The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War (72 page)

General William Hardee writes, “He was an Irishman by birth, a Southerner by adoption … a lawyer by profession, a soldier in the British army by accident, and a soldier in the Southern armies from patriotism and conviction of duty in his manhood.”

Historian Craig L. Symonds writes, “Cleburne was an emotional man who felt the pull of patriotic sentiment and romantic love as well as the burden of duty. In their name, he sought—and found—glory on the battlefield.”

One of the officers who serves Pierre Beauregard during the war’s first conflict at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Manigault serves capably in most of the major commands throughout Tennessee and Kentucky. He continues to lead troops in the battles for Atlanta, and accompanies John Bell Hood on Hood’s invasion of Tennessee. He is severely wounded at the Battle of Franklin, which forces his resignation
from the army. He returns to his native South Carolina, attempts to reenter civilian life as a planter on his beloved rice plantation, and dies from the aftereffects of his wound in 1886. He is sixty-one. His memoir,
A Carolinian Goes to War
, is not published until 1983, and is an exceptional firsthand account of the struggle for Missionary Ridge.

Bauer survives the horrific wound received on Missionary Ridge, but loses his right leg. Despite Bauer’s passion for life as a soldier, the wound, and the death of his closest friend, Sammie Willis, drain away Bauer’s desire for service. After his surgery in the army’s hospital in Chattanooga and a lengthy recovery in Nashville, he returns to the only other home he knows, the city of Milwaukee.

With no talent for his deceased father’s sausage-making business, Bauer searches for any kind of work that allows for his disability, and finally lands a job as a newspaper reporter. At a gathering of Civil War veterans in 1869, he meets Hanna Rose, who writes for a war veterans’ journal in Chicago. They correspond for two years before Bauer builds the courage to propose. They are married in Chicago in 1871, and she bears him four children, including a son he names Samuel Willis Bauer. Three of his children reach adulthood, with direct descendants who survive to this day, including four veterans of the military.

Bauer lives until 1904, and dies of pneumonia at age sixty-two. Hanna lives another twenty-four years, and dies at age eighty-four.

After his army’s astounding success on Missionary Ridge, Thomas accepts the subordinate position to Sherman’s elevated command, and accompanies Sherman’s forces toward Atlanta. He serves Sherman well, but the two men can never be called friends, both recognizing their wildly differing personalities. Moreover, Thomas technically outranks Sherman, though Grant’s appointment of Sherman erases
the distinction. It is the second time that Thomas finds himself subordinate to an officer he outranks (the first being Rosecrans).

In July 1864, Thomas’s army decisively defeats John Bell Hood at the Battle of Peachtree Creek, which opens the door to Sherman’s conquest of the city of Atlanta. But Thomas’s penchant for attention to detail causes conflicts with Sherman, who, after capturing Atlanta writes to Henry Halleck, “I ought to have reaped larger fruits of victory, but a part of my army is too slow.” Halleck’s response is diplomatic: “Thomas is a noble old war-horse. It is true that he is slow, but he is always sure.”

Responding to Hood’s invasion of Tennessee, Thomas arrives at Nashville on October 3, 1864, and immediately supervises the strengthening of Federal outposts and supply depots from Chattanooga northward. Though Ulysses Grant and most of official Washington expect Thomas to meet Hood’s challenge with a bold, aggressive stroke, Thomas prefers to strengthen his fortifications and encourages Hood to destroy himself. While tactically sound, the contrast with Sherman once again casts Thomas in an unfavorable light and gives fuel to his many critics. But Thomas’s efforts bear fruit when his troops crush Hood’s assault at Franklin, Tennessee. Again Grant has expectations that Thomas will finish the task and destroy what remains of Hood’s army before Hood escapes southward. When Hood refuses to retreat, Thomas reassures Washington that he intends to attack the stubborn and outmanned enemy, but Thomas injures his reputation by informing Halleck, “If I can perfect my arrangements, I shall move.…” The choice of words adds more fuel to the fires against him. Grant is aware that Thomas’s army outnumbers Hood’s by a substantial margin. Yet Thomas seems to have an instinct for his adversary, and instead of pursuing what should have been a Confederate retreat, Thomas fortifies Nashville into an invincible citadel. On December 6, 1864, an exasperated Grant orders Thomas to “attack Hood at once, and wait no longer.” The war of words heats up further, as Thomas attempts to explain his delays as an effort to protect his flanks, and put sufficient cavalry forces into the saddle, countering what he believes to be Hood’s only real chance for success. Grant’s frustrations with what he continues to see as Thomas’s reluctance to act results in a letter to Henry Halleck two
days later, insisting that “if Thomas has not struck yet, he ought to be ordered to hand over his command.”

