Never Call Retreat (58 page)

Having swallowed this the convention went on to nominate McClellan, and when the ballots had been cast Vallandigham himself went to the platform to move that the nomination be made unanimous. He got "a whirlwind of applause," and he stood there, basking in it, "bland, smiling and rosy"—for all the world the way William L. Yancey stood and basked and smiled at Charleston four years earlier when he succeeded in splitting the party. (Yancey was dead now, his passing almost unnoticed; the war he had done so much to bring on had never quite had a place for him.) Having nominated McClellan, the convention made another concession to the peace wing by naming Congressman Pendleton of Ohio for Vice-President. Reporter Brooks noted, as an oddity, that the convention always cheered when the band played "Dixie" but cheered no Northern patriotic airs; and a friend of Jefferson Davis who attended the convention hastened to send a letter to Mr. Davis: "I'm glad to assure you, McClellan is pledged to
peace.
... It
all means peace
—let the South go, So they all understand it."
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However they all understood it, the delegates had done as Mr. Lincoln expected: they had named a War Democrat on a peace platform . . . tying the two together with the assertion that the war was a failure. And two days after the convention adjourned, General Sherman captured Atlanta.

6. A Grand Simplicity of Purpose

JOHN B. HOOD was uncomplicated, and when they gave him Joe Johnston's army he assumed that he was expected to go out and fight. This he did, and as a result the South lost 20,000 good soldiers, Atlanta, the presidential election, and most of what remained of the war. Hood can be blamed too much, because when he applied simple pugnacity to a situation that required finesse he was in the grand tradition; after all, that was how the independence of the Confederacy had been asserted in the first place, and perhaps it was only natural that it should be lost in the same way. The black mark against Hood is that after he overtried his army and broke it he complained that his soldiers had let him down.

Hood took over the Army of Tennessee on July 18, and he had it in battle inside of forty-eight hours. He could have used more time, for administrative reasons if for no other; he had more than 60,000 men, but fully a sixth of them were on the "extra duty" list and could not be used in battle, and he wanted to devise a better system.
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But Sherman, whose success in crossing the Chattahoochee River had led to Johnston's removal, was pressing him.

The Federal advance led by McPherson was about to enter Decatur, five miles east of Atlanta, and the rear, commanded by unhurried George Thomas, was crossing Peachtree Creek, four miles north of the city. Sherman was threatening encirclement but his column was extended and probably there were gaps in it. Hood believed that it was impossible to defend Atlanta without stirring up a fight, and Thomas made a likely target; he represented Sherman's grip on the vital railroad back to Tennessee, and if he could be struck while his men were still getting across the creek he could be caught at a ruinous disadvantage. Crush him, and then go after the Yankees over by Decatur: Hood made up his mind, and on the afternoon of July 20 he struck at Thomas with two army corps, Hardee's and the one formerly led by Bishop Polk, now under Lieutenant General Alexander Stewart.
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Hood acted on defective information and his timing was off. Thomas had finished crossing the creek hours earlier, Hood was unable to get his attack moving promptly, and when the Confederate lines advanced Thomas was waiting for them, most of his men entrenched, with plenty of artillery in support. The rule that men in trenches could repel almost any imaginable frontal assault held good. Federal fire power was devastating—delivered so enthusiastically that some units kept on volleying away long after their assailants had retreated out of range—and Hardee and Stewart lost 5000 men and got nowhere. Grumbling that the failure was Hardee's fault, Hood immediately went on to execute the second part of his plan and launched a blow at McPherson.
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His plan was bold. Sherman was using McPherson to flank the Confederate right; Hood now divided his army in order to flank McPherson, and on July 21, while half of his army drew a new defensive line closer to Atlanta, to hold off Thomas and Schofield, he ordered a reinforced Hardee to come back through the city, march east, get around McPherson's left and attack him in the rear. He was asking too much. Hardee's men were tired from the fight of the day before, and in oppressive July heat they had to make an all-night march of fifteen miles on congested roads deep in dust, with unskilled guides, to attack a foe whose position was changing. The effort almost exhausted them, but late in the morning of July 22 they got behind McPherson's flank near the Decatur road, swung into line, and made a furious attack which brought on the heaviest battle of the entire campaign.

