WHAT CAUSED THE FALL OF ATLANTA--A DISSERTATION UPON AN IMPORTANT
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM--THE BATTLE OF JONESBORO--WHY IT WAS FOUGHT
--HOW SHERMAN DECEIVED HOOD--A DESPERATE BAYONET CHARGE, AND THE ONLY
SUCCESSFUL ONE IN THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN--A GALLANT COLONEL AND HOW HE
DIED--THE HEROISM OF SOME ENLISTED MEN--GOING CALMLY INTO CERTAIN DEATH.
An intelligent, quick-eyed, sunburned boy, without an ounce of
surplus flesh on face or limbs, which had been reduced to gray-hound
condition by the labors and anxieties of the months of battling between
Chattanooga and Atlanta, seemed to be the accepted talker of the crowd,
since all the rest looked at him, as if expecting him to answer for
them. He did so:
“You want to know about how we got Atlanta at last, do you? Well, if
you don’t know, I should think you would want to. If I didn’t, I’d want
somebody to tell me all about it just as soon as he could get to me,
for it was one of the neatest little bits of work that ‘old Billy’ and
his boys ever did, and it got away with Hood so bad that he hardly knew
what hurt him.
“Well, first, I’ll tell you that we belong to the old Fourteenth
Ohio Volunteers, which, if you know anything about the Army of the
Cumberland, you’ll remember has just about as good a record as any that
trains around old Pap Thomas--and he don’t ’low no slouches of any kind
near him, either--you can bet $500 to a cent on that, and offer to give
back the cent if you win. Ours is Jim Steedman’s old regiment--you’ve
all heard of old Chickamauga Jim, who slashed his division of 7,000
fresh men into the Rebel flank on the second day at Chickamauga, in a
way that made Longstreet wish he’d staid on the Rappahannock, and never
tried to get up any little sociable with the Westerners. If I do say
it myself, I believe we’ve got as good a crowd of square, stand-up,
trust ’em-every-minute-in-your-life boys, as ever thawed hard-tack and
sowbelly. We got all the grunters and weak sisters fanned out the first
year, and since then we’ve been on a business basis, all the time.
We’re in a mighty good brigade, too. Most of the regiments have been
with us since we formed the first brigade Pap Thomas ever commanded,
and waded with him through the mud of Kentucky, from Wild Cat to Mill
Springs, where he gave Zollicoffer just a little the awfulest thrashing
that a Rebel General ever got. That, you know, was in January, 1862,
and was the first victory gained by the Western Army, and our people
felt so rejoiced over it that--”
“Yes, yes; we’ve read all about that,” we broke in, “and we’d like to
hear it again, some other time; but tell us now about Atlanta.”
“All right. Let’s see: where was I? O, yes, talking about our brigade.
It is the Third Brigade, of the Third Division, of the Fourteenth
Corps, and is made up of the Fourteenth Ohio, Thirty-eighth Ohio, Tenth
Kentucky, and Seventy-fourth Indiana. Our old Colonel--George P. Este
--commands it. We never liked him very well in camp, but I tell you
he’s a whole team in a fight, and he’d do so well there that all would
take to him again, and he’d be real popular for a while.”
“Now, isn’t that strange,” broke in Andrews, who was given to fits of
speculation of psychological phenomena: “None of us yearn to die, but
the surest way to gain the affection of the boys is to show zeal in
leading them into scrapes where the chances of getting shot are the
best. Courage in action, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. I
have known it to make the most unpopular man in the battalion, the most
popular inside of half an hour. Now, M.(addressing himself to me,)
you remember Lieutenant H., of our battalion. You know he was a very
fancy young fellow; wore as snipish’ clothes as the tailor could make,
had gold lace on his jacket wherever the regulations would allow it,
decorated his shoulders with the stunningest pair of shoulder knots I
ever saw, and so on. Well, he did not stay with us long after we went
to the front. He went back on a detail for a court martial, and staid
a good while. When he rejoined us, he was not in good odor, at all,
and the boys weren’t at all careful in saying unpleasant things when
he could hear them, A little while after he came back we made that
reconnaissance up on the Virginia Road. We stirred up the Johnnies with
our skirmish line, and while the firing was going on in front we sat on
our horses in line, waiting for the order to move forward and engage.
You know how solemn such moments are. I looked down the line and saw
Lieutenant H. at the right of Company --, in command of it. I had not
seen him since he came back, and I sung out:
“‘Hello, Lieutenant, how do you feel?’
“The reply came back, promptly, and with boyish cheerfulness:
“‘Bully, by ----; I’m going to lead seventy men of Company into action
today!’
