Never Call Retreat (78 page)

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Authors: Bruce Catton

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4.
Henry Stone,
The Atlanta Campaign; Part One, the Opening of the Campaign,
MHSM Papers, Vol. VIII, 347.

5.
M. A. DeWolfe Howe,
Home Letters of Gen. Sherman,
291-94;
CCW Report, 1865,
Supplement, Part One,
Report of Ma). Gen. George H. Thomas,
198, 201-2; O.R., Vol. XXXVIII, Part One, 61-65; Part Three, 721;
Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman,
Vol. II, 34; Gov;m and Livingood,
A Different Valor,
263-67.

6.
The Sherman Letters: Correspondence between General and Senator Sherman from
VRCG
to 1891,
edited by R. S. Thorndike, 235-36; Joseph E. Johnston,
Opposing Sherman's March to Atlanta,
B. & L., Vol. IV, 262-65.

7. The estimate of casualties is in Stone, op. cit, 390.

8.
Johnston,
Opposing Sherman's March to Atlanta,
268-69, and
Narrative of Military Operations,
321-24; O.R., Vol. XXXVIII, Part Three, 615-16. Hood's account of this, so unlike Johnston's that the two simply cannot be reconciled, is in his
Advance and Retreat,
98-101, 104-9.

9.
The Sherman Letters,
235-36; letter of Sherman to Silas F. Miller of Louisville; photostat in the Filson Club, Louisville, from original owned by John Mason Brown of New York.

10.    Stone, op. cit., 412-13; John M. Schofield,
Forty-six Years
in the Army,
145.

11.
Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman,
Vol. II, 51-53.

12.Sherman's report from Acworth, Ga., dated June 8, in B. & L., extra-illustrated, Vol. XIII, Huntington Library; Sherman to Grant dated June 18, in the Sherman Papers, also at the Huntington Library.

13.O.R., Vol. XXXVIII, Part Four, 610-11; Johnston,
Narrative of Military Operations,
341; O. O. Howard,
The Struggle for Atlanta,
B. & L., Vol. IV, 311. The estimate of 3000 Union casualties is Sherman's; Livermore
(Numbers and Losses,
120-21) puts it at 2051 and says that slightly more than 16,000 Federals were engaged. Johnston insisted that Union losses were far above Sherman's estimate.

14.Johnston discussed his plans in a letter to Senator Wigfall dated Aug. 27, in the Wigfall Papers, Library of Congress. Good accounts of Sherman's operations from Kennesaw Mountain to the crossing of the Chattahoochee are in Stone, 422-35, and Jacob Cox,
Military Reminiscences of the Civil War,
Vol. II, 262-77.

2.
Sideshows

1.
Diary of S. R. Mallory, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library; letter of Secretary Seddon, in Rowland, Vol. VIII, 349-54. Mallory believed that Benjamin's constant criticisms of Johnston had much to do with Mr. Davis' action.

2.
Davis,
Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,
Vol. II, 555-56; postwar letter to James Lyons of Richmond, dated Aug. 13, 1876, in the Virginia State Historical Society.

3.
Bragg to Davis, dated July 15, sent from Atlanta to Richmond by special messenger, in Vol. XIII of the extra-illustrated edition of B. & L., at the Huntington Library. A staff officer in Hardee's corps may have appraised the situation accurately when he wrote: "The fact is that Pres. Davis is influenced by political as well as military considerations." (Letter of W. W. Gordon, an officer on the staff of Brig. Gen. H. W. Mercer, dated July 17, in the Gordon Family Papers, Georgia Historical Society.)

4.
The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee,
821-22; Rowland, Vol. VI, 293-94.

5.
O.R., Vol. XXXVIII, Part Five, 879-80. Hood's estimate of the army's losses appears to have been a good deal too high.

6.
Henry Stone,
The Atlanta Campaign,
MHSM Papers, Vol. VIII, 433-34.

7.
William Witherspoon,
Tishomingo Creek, or Price's Cross Roads,
113.

8.
Rowland, Vol. VI, 278-80. Johnston's appeals for Forrest are in O.R., Vol. XXXVIII, Part Four, 772, 777, 792, 796.

9.
Robert Selph Henry,
First with the Most: Forrest,
235 ff; O.R., Vol. XXXII, Part One, 611-13; Vol. XXXIX, Part One, 89-96, 221-28. The literature on Fort Pillow is extensive, and it is almost impossible to be sure that one knows exactly what happened. Two studies that struck this writer as especially useful are Henry, op. cit., 248-68, and Albert Castel,
The Fort Pillow Massacre: a Fresh Examination of the Evidence,
in
Civil War History,
Vol. TV, Number One, March 1958, 37-50.

