GENERAL SHERMAN'S CAMPAIGN. 373 must have suffered heavily. My own versed with two prisoners of Mahone's loss, including cavalry, will perhaps not division, last night. I do not find them exceed twelve or fifteen hundred, though this morning. They said Mahone's divithis is surmise, as the command is not sion, with the exception of one brigade, yet organized. Captain Brownson, of was there." This engagement was unmy staff, was mortally wounded during doubtedly a heavy disaster to the Union the night. Colonel Walker, A. A. G., forces engaged-the losses numbering, is missing. This is acknowledged to it is said, about 2,000 prisoners and have been one of the most determined about 1,000 killed and wounded, with and desperate fights of the war, resem- nine cannon of necessity abandoned to bling Spottsylvania in its character, the superior force of the enemy, who, though the number engaged gives less however, in their turn suffered heavily. importance to it. A few more good But it did not affect the main object of troops would have given a victory of the movement of which it was but an considerable importance. I forward incident-the occupation of the Weldon this forenoon prisoners from the field, road below Petersburg, which confrom Wilcox's and Heth's divisions. tinued to be firmly held by General Major Angel, of my staff, saw and con- Grant. CHAPTER C. GENERAL SHERMAN'S GEORGIA CAMPAIGN-CHATTANOOGA TO ATLANTA, WHEN General Grant, in March, 1864, General Schofield of the army of the was called to the head of the army with Ohio at Knoxville. By a subsequent the rank of Lieutenant-General, and order in April, Major-General Hooker removed his headquarters to the army was placed in command of the Eleventh of the Potomac, the important depart- and Twelfth consolidated Corps ; Majorment in the South, the immediate com- General O. O. Howard was assigned to mand of which he necessarily relin- the Fourth Corps, relieving Major-Genquished, was assigned to a well-tried eral Granger; Major-General J. M. officer, of consummate military expe- Schofield to the Twenty-third Corps. rience and resources, Major-General Major-General Frank P. Blair having W. T. Sherman. The latter by the withdrawn the resignation as an army order of the War Department of the officer which he had tendered on taking 12th of March, was placed in command his seat in Congress in January, was of the Military Division of the Missis- permitted by the President to resume sippi, composed of the Departments of his rank, and was appointed to the comthe Ohio, the Cumberland, the Ten- mand of the Seventeenth Army Corps. nessee, and the Arkansas. Major-Gen- Major-General John M. Palmer now eral J. B. McPherson, also an officer of held the command of the Fourteenth rare merit, was assigned to the com- Corps, and Major-General John A. Lomand of the Department and Army of gan of the Fifteenth, General George the Tennessee. Major-General Thomas Stoneman was assigned to the command was in command of the Army of the of a special cavalry force. Major-GenCumberland at Chattanooga, and Major-eral John Newton was ordered to report to General Thomas at Chattanooga, to be assigned to duty. With such men as these, and with numerous division commanders of tried merit in the field, General Sherman, at the beginning of May, simultaneously with the advance of the army of the Potomac at the east, began a campaign destined after several months of arduous effort, of most heroic exertion, to attain the object in view from the beginning the capture of Atlanta. ing out iron rails for roads, and armorplating for iron-clads, the latter in great abundance. Here are factories for shot and shell, for pistols, powder, cartridges and percussion caps, for gun-carriages, for small arms, for equipments, wagons and harnesses, shoes and clothing, and for many other purposes useful to the rebel commissariat. Here also are railroad repair-shops of incalculable value to the enemy. At least 2,000 people keep this valuable machinery in operaThis, next to Richmond, was the most tion. We, with our surplus Springimportant position, as a centre of mili- fields and Lowells, do not appreciate tary operations now held by the Con- how illy the enemy can spare this single federacy; and not without reason were city. As a depot of supplies, also as the two great armies of the Union at well as a manufactory, Atlanta has this time directed against these points. played an important part. But doubtWith the captures already made, the less most of its stores and its completed possession of these cities would assure goods, have already been prudentially complete military control of the States removed. Next, Atlanta is one of the in rebellion. In an article on Sherman's chief railroad centres in the Confederprojected campaign, while it was still acy. Northerly runs