“How his boys did cheer him. When the bugle sounded--‘forward, trot,’
his company sailed in as if they meant it, and swept the Johnnies off
in short meter. You never heard anybody say anything against Lieutenant
after that.”
“You know how it was with Captain G., of our regiment,” said one of
the Fourteenth to another. “He was promoted from Orderly Sergeant to
a Second Lieutenant, and assigned to Company D. All the members of
Company D went to headquarters in a body, and protested against his
being put in their company, and he was not. Well, he behaved so well at
Chickamauga that the boys saw that they had done him a great injustice,
and all those that still lived went again to headquarters, and asked to
take all back that they had said, and to have him put into the company.”
“Well, that was doing the manly thing, sure; but go on about Atlanta.”
“I was telling about our brigade,” resumed the narrator. “Of course, we
think our regiment’s the best by long odds in the army--every fellow
thinks that of his regiment--but next to it come the other regiments of
our brigade. There’s not a cent of discount on any of them.
“Sherman had stretched out his right away to the south and west of
Atlanta. About the middle of August our corps, commanded by Jefferson
C. Davis, was lying in works at Utoy Creek, a couple of miles from
Atlanta. We could see the tall steeples and the high buildings of the
City quite plainly. Things had gone on dull and quiet like for about
ten days. This was longer by a good deal than we had been at rest since
we left Resaca in the Spring. We knew that something was brewing, and
that it must come to a head soon.
“I belong to Company C. Our little mess--now reduced to three by the
loss of two of our best soldiers and cooks, Disbrow and Sulier, killed
behind head-logs in front of Atlanta, by sharpshooters--had one fellow
that we called ‘Observer,’ because he had such a faculty of picking
up news in his prowling around headquarters. He brought us in so much
of this, and it was generally so reliable that we frequently made up
his absence from duty by taking his place. He was never away from a
fight, though. On the night of the 25th of August, ‘Observer’ came in
with the news that something was in the wind. Sherman was getting awful
restless, and we had found out that this always meant lots of trouble
to our friends on the other side.
“Sure enough, orders came to get ready to move, and the next night we
all moved to the right and rear, out of sight of the Johnnies. Our well
built works were left in charge of Garrard’s Cavalry, who concealed
their horses in the rear, and came up and took our places. The whole
army except the Twentieth Corps moved quietly off, and did it so nicely
that we were gone some time before the enemy suspected it. Then the
Twentieth Corps pulled out towards the North, and fell back to the
Chattahoochie, making quite a shove of retreat. The Rebels snapped up
the bait greedily. They thought the siege was being raised, and they
poured over their works to hurry the Twentieth boys off. The Twentieth
fellows let them know that there was lots of sting in them yet, and the
Johnnies were not long in discovering that it would have been money
in their pockets if they had let that ‘moon-and-star’ (that’s the
Twentieth’s badge, you know) crowd alone.
“But the Rebs thought the rest of us were gone for good and that
Atlanta was saved. Naturally they felt mighty happy over it; and
resolved to have a big celebration--a ball, a meeting of jubilee, etc.
Extra trains were run in, with girls and women from the surrounding
country, and they just had a high old time.
“In the meantime we were going through so many different kinds of
tactics that it looked as if Sherman was really crazy this time, sure.
Finally we made a grand left wheel, and then went forward a long way
in line of battle. It puzzled us a good deal, but we knew that Sherman
couldn’t get us into any scrape that Pap Thomas couldn’t get us out of,
and so it was all right.
“Along on the evening of the 31st our right wing seemed to have run
against a hornet’s nest, and we could hear the musketry and cannon
speak out real spiteful, but nothing came down our way. We had struck
the railroad leading south from Atlanta to Macon, and began tearing
it up. The jollity at Atlanta was stopped right in the middle by the
appalling news that the Yankees hadn’t retreated worth a cent, but had
broken out in a new and much worse spot than ever. Then there was no
end of trouble all around, and Hood started part of his army back after
us.
“Part of Hardee’s and Pat Cleburne’s command went into position in
front of us. We left them alone till Stanley could come up on our left,
and swing around, so as to cut off their retreat, when we would bag
every one of them. But Stanley was as slow as he always was, and did
not come up until it was too late, and the game was gone.
“The sun was just going down on the evening of the 1st of September,
when we began to see we were in for it, sure. The Fourteenth Corps
wheeled into position near the railroad, and the sound of musketry and
artillery became very loud and clear on our front and left. We turned
a little and marched straight toward the racket, becoming more excited
every minute. We saw the Carlin’s brigade of regulars, who were some
distance ahead of us, pile knapsacks, form in line, fix bayonets, and
dash off with arousing cheer.