10. O.R., Vol. XXXIV, Part Two, 15-16, 55-56, 133.

11. 
CCW Report, 1865,
Vol. II,
Red River Expedition,
273.
The Committee on the Conduct of the War developed much in-
teresting testimony regarding the Red River expedition. Because
of the Committee's bias against Banks and the ten percent plan,
its material needs to be handled with some caution; from first
to last, this body was more a propaganda agency than a factfinding committee.

12.O.R., Vol. XXXIV, Part One, 196-97; Part Two, 610-11; Richard B. Irwin,
The Red River Campaign,
B. & L., Vol. IV, 349-50.

13.John Homans,
The Red River Expedition,
MHSM Papers, Vol. VIII, 77-82; E. Kirby Smith,
The Defense of the Red River,
B. & L., Vol. IV, 372; O.R., Vol. XXXIV, Part Two, 181-87; N.O.R., Vol. XXVI, 56.

14.A. T. Mahan,
The Gulf and Inland Waters,
198-207; Thomas O. Selfridge,
The Navy in the Red River,
B. & L., Vol. IV, 364-65.

15.E. Merton Coulter,
Commercial Intercourse with the Confederacy in the Mississippi Valley, 1861-65,
in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. V, No. Four, 387-95; O.R., Vol. XLI, Part Four, 785-87; Basler, Vol. VIII, 163-64.

16.Thirty-eighth Congress, Second Session, House of Representatives Report No. 24,
Trade with Rebellious States,
84;
CCW Report, 1865,
Vol. II,
Red River Expedition,
18-19, 27, 81, 244, 270-71.

17. John Homans, op. cit., 71.

3. The Cork in the Bottle

1.  Lieut. Col. George Brace,
General Butler's Bermuda Cam-
paign,
MHSM Papers, Vol. IX, 310-11; dispatch of Gen. George
Pickett to Bragg and Beauregard, dated May 6, in the Palmer
Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society.

2. O.R., Vol. XXXIII, 794-95, 904, 1017-18.

3.
 
In 1864 Richmond had two railroad connections with the deep South—the Richmond & Danville line, which intersected the broken trunk line across Tennessee, and the Richmond & Petersburg road, tying in at Petersburg with the principal routes across the Carolinas to Georgia and the Gulf. The line to Petersburg was vital, and in the spring of 1865 the loss of Petersburg brought about the immediate evacuation of Richmond.

4.
 
After the battle of Chattanooga, Smith was promoted to major general, largely on Grant's recommendation. There was strong opposition in the Senate, but confirmation was voted on Grant's insistence. After the war, Grant wrote that "I was not long in finding out that the objections to Smith's promotion were well founded." (Grant,
Preparing for the Campaigns of 1864,
B. & L., Vol. IV, 104.)

5.         Barbed wire did not exist in 1864, but this use of telegraph
wire foreshadowed the way barbed wire would eventually be used. The telegraph wire, of course, was intended simply to trip the advancing soldiers rather than to entangle them. There was a similar use of it by Burnside's engineers during the siege of Knoxville. Butler's letter to Senator Wilson is in O.R., Vol. XXXVI, Part Two, 518.

6.
The best account of Butler's adventures before the battle of Drewry's Bluff is that of Col. Bruce, cited in Note 1, above. There is also a good account by Alfred P. Rockwell,
The Tenth Army Corps in Virginia, May, 1864,
MHSM Papers, Vol. IX, 294 ff.

7.
Beauregard,
The Defense of Drewry's Bluff,
B. & L., Vol. IV, 195-205; W. F. Smith,
Butler's Attack on Drewry's Bluff,
in the same volume, 206-11; Livermore,
Numbers and Losses,
113; Martin A. Haynes,
A History of the Second Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry,
224-26.

8.
O.R., Vol. XXXVI, Part One, 20-21; Part Two, 10-11; Freeman,
R. E. Lee,
Vol. Ill, 356.

9.
Edward Raymond Turner,
The New Market Campaign, 1864,
ix, 98-100; Gen. John D. Imboden,
The Battle of New Market,
B. & L., Vol. IV, 480-86; Gen. Franz Sigel,
Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864,
in the same volume, 487-91; William Couper,
Virginia Military Institute Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Battle of New Market,
8-14; John S. Wise,
The West Point of the Confederacy Boys in Battle at New Market, Virginia,
in an unidentified magazine in the files of E. B. Long; Cecil D. Eby, Jr.,
With Sigel at New Market: the Diary of Col. D. H. Strother,
Civil War History, Vol. VI, No. One, 75-82. The veteran's memory as to "Rockabye Baby" may have deceived him: apparently this tune was written after the war.

