening his communications, General Hood resolved to attack him at or near Decatur, in front and on flank, turn his left, and then, following up the movement from the right to the left with his whole army, force the enemy down Peachtree Creek. This engagement was the hottest of the campaign, but it failed to accomplish any other favorable result than to check General McPherson's movement upon the communications of our army, while it cost heavily in the loss of many officers and men, foremost among whom was that _preux_ chevalier and accomplished soldier, Major-General W. H. T. Walker, of Georgia.

Beyond expeditions by the enemy, for the most part by cavalry, to destroy the lines of railroad by which supplies and reenforcements could reach Atlanta, and successful efforts on our part to frustrate their movements, resulting in the defeat and capture of General Stoneman and his command near Macon, the utter destruction of the enemy's cavalry force engaged by General Wheeler at Newnan, and the defeat of Sherman's design to unite his cavalry at the Macon and Western Railroad, and effectually destroy that essential avenue for the conveyance of stores and ammunition for our army, no movement of special importance took place between July 22d and August 26th, at which latter date it was discovered that Sherman had abandoned his works upon our right, and, leaving a considerable force to hold his intrenched position at the railroad-bridge over the Chattahoochee, was marching his main body to the south and southwest of Atlanta, to use it, as he himself has expressed it, ”against the communications of Atlanta, instead of against its intrenchments.” On the 30th, it being known that he was moving on Jonesboro, the county town of Clayton County, about twenty miles south of Atlanta, General Hood sent two corps under General Hardee to confront him at that point, in the hope that he could drive him across Flint River, oblige him to abandon his works on the left, and then be able to attack him successfully in flank. The attack at Jonesboro was unsuccessful.

General Hardee was obliged, on September 1st, to fall back to Lovejoy's, seven miles south of Jonesboro, on the Macon and Western Railroad. Thus, the main body of the Federal army was between Hardee and Atlanta, and the immediate evacuation of that city became a necessity. There was an additional and cogent reason for that movement. Owing to the obstinately cruel policy which the United States Government had pursued for some time, of refusing on any terms to exchange prisoners of war, upward of thirty thousand prisoners were at Andersonville in southwestern Georgia at this time. To guard against the release and arming of these prisoners, General Hood thought it necessary to place our army between them and the enemy, and abandon the project, which he thought feasible, of moving on Sherman's communications and destroying his depots of supplies at Marietta.

Upon abandoning Atlanta, Hood marched his army in a westerly direction, and formed a junction with the two corps which had been operating at Jonesboro and Lovejoy's under General Hardee.

General Sherman, desisting from any further aggressive movement in the field, returned to Atlanta, which had been formally surrendered by the Mayor on September 2d, with the promise, as reported, on the part of the Federal commander, that non-combatants and private property should be respected. Shortly after his arrival, the commanding General of the Federal forces, forgetful of this promise, and on the pretense that the exigencies of the service required that the place should be used exclusively for military purposes, issued an order directing all civilians living in Atlanta, male and female, to leave the city within five days from the date of the order (September 5th). Since Alva's atrocious cruelties to the noncombatant population of the Low Countries in the sixteenth century, the history of war records no instance of such barbarous cruelty as that which this order designed to perpetrate. It involved the immediate expulsion from their homes and only means of subsistence of thousands of unoffending women and children, whose husbands and fathers were either in the army, in Northern prisons, or had died in battle. In vain did the Mayor and corporate authorities of Atlanta appeal to Sherman to revoke or modify this inhuman order, representing in piteous language ”the woe, the horror, and the suffering, not to be described by words,” [110] which its execution would inflict on helpless women and infant children. His only reply was:

”I give full credit to your statements of the distress that will be occasioned by it, and yet shall not revoke my order, because my orders are not designed to meet the humanities of the case.”

At the time appointed, the women and children were expelled from their houses, and, before they were pa.s.sed within our lines, complaint was generally made that the Federal officers and men who were sent to guard them had robbed them of the few articles of value they had been permitted to take from their homes. The cowardly dishonesty of its executioners was in perfect harmony with the temper and spirit of the order.

During the month of September the Federal army in and around Atlanta made no movement beyond strengthening its defenses and collecting within it large quant.i.ties of military supplies. General Hood, meantime, held his troops in the vicinity of Jonesboro. His reports to the War Department represented the morale of his army as ”greatly impaired by the recurrence of retreat,” decreasing in numbers day by day, and the surrounding country devoid of natural strength or any advantageous position upon which he could retire. With a view to judge better the situation, and then determine after personal inspection the course which should seem best to pursue, I visited General Hood's headquarters at Palmetto. The crisis was grave. It was not to be expected that General Sherman would remain long inactive.