The criticism of Thomas grows, spreading to the pen of Secretary of War Stanton, who tells Grant, “Thomas seems unwilling to attack because it is hazardous, as if all war was anything but hazardous.” Grant responds on December 9 by drafting an order to Henry Halleck instructing Thomas to turn his command over to General John Schofield, a Thomas subordinate. But Halleck is not one to hurry paperwork, and the order is not yet official when Thomas finally orders the attack. On December 15, Hood’s army is outnumbered two to one, and is utterly routed. Despite criticism of Thomas’s methods or attention to detail, his strategy is completely successful, and the Confederate threat to Tennessee is wiped away. What remains of Hood’s army withdraws into Mississippi, and Hood’s military career is terminated by Jefferson Davis.

But accolades for the victory are delayed. Instead of allowing Thomas’s victorious army to rest in winter quarters, Grant immediately orders Thomas to resume campaigning southward, hoping to eliminate remaining Confederate strongholds in Mississippi and Alabama.

In spring 1865, as the war concludes, Thomas commands occupied Confederate territory in the states west and south of the Appalachians, what is known as the Department of the Cumberland.

In 1869, Thomas is assigned to command the Military Division of the Pacific, and moves to San Francisco. But his service there is brief. He dies in 1870, at age fifty-three, and is buried in Troy, New York. He is still considered a traitor to the Confederacy by his family, and none of his Southern relatives attend the funeral. But the list of those who attend his memorial service includes (now president) Ulysses Grant, and Generals Sherman, Meade, Sheridan, Rosecrans, and Hooker, among many others.

It is an ongoing debate whether Thomas was grotesquely mistreated by both Grant and Sherman, both of whom condemn Thomas in their memoirs. Thomas does not live to counter the attacks on his character, though in subsequent years, a great many others, including Charles Dana and (later president) James Garfield, are effusive in their praise for Thomas as a commander. There is no confusion about
the loyalty of his own troops, who vehemently defend his campaigning style. The United States Congress agrees, and even before the war’s end, in early March 1865, Thomas is presented with a formal resolution of thanks. Later that year, the state of Tennessee recognizes him with the issuance of a gold medal.

One consistency to Thomas’s character is a lack of self-promotion, which in the end is likely responsible for his being overlooked by history. Unlike Sherman and Grant, Thomas does not write memoirs, and instead burns his private papers, saying “my private life is my own, and I will not have it hawked about in print for the amusement of the curious.” He dislikes public speaking, is no orator in any sense, and does not seek the accolades that come to him after the war, including an attempt by some to draft him as a candidate for president in 1867. In 1868, he refuses his nomination to the rank of lieutenant general, believing that his services “do not rank so high a compliment.”

To this day, Thomas has both detractors and admirers, and his early death, compared to so many of his contemporaries, has likely erased a reputation that deserves far greater mention.

With unexpected graciousness, General in Chief Sherman officially announces Thomas’s death to the army: “In battle he never wavered, he never sought advancement of rank or honor at the expense of anyone. Whatever he earned of these were his own and no one disputes his fame. General Thomas was the very impersonation of honesty, integrity and honor … the beau ideal of the soldier and gentleman. The old Army of the Cumberland … will weep for him many tears of grief.”

Historian Bruce Catton responds to Thomas’s critics with even more enthusiasm: “What a general could do, Thomas did. No more dependable soldier for a moment of crisis existed on the North American continent … there was nothing slow about Thomas, nor was he primarily defensive. Grant was wrong.”

The controversy is best summed up by historian Benson Bobrick: “Either Thomas was overcautious and deliberate … or quite simply, the greatest Union general of the war.”

But this story continues. From Atlanta to the last struggles for the Confederacy in the Carolinas, the Federal army, led now by William T. Sherman, must confront the last stand of the Confederates and Joseph Johnston, in a campaign that tears and burns through the beleaguered lands and fading light of Southern hopes. It is a story to come …

Gods and Generals

The Last Full Measure

Gone for Soldiers

Rise to Rebellion

The Glorious Cause

To the Last Man

Jeff Shaara’s Civil War Battlefields

The Rising Tide

The Steel Wave

No Less Than Victory

The Final Storm

A Blaze of Glory

A Chain of Thunder