“The Rebel fire beat upon them like a Summer rain-storm, the ground
shook with the noise, and just as we reached the edge of the cotton
field, we saw the remnant of the brigade come flying back out of the
awful, blasting shower of bullets. The whole slope was covered with
dead and wounded.”
“Yes,” interrupts one of the Fourteenth; “and they made that charge
right gamely, too, I can tell you. They were good soldiers, and well
led. When we went over the works, I remember seeing the body of a
little Major of one of the regiments lying right on the top. If he
hadn’t been killed he’d been inside in a half-a-dozen steps more.
There’s no mistake about it; those regulars will fight.”
“When we saw this,” resumed the narrator, “it set our fellows fairly
wild; they became just crying mad; I never saw them so before. The
order came to strip for the charge, and our knapsacks were piled in
half a minute. A Lieutenant of our company, who was then on the staff
of Gen. Baird, our division commander, rode slowly down the line and
gave us our instructions to load our guns, fix bayonets, and hold fire
until we were on top of the Rebel works. Then Colonel Este sang out
clear and steady as a bugle signal:
“‘Brigade, forward! Guide center! MARCH!!’
“And we started. Heavens, how they did let into us, as we came up
into range. They had ten pieces of artillery, and more men behind the
breastworks than we had in line, and the fire they poured on us was
simply withering. We walked across the hundreds of dead and dying of
the regular brigade, and at every step our own men fell down among
them. General Baud’s horse was shot down, and the General thrown far
over his head, but he jumped up and ran alongside of us. Major Wilson,
our regimental commander, fell mortally wounded; Lieutenant Kirk was
killed, and also Captain Stopfard, Adjutant General of the brigade.
Lieutenants Cobb and Mitchell dropped with wounds that proved fatal in
a few days. Captain Ugan lost an arm, one-third of the enlisted men
fell, but we went straight ahead, the grape and the musketry becoming
worse every step, until we gained the edge of the hill, where we were
checked a minute by the brush, which the Rebels had fixed up in the
shape of abattis. Just then a terrible fire from a new direction,
our left, swept down the whole length of our line. The Colonel of
the Seventeenth New York--as gallant a man as ever lived saw the new
trouble, took his regiment in on the run, and relieved us of this, but
he was himself mortally wounded. If our boys were half-crazy before,
they were frantic now, and as we got out of the entanglement of the
brush, we raised a fearful yell and ran at the works. We climbed the
sides, fired right down into the defenders, and then began with the
bayonet and sword. For a few minutes it was simply awful. On both sides
men acted like infuriated devils. They dashed each other’s brains out
with clubbed muskets; bayonets were driven into men’s bodies up to the
muzzle of the gun; officers ran their swords through their opponents,
and revolvers, after being emptied into the faces of the Rebels, were
thrown with desperate force into the ranks. In our regiment was a
stout German butcher named Frank Fleck. He became so excited that he
threw down his sword, and rushed among the Rebels with his bare fists,
knocking down a swath of them. He yelled to the first Rebel he met:
“Py Gott, I’ve no patience mit you,’ and knocked him sprawling. He
caught hold of the commander of the Rebel Brigade, and snatched him
back over the works by main strength. Wonderful to say, he escaped
unhurt, but the boys will probably not soon let him hear the last of,
“Py Gott, I’ve no patience mit you.’
“The Tenth Kentucky, by the queerest luck in the world, was matched
against the Rebel Ninth Kentucky. The commanders of the two regiments
were brothers-in-law, and the men relatives, friends, acquaintances and
schoolmates. They hated each other accordingly, and the fight between
them was more bitter, if possible, than anywhere else on the line. The
Thirty-Eighth Ohio and Seventy-fourth Indiana put in some work that was
just magnificent. We hadn’t time to look at it then, but the dead and
wounded piled up after the fight told the story.
“We gradually forced our way over the works, but the Rebels were game
to the last, and we had to make them surrender almost one at a time.
The artillerymen tried to fire on us when we were so close we could lay
our hands on the guns.
“Finally nearly all in the works surrendered, and were disarmed and
marched back. Just then an aid came dashing up with the information
that we must turn the works, and get ready to receive Hardee, who was
advancing to retake the position. We snatched up some shovels lying
near, and began work. We had no time to remove the dead and dying
Rebels on the works, and the dirt we threw covered them up. It proved
a false alarm. Hardee had as much as he could do to save his own hide,
and the affair ended about dark.