the Western and being carried out, a Northern journalist Atlantic road to Chattanooga. Southpresented this striking view of its main westerly, the Atlanta, West Point and object :-"In the first place, it is At- Montgomery road, connecting the forlanta itself a modern, well-built city, mer point with the capital of Alabama, now approaching its twenty-first year, thence with Mobile on the South, and but still sooner to reach its freedom with the whole Mississippi Valley on birthday. Laid out in a circular form, the West. Southeasterly runs the imwith a radius of about a mile, it con- portant road to Macon, and thence to tains within its strongly intrenched cir- Savannah. Easterly, the road to Aucumference (now that the war has gusta, and again to Savannah and to brought an accretion of a fourth to its Charleston. Besides these advantages, numbers,) a population of 20,000 souls. there is a topographical one of great From its protected situation, deep in importance. The chief military point the interior of the Confederacy, it was in all the mountain region of this vicinchosen at the outset as a great military ity is Chattanooga. That we must condepot of supplies and of material of tinue to hold in force at all hazards. war, and, furthermore, as a great mili- Its chief value, however, is in its defentary workshop. In this respect it has sive relation to East Tennessee, because no equal in the central zone of the Con- from that point a column can easily federacy. It is the Richmond of the throw itself on the communications of West. Here are arsenals, foundries, any hostile force which has passed furnaces, rolling-mills, machine-shops, through the mountain gaps to ravage laboratories, factories, which have been the interior of the State. Accordingly, busily supplying the Confederacy with it is the key of all that lies behind its munitions of war for the past three years. Here the finest and largest rolling-mill in the South has been turn back, or, rather, it is the gate which closes up all that region from assault. But for penetrating Central Georgia, GENERAL SHERMAN'S ARMY. Atlanta is the true starting point. Atlanta is as essentially the door of Georgia as Chattanooga of Tennessee. Till it is seized, only cavalry can be used by us further South, and their raids must be hurried, temporary, often ineffective, and always hazardous. Even a movable infantry column, like that famous one of Sherman which traversed Mississippi from Vicksburg to Meridian at the opening of this year, would be marched in this quarter with great peril, as the army in Atlanta could harass its rear. Now, betwixt these two main points extend the Alleghanies, ridging the whole face of the country into a mountainous formation. Lookout Mountain, Mission Ridge, Taylor's Ridge, John's Mountain, Dug-Down Mountain, and other parallel ranges, break up the region lying between the Tennessee and the Chattahoochee. So long as our base remains at Chattanooga, the enemy can always force us, in a southward march, to expend a campaign of several months in pressing him to Atlanta. We should have to fight him at long odds in such eyries as Buzzard's Roost, or turn him, as Sherman does, by flanking marches of 150 or 200 miles. But once carried, Atlanta is the new advanced position, and that labor is done once for all. To the southwest the country is still broken with the Alleghany chain, and due south of Atlanta is the formidable ridge of Pine Mountain. But, in the main, the region on the south and southeast is less rugged than that which Sherman's legions have already surmounted, and is less defensible."* With this view of the military value of Atlanta we can better appreciate the heroic persistency with which General Sherman over a track of more than 130 miles by the most direct railway route, interposing many natural obstacles, affording ready means of resistance, and defended by a resolute foe, sought and obtained the prize. He had opposed to * New York Times, July 26th, 1861. 375 him the second army in the Confederacy, inferior only to that of General Lee in Virginia, commanded by Joseph E. Johnston, one of the most experienced of the rebel officers, and especially chosen by President Davis as best capable to resist the progress of the Union forces in the southwest. Associated with Johnston were the corps commanders MajorGenerals Polk, Hardee, Hood, and other well-tried leaders of the war. Numerically, the force of General Sherman was superior. He had at his command, at the start, according to his own official report, a grand aggregate of 98,797 troops, with 254 guns. Of these, 60,773, with 130 guns, were in General Thomas' Army of the Cumberland, in the following proportions: infantry, 54,568; artillery, 2,377; cavalry, 3,828. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee numbered 24,465, with 96 guns, including 22,437 infantry; 1,404 artillery, and 624 cavalry. Schofield's Army of the Ohio numbered 13,559, with 28 guns, including 11,183 infantry, 679 artillery, 1,697 cavalry. This effective force, General Sherman tells us, was maintained during the campaign, the number of men joining from furlough and hospitals about compensating for the loss in battle and from sickness. The enemy's force was estimated by General Sherman at about 55,000 or 60,000, including about 10,000 cavalry under Wheeler. But to compensate for any inequality, the enemy had the advantage of position, their thorough knowledge of an intricate field of operations, an interior line of communication for supplies and reinforcements, while Sherman, at every move departing farther from his base as Johnston approached his, risked every thing on the issue of the campaign. "It must, wrote a correspondent from the field, recording the advance to Resaca, "have been apparent to General Sherman, before throwing his columns through this mountain pass, that the campaign into Georgia must be either a victory or a rated, supply some of the most picMoscow for the Union Army Victori- turesque incidents of the war. A corous, the rebel cause in Georgia and the respondent who was with the portion whole South is collapsed. Defeated, the of the army which sought to gain a posienemy would have it in their power to tion upon Rocky Faced Ridge, thus deinflict a heavy blow upon us, such as scribes one of these scenes: "General we have never experienced in the history Hooker," he writes, "had hard fighting of the war."* on the 9th, on the mountain crest. After Under these circumstances, General skirmishing heavily all the fore part of Sherman, having visited the several the day, with his men deployed on the commands and fully organized his forces, steep hill-sides, among rocks and inacreduced the trains to the absolute neces- cessible cliffs, he finally assaulted the sities of an army in the field, and otherwise enemy's position under a murderous provided for an active, fighting campaign, fire. The rebel line was carried, and on the 2d of May set his army in motion held for a few minutes, but, finding in the advance from Chattanooga. The themselves exposed to a raking, plungarmy moved in three columns, General ing fire from a new position, they were Thomas, in front, advancing upon the compelled to fall back. About fifty men line of the enemy on the railroad at were lost in the assault, the larger proRinggold, while General Schofield with portion wounded. Lieutenant-Colonel his own and Howard's corps moved McIlvain of the Sixty-fourth Ohio was down on the left from Cleveland; and killed, and each of the other comMcPherson, with the Army of the Ten- manders of the regiments engaged were nessee, was prepared to execute a flank- wounded. Major Rust of the Twentying movement on the right. Upon seventh Illinois had been wounded early Thomas' advance, little resistance was in the day. The men and officers bemade by the enemy at their outposts at haved with the greatest gallantry, and Ringgold and Tunnel Hill, as they fell after the repulse maintained their old back to the stronger position a few miles position, though subjected to a very beyond at Buzzard's Roost. This was heavy fire. Throughout there was cona narrow gap in the mountains closing tinued skirmishing on the west front of on the south the small valley beyond Rocky Face, General J. D. Morgan's Tunnel Hill, through which the railway brigade, the first of the Second Division ran to Dalton. On the west it was Fourteenth Corps being still engaged, guarded by the northern extremity of where they were sent in on the 8th. Rocky Faced Ridge, a continuous height This made two days and a night in the of several hundred feet, running for mountains. The Sixtieth Illinois Volunsome twenty miles parallel with the teers pushed upwards at a position torailway beyond Resaca. The enemy ward the southern extremity of the had planted their works across the val- mountain, and some portion of the troops ley and occupied the declivities on reached within fifty yards of the rebel either side, effectually guarding the riflemen, who fell back to the two gaps passage to Dalton. Several days were or depressions in the crest as the Union passed following May 8 in a reconnois- troops advanced. They finally reached sance of this position, with frequent a perpendicular cliff, under which the skirmishing and demonstrations on the rebel sharpshooters could not reach enemy. The details of this moun- them with their rifles, so they began to tain warfare will, when fully nar- throw stones and roll rocks down upon them. Here they remained for some time, within speaking distance, the rebels call * Army correspondence, N. Y. Tribune. Camp South west of Resaca, Ga. May 13th, 1864. |