The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox

  Hill’s hopes, which had been so high on the ride east, declined rapidly while he listened to this double-barreled refutation of the “facts” behind them. But presently they took an even sharper drop when Davis paused and asked: “How long did you understand General Johnston to say he could hold Sherman north of the Chattahoochee River?” Fifty-four to sixty days, the senator replied; whereupon Davis took up and read to him a telegraphic dispatch received just before his arrival. It was from Johnston and it announced that, a part of Sherman’s army having crossed upriver two days ago, several miles beyond his right, he had begun his withdrawal across the Chattahoochee last night and completed it this morning.… Hill retired in some confusion, which was increased next day when the Secretary of War called on him “to reduce my interview with General Johnston to writing, for the use of the Cabinet.”

  He perceived now that his trip to Richmond, designed to help the Atlanta commander, had resulted instead in furnishing the general’s Confederate foes with ammunition they could use in urging his removal from command. Three days later, after taking a still closer look at the attitude of those in high positions at the capital, he wired Johnston by way of warning: “You must do the work with your present force. For God’s sake do it.”

  Just as the pressure had been greater, so now was Johnston’s time even shorter than Hill knew — unless, that is, the general was somehow able to follow his friend’s advice and “do the work.” Atlanta, with its rolling mill and foundries, its munition plants and factories, its vital rail connections and vast store of military supplies, was the combined workshop and warehouse of the Confederate West, and as Sherman closed down upon it, Davis later wrote, the threat of its loss “produced intense anxiety far and wide. From many quarters, including such as had most urged his assignment, came delegations, petitions, and letters,” insisting that the present army commander be replaced by one who would fight to save the city, not abandon it to the fate which Johnston seemed to consider unavoidable without outside help. “The clamor for his removal commenced immediately after it became known that the army had fallen back from Dalton,” Davis added, “and it gathered volume with each remove toward Atlanta.”

  Nowhere was this clamor more vociferous than at meetings of the cabinet, not one of whose six members was by now in favor of keeping the Virginia general at his Georgia post. Some had advised against sending him there in the first place: including the Secretary of State, who afterwards told why. “From a close observation of his career,” the shrewd-minded Benjamin declared, “I became persuaded that his nervous dread of losing a battle would prevent at all times his ability to cope with an enemy of nearly equal strength, and that opportunities would thus constantly be lost which under other commanders would open a plain path to victory.” Still, those who had opposed his selection were not nearly so strident in their demands for his removal, at this stage, as were those who had been his supporters at the outset. The Secretary of War, for example, explained that, having made “a great mistake” seven months ago, “he desired to do all he could, even at this late date, to atone for it.”

  Davis resisted — now as in the case of that other Johnston, two and a half years ago, after Donelson and on the eve of Shiloh — both the public and the private clamor for the general’s removal; Seddon later revealed that though “the whole Cabinet concurred in advising and even urging” the change, the President moved toward a decision “slowly and not without much hesitation, misgiving and, even to the last, reluctance.” His concern was for Atlanta, for what it contained and for what it represented, not only in the minds of his own people, but also in the minds of the people of the North, who would be voting in November whether to sustain their present hard-war leader or replace him with one who might be willing, in the name of peace, to let the South depart in independence. A military professional, Davis knew only too well, as he put the case, “how serious it was to change commanders in the presence of the enemy,” and he told Senator Hill flatly, in the course of their Sunday conference at the White House, that he “would not do it if he could have any assurance that General Johnston would not surrender Atlanta without a battle.”

  In this connection, he had sent his chief military adviser, Braxton Bragg, to determine at first hand, if possible, what the intentions of the western commander were. Bragg had left the previous day, July 9, but before he reached Atlanta — a three-day trip, as it turned out — the War Department received from Johnston himself, on July 11, a telegram which seemed to some to answer only too clearly the question as to the city’s impending fate: “I strongly recommend the distribution of the U.S. prisoners, now at Andersonville, immediately.”

  Andersonville, a prisoner-of-war camp for enlisted personnel, established that spring near Americus, Georgia, and already badly crowded as a result of the northern decision to discontinue the exchange of prisoners, was more than a hundred miles due south of Atlanta. That distance, combined with the use of the word “immediately,” gave occasion for alarm. For though Davis knew that what mainly caused Johnston to recommend the camp’s evacuation was fear that Sherman, finding it within present cavalry range, might send out a flying column to liberate its 30,000 Federal captives — and thus create, as if by a sowing of dragon teeth, a ferocious new blue army deep in the Confederate rear — still, following hard as it did on the heels of news that Atlanta’s defenders had retired in haste across the Chattahoochee, the telegram was an alarming indication of the direction in which Johnston’s mind had turned now that Sherman was about to leap the last natural barrier in his path. For the first time since the clamor for the Virginian’s removal began, two months ago, Davis agreed that his relief seemed necessary, and he said as much next day in a cipher telegram asking R. E. Lee’s advice in choosing a successor: “General Johnston has failed and there are strong indications that he will abandon Atlanta.… It seems necessary to remove him at once. Who should succeed him? What think you of Hood for the position?”