The rapidity with which he was collecting recruits and supplies at Atlanta indicated that he contemplated a movement farther south, making Atlanta a secondary base. To rescue Georgia, save the Gulf States, and retain possession of the lines of communication upon which we depended for the supplies of our armies in the field, an effort to arrest the further progress of the enemy was necessary; and to this end the railroads in his rear must be effectually torn up, the great railroad-bridge over the Tennessee River at Bridgeport destroyed, and the communication between Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Nashville completely cut off. Could this be accomplished, all the fruits of Sherman's successful campaign in Georgia would be blighted, his capture of Atlanta would become a barren victory, and he would probably be compelled to make a retreat toward Tennessee, at every mile of which he might be hara.s.sed by our army. Or, should he, relying on Atlanta as a base, push forward through Georgia to the Atlantic coast, our army, having cut his communications north of Atlanta, could fall upon his rear, and, with the advantages of a better knowledge of the country, of the surrounding devoted population, of the auxiliary force to be expected under the circ.u.mstances, and our superiority in cavalry, it was not unreasonable to hope that retributive justice might overtake the ruthless invader.

My first object was to fill up the depleted ranks of the army, to bring the absentees and deserters back to the ranks, and induce the Governor and State officials to cooperate heartily and earnestly with the Confederate Government in all measures that might be found necessary to give the proposed movement a reasonable prospect of success.

The avowed objection of the Governor of Georgia to the acts of Congress providing for raising troops by conscription, and his persistent opposition to the authority of the Confederate Executive to appoint the generals and staff officers of the volunteer organizations received from the States to form the provisional army of the Confederacy, caused him frequently to obstruct the Government officials in the discharge of their duty, to withhold the a.s.sistance which he might be justly expected to render, and, in the contemplation of his own views of the duties and obligations of the Executive and legislative departments of the General Government, to lose sight of those important objects, the attainment of which an exalted patriotism might have told him depended on the cooperation of the State and Confederate governments. The inordinate exemption from military service as State officials of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-live (it was estimated that the number of exempts in November, 1864 amounted to fifteen thousand) was an abuse which I endeavored in vain to correct. Were the majority of the men thus exempted, and who remained at home ”that the army might be fed,”

really engaged in that important service, the end might be said to justify the means; but, for any less exigent demand, patriotism and humane consideration for the brave men at the front required that the number of these exempts should be reduced to the minimum, if, indeed, the number of those unfit for military duty was not sufficient to perform this service. After a thorough inspection of the Army of Tennessee at Palmetto, after conference with several prominent Georgians, and notably with that pure patriot and distinguished statesman and soldier. General Howell Cobb, whose brain and heart and means and energies were all at the service of his country, I proceeded to Augusta during the first week of October, in order, with Generals Hardee and Cobb and other officers of prominence, to meet and confer with General Beauregard, whom I had just a.s.signed to the command of the Military Division of the West, and to impart to him my views as to the exigencies of the occasion, and how I thought that they might be most advantageously met.

Before this time General Hood had already crossed the Chattahoochee with his entire force, moving against the enemy's line of communication. General Forrest, with a strong force of cavalry, had been ordered to Tennessee to strike the railroad from Nashville to Chattanooga. During my visit to Hood's army, I learned that the morale of it had been partially restored, many absentees had returned to duty, and the waning hope of the people was beginning to revive.

The plan of operations which I had discussed with General Hood while at his headquarters was fully explained to General Beauregard at Augusta, and by him cordially approved. It comprised the occupation of a strong position on the enemy's line of communication by the railroad between Atlanta and Chattanooga, the capture of his depots of supplies and the small garrisons left to guard them. If this, as was probable, should cause Sherman to move to attack as in position, in that case, if the tone of the troops justified it, a battle should be joined; otherwise, he should retreat toward Gadsden, where supplies would be collected, and, should Sherman follow him so far, then there, on the dividing line of the States of Georgia and Alabama, the largest practicable number of militia and home-guards of both States would be a.s.sembled as an auxiliary force, and there a final stand should be made for a decisive battle. If victorious, as under the circ.u.mstances it was hoped we should be, the enemy could not retreat through the wasted country behind him, and must surrender or disperse. If Sherman should not pursue our retiring army to Gadsden, but return to Atlanta to march toward the seacoast, he was to be pursued, and, by our superiority in cavalry, to be prevented from foraging on the country, which, according to our information as to his supplies on hand at Atlanta, and as to his inadequate means of transportation, would be indispensable for the support of his troops.

Should Sherman, contrary to that information, have supplies and transportation sufficient to enable him to march across the country, and he should start toward the seacoast, the militia, the local troops, and others who could be employed, should obstruct the roads and fords in his front by felling trees, and, by burning bridges and other available means, delay his progress until his provisions should be consumed and absolute want should deplete if not disintegrate his army. It was supposed that Augusta, on account of our princ.i.p.al powder-manufactory and some important workshops being located there, would be the first objective point of Sherman, should he march toward the east. General Hood's calculation was that, taking a route north of Sherman, where he would have smaller streams to cross, he could reach Augusta as soon as Sherman.

General Cobb, the local commander in Georgia, in addition to obstructing roads, etc., was, in the last supposed contingency, to a.s.semble at Augusta the invalid soldiers, the militia, and others to defend the place. General George W. Rains, an accomplished soldier and military engineer, was instructed to enlarge and strengthen the defenses of the place, and General G. R. Rains, the author of the system of defense by sub-terra sh.e.l.ls, was, on the coming of the enemy, to apply his invention to the threatened approaches of the town. There was another contemplated contingency, viz., that Sherman, emboldened by his recent successes, would move against Hood with such overweening confidence as might offer to the latter the opportunity to strike in detail.

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