10.O.R., Vol. XXXVI, Part Two, 840-41; Freeman,
Lee's Lieutenants,
Vol. Ill, 515.

11.Benjamin F. Butler,
Ben Butler's Book,
649, 651, 656-57, 664.

4. However Bold We Might Be

1.
McHenry Howard,
Notes on Opening of Campaign of 1864,
MHSM Papers, Vol. IV, 94-95.

2.
O.R., Vol. XXXVI, Part One, 1, 18, 198, 915; Livermore,
Numbers and Losses,
110.

3.
Jed. Hotchkiss,
Virginia,
in
Confederate Military History,
Vol. Ill, 433-36.

4.
O.R., Vol. XXXVI, Part One, 325; William Swinton,
Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac,
439; Reminiscences of Berry

G. Benson, 1st S.C. Volunteers, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library; McHenry Howard, op. cit., 101-2; G. Moxley Sorrel,
Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer,
239-40.

5.
 
A. A. Humphreys,
The Virginia Campaign of 1864 and 1865,
136-59; Col. C. S. Venable,
The Campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg,
SHSP, Vol. XIV, 522-26; Maj. Gen. C. W. Field,
The Campaign of 1864 and 1865,
in the same volume, 542-46; Sorrel, op. cit., 230-35; Gen. John B. Gordon,
Reminiscences of the Civil War,
242-52. Federal casualties are from O.R., Vol. XXXVI, Part One, 133. To get a satisfactory figure for the Confederates is impossible, since returns for most of the regiments in this battle no longer exist. Freeman
(R. E. Lee,
Vol. Ill, 297) estimates Lee's losses at approximately 7600.
The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion,
Part One, Vol. II, cvi, gives an estimate of 11,400, which seems too high.

6.
 
O.R., Vol. XXXVII, Part One, 411; Vol. XXXVI, Part Two, 526;
Lee's Dispatches, 176-77.

7.
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant,
Vol. II, 211-12.

8.
 
Grant to Halleck dated May 11, the U. S. Grant Association from the New York Historical Society. There is a good general account of the Spotsylvania fighting in Humphreys, op. cit., 55-90. A detailed list of sources for the fighting in the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania can be found in
A Stillness at Appomattox,
399-406.

9.
 
O.R., Vol. XXXVI, Part Three, 206-7;
Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade,
Vol. II, 198; letter of G. K. Warren dated May 20, in the G. K. Warren Papers, New York State Library;
Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee,
747-48; C. S. Venable,
The Campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg,
SHSP, Vol. XIV, 533-34; letter from "Frank" to his mother dated May 17, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library; from the Confederate letters loaned, through Bell Wiley, by Mrs. E. K. Atkinson of Baltimore.

10.     There is a good summary of the Cold Harbor action in
Joseph P. Cullen,
Richmond Battlefields,
National Park Service
Historical Handbook Series, No. XXXIII, 29-34. The armies were
in contact along a six-mile front, and the June 3 engagement
covered about two and one-half miles of it. Apparently, fewer
than 50,000 Federals attacked some 30,000 Confederates. Cold
Harbor casualty figures usually include totals for all of the June
1-3 fighting, and it is hard to get a firm figure for the June 3
attack by itself. Cullen (op. cit.) accepts 7000; Humphreys,
The
Virginia Campaign,
191, estimates the loss at 6617. It may be
worth noting that on June 4 Meade wrote to his wife: "I had immediate and entire command on the battlefield all day, the Lieutenant-General honoring the field with his presence only about one hour in the middle of the day."
(Life and Letters,
Vol. II, 200.)

11.On June 5 Charles F. Adams, Jr., wrote from the Army of the Potomac: "I think Grant will be forced to adopt his Vicksburg tactics—he will have to uncover Washington, cross the James, move up the south bank and then throw himself on the Confederate line of communications and supplies." (Letter to R. H. Dana, Jr., in the Dana Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.) Grant explains his reasoning in O.R., Vol. XXXVI, Part One, 22-23.

12.Lee to Seddon dated June 6, in the Robert E. Lee Papers, Chicago Historical Society.

13.Beauregard,
Four Days of Battle at Petersburg,
B. & L., Vol. IV, 541.

14.On June 21 Meade wrote to his wife regarding the effort to take Petersburg: "In all this fighting and these operations I had exclusive command, Grant being all the time at City Point and coming on the field for only half an hour on the 17th."
(Life and Letters,
Vol. II, 205-6.)

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