“When we came to count up what we had gained, we found that we had
actually taken more prisoners from behind breastworks than there
were in our brigade when we started the charge. We had made the only
really successful bayonet charge of the campaign. Every other time
since we left Chattanooga the party standing on the defensive had been
successful. Here we had taken strong double lines, with ten guns,
seven battle flags, and over two thousand prisoners. We had lost
terribly--not less than one-third of the brigade, and many of our best
men. Our regiment went into the battle with fifteen officers; nine of
these were killed or wounded, and seven of the nine lost either their
limbs or lives. The Thirty-Eighth Ohio, and the other regiments of the
brigade lost equally heavy. We thought Chickamauga awful, but Jonesboro
discounted it.”
“Do you know,” said another of the Fourteenth, “I heard our Surgeon
telling about how that Colonel Grower, of the Seventeenth New York, who
came in so splendidly on our left, died? They say he was a Wall Street
broker, before the war. He was hit shortly after he led his regiment
in, and after the fight, was carried back to the hospital. While our
Surgeon was going the rounds Colonel Grower called him, and said
quietly, ‘When you get through with the men, come and see me, please.’
“The Doctor would have attended to him then, but Grower wouldn’t let
him. After he got through he went back to Grower, examined his wound,
and told him that he could only live a few hours. Grower received the
news tranquilly, had the Doctor write a letter to his wife, and gave
him his things to send her, and then grasping the Doctor’s hand, he
said:
“Doctor, I’ve just one more favor to ask; will you grant it?’
“The Doctor said, ‘Certainly; what is it?’
“You say I can’t live but a few hours?’
“Yes; that is true.’
“And that I will likely be in great pain!’
“I am sorry to say so.’
“Well, then, do give me morphia enough to put me to sleep, so that I
will wake up only in another world.’
“The Doctor did so; Colonel Grower thanked him; wrung his hand, bade
him good-by, and went to sleep to wake no more.”
“Do you believe in presentiments and superstitions?” said another of
the Fourteenth. There was Fisher Pray, Orderly Sergeant of Company I.
He came from Waterville, O., where his folks are now living. The day
before we started out he had a presentiment that we were going into
a fight, and that he would be killed. He couldn’t shake it off. He
told the Lieutenant, and some of the boys about it, and they tried
to ridicule him out of it, but it was no good. When the sharp firing
broke out in front some of the boys said, ‘Fisher, I do believe you
are right,’ and he nodded his head mournfully. When we were piling
knapsacks for the charge, the Lieutenant, who was a great friend of
Fisher’s, said:
“Fisher, you stay here and guard the knapsacks.’
“Fisher’s face blazed in an instant.
“No, sir,’ said he; I never shirked a fight yet, and I won’t begin now.’
“So he went into the fight, and was killed, as he knew he would be.
Now, that’s what I call nerve.”
“The same thing was true of Sergeant Arthur Tarbox, of Company A,” said
the narrator; “he had a presentiment, too; he knew he was going to be
killed, if he went in, and he was offered an honorable chance to stay
out, but he would not take it, and went in and was killed.”
“Well, we staid there the next day, buried our dead, took care of our
wounded, and gathered up the plunder we had taken from the Johnnies.
The rest of the army went off, ‘hot blocks,’ after Hardee and the
rest of Hood’s army, which it was hoped would be caught outside of
entrenchments. But Hood had too much the start, and got into the works
at Lovejoy, ahead of our fellows. The night before we heard several
very loud explosions up to the north. We guessed what that meant, and
so did the Twentieth Corps, who were lying back at the Chattahoochee,
and the next morning the General commanding--Slocum--sent out a
reconnaissance. It was met by the Mayor of Atlanta, who said that the
Rebels had blown up their stores and retreated. The Twentieth Corps
then came in and took possession of the City, and the next day--the
3d--Sherman came in, and issued an order declaring the campaign at an
end, and that we would rest awhile and refit.
“We laid around Atlanta a good while, and things quieted down so
that it seemed almost like peace, after the four months of continual
fighting we had gone through. We had been under a strain so long that
now we boys went in the other direction, and became too careless, and
that’s how we got picked up. We went out about five miles one night
after a lot of nice smoked hams that a nigger told us were stored in
an old cotton press, and which we knew would be enough sight better
eating for Company C, than the commissary pork we had lived on so long.
We found the cotton press, and the hams, just as the nigger told us,
and we hitched up a team to take them into camp. As we hadn’t seen any
Johnny signs anywhere, we set our guns down to help load the meat, and
just as we all came stringing out to the wagon with as much meat as we
could carry, a company of Ferguson’s Cavalry popped out of the woods
about one hundred yards in front of us and were on top of us before we
could say I scat. You see they’d heard of the meat, too.”