It nearly worked. McPherson was killed, part of his line was under fire from front and rear at the same time, and there was violent hand-to-hand fighting along a plateau known as Leggett's Hill. John A. Logan, an old Douglas Democrat from Illinois, a "political general" in the strictest sense of the word, temporarily succeeded to McPherson's command and turned out to be an able combat commander, and his men held their ground. Hood's army did its best, but when the day ended the Federals were still in position and Hood had lost between 7000 and 8000 men (against a Federal loss about half that size). Not until some time afterward did men see that Sherman may have missed a bright opportunity. Hood had used most of his strength to attack the Federal left, and Thomas and Schofield could possibly have overwhelmed the force in their front and gone on into Atlanta. Somewhat oddly, Sherman explained that he wanted McPherson's troops—the old Army of the Tennessee, which he himself formerly commanded—to win their battle unaided.
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Surprisingly, Sherman after the battle gave command of McPherson's troops to Major General Oliver Otis Howard, the one-armed transplant from the Army of the Potomac, whose dignified sobriety made him seem a little out of place in this carefree army of westerners. Logan seemed to have earned the job, but Sherman distrusted political generals and when Pap Thomas protested that he and Logan could not work well together Sherman concluded that he had to have harmony in the upper levels of command. Deeply disappointed, Logan made no protest, and remained in command of the XV Corps; but Joe Hooker, who ranked Howard and had a high opinion of his own merits, and blamed Howard for the defeat at Chancellorsville, announced that the appointment was "an insult to my rank and services" and sent in his resignation. Sherman, who disliked Hooker anyway, accepted the resignation without the least delay, Hooker went north to a quiet assignment far from the combat zone, and when the campaign was resumed Howard led the Army of the Tennessee.
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The campaign was resumed quickly. Sherman saw that he could not cut off Atlanta on the east without getting too far from his railroad line, so he had Howard move back and swing far to the Federal right, passing behind the rest of the army to get west of the city, while Schofield and Thomas kept up the pressure by opening a bombardment—on Hood's lines and on the city beyond. Hood believed that Howard's move offered an opening, and on July 28 he attacked in a featureless woodland near a country chapel called Ezra Church. The opening was not as good as he thought it was, the attack was poorly co-ordinated, and by nightfall Hood had lost another 5000 men. The Federal advance was unchecked.
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After that it was only a question of time—a couple of days more than a month, to be exact, seeming longer to Northern impatience. Having fought three big battles in nine days, failing each time and suffering ruinous losses, Hood was too weak to stop Sherman, who kept shifting to the right, moving slowly but steadily to cut the railroads that came to Atlanta from the southwest and south. The bombardment went on and on, and while Henry Slocum and the XX Corps stayed to watch the beleaguered city the rest of the Federals moved farther and farther toward Hood's rear. At the end of August, when Vallandigham was persuading the Democrats to proclaim the war a failure, Hood realized that the Federals were about to complete their encirclement. He struck desperately at the Federal right, at Jonesboro, fifteen miles due south of the city, failed to drive it away, and then took the only course that was left to him and evacuated Atlanta.