  Lee replied, also by wire and in cipher: “I regret the fact stated. It is a bad time to relieve the commander of an army situated as that of Tenne. We may lose Atlanta and the army too. Hood is a bold fighter. I am doubtful as to other qualities necessary.” That evening he expanded these words of caution and regret in a follow-up letter. “It is a grievous thing,” he said of the impending change. “Still if necessary it ought to be done. I know nothing of the necessity. I had hoped that Johnston was strong enough to deliver battle.” As for the choice of his former star brigade and division chief as his old friend’s successor out in Georgia, second thoughts had not diminished his reservations. “Hood is a good commander, very industrious on the battlefield, careless off, and I have had no opportunity of judging his action when the whole responsibility rested upon him. I have a high opinion of his gallantry, earnestness, and zeal.” Further than this Lee would not go, either in praise or detraction, but he added suggestively: “General Hardee has more experience in managing an army. May God give you wisdom to decide in this momentous matter.”

  A series of telegrams and letters from Bragg, who reached Atlanta next morning, July 13, confirmed the need for early action, either by Johnston or the government. “Indications seem to favor an entire evacuation of this place,” he wired Davis on arrival, and followed with a second gloomy message a few hours later, still without having ridden out to the general’s headquarters in the field: “Our army is sadly depleted, and now reports 10,000 less than the return of the 10th June. I find but little encouraging.” Two days later he was able to report more fully on conditions, having paid two calls on Johnston in the meantime. “He has not sought my advice, and it was not volunteered,” Bragg wired. “I cannot learn that he has any more plan for the future than he has had in the past. It is expected that he will await the enemy on a line some three miles from here, and the impression prevails that he is now more inclined to fight.… The morale of our army is still reported good.”

  In a letter sent by courier to Richmond that same day he went
more fully into this and other matters bearing on the issue. Johnston’s apparent intention, now as always, Bragg declared, was to “await the enemy’s approach and be governed, as heretofore, by the development in our front.” What was likely to follow could be predicted by reviewing what had happened under similar circumstances at Dalton, Resaca, Cassville, and Marietta — or, indeed, by observing what had happened in and around Atlanta just this week; “All valuable stores and machinery have been removed, and most of the citizens able to go have left with their effects.… Position, numbers, and morale are now with the enemy.” Which said, Bragg moved on to the problem of choosing a successor to the general who had brought the army to this pass. Hardee had disqualified himself, not only because he had declined the post seven months ago (and thereby brought on Johnston) but also because he had “generally favored the retiring policy” of his chief. Alexander Stewart, who had been promoted to lieutenant general and given command of Polk’s corps on the retreat to the Chattahoochee, was too green for larger duties yet, despite the commendable savagery he had displayed at New Hope Church. That left Hood, who had “been in favor of giving battle” all the way from Dalton and who, in fact — aside, that is, from the peculiar circumstances that prevailed at Cassville — had done just that whenever he was on his own. By way of evidence that this was so, Bragg included a letter he had received from the young Texan the day before, expressing regret that the army had “failed to give battle to the enemy many miles north of our present position.”

  “If any change is made,” Bragg concluded, “Lieutenant General Hood would give unlimited satisfaction.” Then, as if aware of the misgiving Lee had expressed three days ago, he added: “Do not understand me as proposing him as a man of genius, or a great general, but as far better in the present emergency than any one we have available.”

  Davis agreed that Hood was the man for the post, if its present occupant had to be replaced, but he would not act without giving Johnston one last chance to commit himself to a fight to save Atlanta, in which case he would keep him where he was. Accordingly, in a wire next day, July 16, he put the case to the general in no uncertain terms: “I wish to hear from you as to present situation, and your plan of operations so specifically as will enable me to anticipate events.”

  Johnston felt no more alarm at this than he had done at Hill’s “For God’s sake do it” telegram, received the day before. Busy with tactical matters, he did not take the time or trouble to outline for the Commander in Chief what he afterwards claimed was his plan for the overthrow of the blue host in his front: which — as he would set it forth some ten years later, after the guns had cooled but not the controversy — was to engage the enemy “on terms of advantage” while they were divided by Peachtree Creek. If this did not work he planned to hold the intrenchments overlooking the creek with 5000 state militia, lately sent him by Governor Brown, “and leisurely fall back with the Confederate troops into the town and, when the Federal army approached, march out with the three corps against one of its flanks.” If this was successful, the bluecoats would be driven back against the unfordable Chattahoochee and cut to pieces before they could recross; if not, “the Confederate army had a near and secure place of refuge in Atlanta, which it could hold forever, and so win the campaign.” So he later said — “forever” — but not now. Now he merely responded, as before, that he would have to be governed by circumstances; circumstances which it was clear would be of Sherman’s making. “As the enemy has double our number, we must be on the defensive,” he replied to Davis’s request for specific information. “My plan of operations must, therefore, depend on that of the enemy. It is mainly to watch for an opportunity to fight to advantage. We are trying to put Atlanta in condition to hold it for a day or two by the Georgia militia, that army movements may be freer and wider.”