Slocum's men saw it first. They were the old kid gloves and paper collar soldiers from the Army of the Potomac, sent west when Rosecrans was trapped in Chattanooga, at first derided by the westerners but finally accepted as good fighting men; and they crouched, half-stunned and unbelieving, in their trenches facing Atlanta on the night of September 1, while great lights flashed across the sky and the ground quivered underfoot as Hood's rear guard blew up carloads of ammunition that could not be removed. Next morning the easterners marched into Atlanta, bands playing, and while the soldiers looked curiously at the buildings that had been wrecked during the long bombardment, anxious women set buckets of drinking water along the streets as propitiatory offerings. The Federals hoisted their colors over the city hall, and Slocum sent a telegram to Secretary Stanton: GENERAL SHERMAN HAS TAKEN ATLANTA. Hood wrote to Richmond to explain what had happened, pointing out that it was not his fault: "It seems the troops had been so long confined to trenches, and had been taught to believe that intrenchments cannot be taken, so that they attacked without spirit and retired without proper effort." The spirit and the effort had been there in abundance, according to the casualty lists: after all, a good 20,000 of his men had been lost since he took command.
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As a matter of fact Sherman had done less than he set out to do. Hood's army had escaped, slipping south to the town of Lovejoy, and after following it for a few miles Sherman let it go and took his own army into Atlanta to rest and refit. He had been told to destroy the Confederate army and he had not done it, and the capture of Atlanta had been no more than incidental to his plans. But now Sherman was part of a political campaign. All across the North, Atlanta had become a symbol. While it held out, the war was a failure; when it fell, the war was visibly on the way to success. Little more than a week earlier Mr. Lincoln had soberly confessed that he was likely to lose the election. Now, as people digested Sherman's exultant telegram—so ATLANTA IS OURS, AND FAIRLY WON—the President's prospects suddenly grew better. Sherman, who despised politics, had brought about a stunning political change.

Then another Federal general, who also had done less than he was supposed to do, won a victory that accelerated the change. On September 19 Phil Sheridan sent a telegram to Grant from the Shenandoah Valley: . . .
I ATTACKED THE FORCES OF GENERAL EARLY ON THE BERRYVILLE PIKE AT THE CROSSING OF OPEQUON CREEK, AND AFTER A MOST STUBBORN

AND SANGUINARY ENGAGEMENT, WHICH LASTED FROM EARLY IN THE MORNING UNTIL 5 O'CLOCK IN THE EVENING, COMPLETELY DEFEATED HIM, AND DRIVING HTM THROUGH WINCHESTER CAPTURED ABOUT 2500 PRISONERS, FIVE PIECES OF ARTILLERY,
NINE ARMY FLAGS AND MOST OF THEIR WOUNDED.

Here was a new note: not merely victory, but victory announced with a chesty arrogance which seemed to say that anything but further victory was unthinkable. The North responded with high enthusiasm, Washington fired a 100-gun salute to celebrate, and James A. Garfield wrote that "Phil Sheridan has made a speech in the Shenandoah Valley more powerful and valuable to the Union cause than all the stumpers in the Republic can make—our prospects are everywhere heightening."
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Like Sherman, Sheridan had struck at a symbol. Jubal Early's long presence in the lower Shenandoah Valley, close to the Potomac, right at the gateway to the heart of the North, had been one of the big reasons why so many Northerners considered the war a failure, and although he looked more dangerous than he was it was because he had done a remarkable job with inadequate means. First he had driven General Hunter away from Lynchburg, thereby removing an essential piece from Grant's strategic plan. Then he marched on Washington, and thereafter he threatened the whole Potomac border country, and with an army that apparently never included more than 15,000 men he had forced the Federals to divert 40,000 soldiers who could have been used elsewhere.
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He had sent a cavalry column into Pennsylvania, burning Chambersburg in reprisal for the places Hunter had burned in Virginia, he had broken service on the important Baltimore & Ohio railroad line, and he had reduced the United States War Department to the same frantic shuffling of troops and proliferation of ineffective orders that Stonewall Jackson had evoked two years earlier. Clearly, the North would not be getting on with the war properly until it did something about General Early.

Early was a hard man for anyone to do anything about. He was "Old Jube" to his troops, a sardonic man twisted by arthritis, caustic and provoking and profane, always riding in a queer hunched-over manner, "solemn as a country coroner going to his first inquest": respected by all but liked by hardly anybody. He had no patience with any human shortcoming, and once when an infantry regiment failed to protect a wagon train the way he thought it should have done he rode up, all steaming, and swore loudly that he would put this regiment in the very front of the next fight that came up, "where he hoped every one of them would get killed and burn through all eternity." He was as good as his word, too, and the regiment had a bad time in the next battle; yet the men mixed a grudging admiration in with their dislike, and one veteran who survived this affair wrote that Early was "a queer fish . . . but no humbug." If it was hard for his own men to get along with him it was even harder for the enemy, and Early deserved more credit from his fellow Southerners than he ever got.
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