  On the defensive. A day or two. The Georgia militia. Freer and wider movements.… Johnston would later maintain that just as he was about to deliver the blow that would “win the campaign,” and which he had had in mind all along, his sword was wrenched from his grasp by the Richmond authorities; but the fact was, he signed his own warrant of dismissal when he put his hand to this telegram declaring, more clearly than anything else it said, that he had no plan involving a battle to save Atlanta.

  Word came next morning — July 17, another Sunday — that Sherman’s whole army was over the Chattahoochee, apparently engaged in an outsized turning movement designed to close down on the city from the north and east. After nightfall Johnston was at his headquarters three miles out the Marietta Road, conferring with his chief engineer about work on the Atlanta fortifications, when a message for him from Adjutant General Samuel Cooper clicked off the telegraph receiver:

  Lieutenant General J. B. Hood has been commissioned to the temporary rank of General under the late law of Congress. I am directed by the Secretary of War to inform you that as you have failed to arrest the advance of the enemy to the vicinity of Atlanta, far in the interior of Georgia, and express no confidence that you can defeat or repel him, you are hereby relieved from the command of the Army and Department of Tennessee, which you will immediately turn over to General Hood.

  Old Joe spent most of the rest of the night in the throes of composition, preparing first a farewell address, in which he expressed his affection for the troops who had served under him, and then a response to his superiors, in which he managed to vent a measure of the resentment aroused by the backhand slap they had taken at him in the order for his removal. “I cannot leave this noble army,” he told its members, “without expressing my admiration of the high military qualities it has displayed. A long and arduous campaign has made conspicuous every soldierly virtue, endurance of toil, obedience to orders, brilliant courage. The enemy has never attacked but to be repulsed and severely punished. You, soldiers, have never argued but from your courage, and never counted your foes. No longer your leader, I will still watch your career, and will rejoice in your victories. To one and all I offer assurances of my friendship, and bid an affectionate farewell.”

  The other document was briefer, if no less emotional under its surface of ice. “Your dispatch of yesterday received and obeyed,” it began, and passed at once to a refutation of the charges made in the dismissal order: “Sherman’s army is much stronger compared with that of Tennessee than Grant’s compared with that of Northern Virginia. Yet the enemy has been compelled to advance much more slowly to the vicinity of Atlanta than to that of Richmond and Petersburg, and has penetrated deeper into Virginia than into Georgia.” Then at the end came the stinger. “Confident language by a military commander is not usually regarded as evidence of competency. J. E. Johnston.”

  Hood too got little if any sleep after he received at 11 p.m. the War Department telegram which, he said, “so astounded and overwhelmed” him that he “remained in deep thought throughout the night.” He had in fact much to ponder, including a follow-up wire from Seddon: “You are charged with a great trust. You will, I know, test to the utmost your capacities to discharge it. Be wary no less than bold.… God be with you.” His appointment was plainly an endorsement of the aggressive views he had been propounding all the way south from the Tennessee line, and he was clearly expected to translate them into action. But he perceived that to do so here on the flat terrain south of the Chattahoochee, with his back to the gates of the city in his care, was a far more difficult undertaking than it would have been in the rugged country Johnston had traversed in the course of his long retreat from Dalton. “We may lose Atlanta and the army too,” Lee had warned Davis five days ago, and though Hood had not seen the message, he was altogether aware of the danger pointed out — as well as of his own shortcomings, which Lee had by no means listed in full.

  For one, there was his youth. He had just last month turned thirty-three, the crucifixion age, which made him not only younger than any of his infantry corps or division commanders, but also a solid ten years younger than the average among them. Then too there was his p
hysical condition; Gettsyburg had cost him the use of his left arm, paralyzed by a fragment of bursting shell as he charged the Devil’s Den, and at Chickamauga his right leg had been amputated so close to the hip that from then on he had to be strapped in the saddle to ride a horse. Worst of all, though, was the timing of the change now ordered by the War Department. Sherman’s final lunge at Atlanta was in full career, and only Johnston knew what plans had been made, if any, to meet and survive the shock. Certainly Hood knew nothing of them, except as they applied to the disposition of his corps on the Confederate right, astride the Georgia Railroad. Emerging at last from the brown study into which the telegram had plunged him, the blond, Kentucky-born Texan came out of his tent before dawn, mounted his horse with the help of an orderly, and set out for Johnston’s headquarters near the far end of the line.