Historians have long been in the habit of dealing with the past as if it
were nothing more than the story of a small number of great men who
moved about shaping the world as they saw fit. In reality, leaders are
not long successful without followers—the great mass of the common
people who do the work, bear the burdens, and suffer the consequences of
their leaders’ policies. The Civil War offers a unique opportunity to
study the common people of America because during that conflict large
numbers of people were directly involved in the great events of the
times. For most of them, the war was the single most important event of
their lives. Consequently they wrote about it in great detail in their
letters and diaries and saved these documents after the conflict ended.
It is therefore possible to see the Civil War armies as groups of
humans, not masses of automata. The men who followed Sherman, Johnston,
and Hood in 1864 left behind information that adds much to an
understanding of the campaign.
Records kept by the Federal Government show that the typical Northern
soldier was 5 feet 8¼ inches tall and weighed 143½ pounds. Doubtless the
Southerners were of a similar stature. The same records also indicate
that before the war 48 percent of the men had been farmers. Among the
Confederates the percentage of farmers was more than half. Relatively
few immigrants served in either western army—perhaps one-fifth to
one-sixth of the men were of foreign birth. More than half the units in
Sherman’s armies were from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Iowa, Kentucky,
Missouri, and Wisconsin also furnished large contingents. Such Eastern
States as New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were
represented, but their contributions were small. More than two-thirds of
the units in the Southern army were from Tennessee, Alabama,
Mississippi, and Georgia. Other States with significant numbers of
troops in the Confederate ranks were Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee were represented by units on
both sides. Most of the men in the armies that struggled for Atlanta had
volunteered for military service in 1861 or 1862. By 1864 they had
become veterans, inured to the hardships of military life. Nevertheless,
they found the Atlanta Campaign a severe trial.
Unlike many Civil War military operations in which fighting occurred at
infrequent intervals, the struggle for Atlanta was virtually a
continuous battle. Sometimes, as at Resaca, almost all of the opposing
forces were engaged; at other times, action was limited to the desultory
firing of skirmishers. But only on rare occasions were the soldiers able
to escape the sounds and dangers of combat.
The weather—whether a freak cold wave in mid-June, the unusually heavy
rains of late May and June, or the normal heat of July and
August—affected every man and often hampered troop movements as well.
Frequently units on the march lost men who could not stand the pace. The
soldiers would drop by the roadside until they had recovered their
strength, then move on to overtake their comrades. For example, the heat
on July 12 was so bad that only 50 of the men in an Illinois regiment
could keep up on a 3-mile march. When the armies were in fortified
positions, as they were at Kennesaw Mountain, the men often stretched
blankets or brush across the trenches to protect themselves from the
sun. On rainy days, fence rails or rocks in the trenches served to keep
soldiers out of the water.
Clothing was also a problem. As a rule, Sherman’s men were better
supplied than their opponents, but the wool uniforms they wore were
unsuited to the hot Georgia summer. The Confederates had almost no new
clothing after the campaign began and their uniforms deteriorated
rapidly. A Texan summed up their plight in early June when he wrote: “In
this army one hole in the seat of the breeches indicates a captain, two
holes a lieutenant, and the seat of the pants all out indicates that the
individual is a private.”
Rarely did the men of either army have a chance to wash and almost all
of them were affected by body lice and other vermin. A sense of humor
helped them to survive these trials—soldiers who were pinned down in a
water-filled trench by enemy fire consoled themselves with the thought
that they were at least drowning the lice. The Federals complained that
the retreating Southerners infested the country with lice that attacked
the advancing Northerners. Other pests included chiggers, ticks, snakes,
scorpions, flies, and ants.
[Illustration: _By 1864 most of the men in the armies that struggled
for Atlanta had become veterans, inured to the hardships of military
life._]
[Illustration: _Soldiers in both armies had no scruples about
supplementing their rations with whatever could be taken from
surrounding farms and homes._]
Soldiers in both armies suffered from a shortage of food and had no
scruples about supplementing their rations with whatever could be taken
from the surrounding farms and homes. Corn, pork, chickens, geese, hams,
potatoes, apples, and onions disappeared as the armies moved through a
neighborhood. Wild berries and fish were also eaten. Nevertheless, there
were many times when food was in short supply. One Federal wrote, “most
of the time we are on the move and cannot get such as is fit for a man
to eat.”
The Atlanta Campaign, like many of the later Civil War campaigns, saw
the development of trench warfare on a large scale. Protecting works
were built from loose rocks, fence rails, tombstones, or even the bodies
of dead comrades. By the third or fourth week of the campaign, both
sides had mastered the art of field fortification—a trench, with the
dirt piled on the side toward the enemy and surmounted by a headlog
under which were small openings for firing. Such works left “little but
the eyes ... exposed” to enemy fire. In front of the trenches the
underbrush would be cleared away and young trees cut so they fell toward
the foe. The trees were left partly attached to the stump so that they
could not be dragged aside. Telegraph wire was sometimes strung between
them to create further obstacles.
From behind their fortifications soldiers could pour out such a volume
of fire that there was no chance for a successful massed attack—unless
complete surprise could be achieved or overwhelming numbers brought
against a weak part of the enemy’s line. Much of the fighting was
therefore done by small patrols and snipers, especially in heavily
wooded country such as the area around New Hope Church and Kennesaw
Mountain.
The soldier who died in battle could expect no elaborate funeral.
Usually the armies were too busy to do more than bury the dead as
quickly as possible and they would probably be put in a mass grave near
the place where they had fallen. Later the bodies might be exhumed and
moved to a cemetery where they would be listed as “unidentified” and
reinterred in a numbered but nameless grave.
The soldier who was wounded or who was disabled by disease suffered
greatly. As a rule, the Northerner who was sent to an army hospital
fared better than his opponent because the Federals were better equipped
and provisioned than the Confederates. Field hospitals treated men whose
wounds were either very slight or too serious to permit further
movement. Others were sent by wagon and rail to hospitals in the
rear—Rome, Chattanooga, and Knoxville for the Federals; Atlanta and the
small towns along the railroads south of that city for the Southerners.
Transportation in crowded hospital wagons over rutted roads or in slow
hospital trains was an indescribable horror. The hospitals themselves
were better but, by modern standards, uncomfortable and dirty. For
painful operations, Northern soldiers often enjoyed the blessing of
chloroform. Many Southerners, however, especially those in the hospitals
in smaller towns, frequently endured major surgery without the benefit
of any opiate except, perhaps, whiskey. In such cases the hospitals
echoed with the screams of men undergoing amputations or such treatments
as that calling for the use of nitric acid to burn gangrene out of their
wounds.
[Illustration: {uncaptioned}]
No precise figures as to the number of men who were killed, wounded, or
sick during the campaign are available. However, it is known that for
the war as a whole, disease killed about twice as many men as did the
weapons of the enemy. Sickness brought on by exposure and unsanitary
camps undoubtedly accounted for many lives among the soldiers in
Georgia. Diseases that were especially common were smallpox, scurvy,
dysentery, diarrhea (also known as “dierear” and the “Tennessee quick
step”), and various types of fevers.
Religion provided a great source of comfort for many soldiers. Chaplains
accompanied both armies but were too few to serve all the troops. Some
chaplains preferred to spend the campaign in the rear where they would
be safe, while others, of far more influence with the men, braved
hardships and dangers with the units they served. At least three of the
latter group were killed in battle during the campaign—either while
helping the wounded or fighting in the ranks. When chaplains were not
available the men sometimes organized and conducted their own religious
services. On the other hand, many soldiers ignored religion altogether
and continued such “sinful” practices as cursing, drinking, and
gambling. Nevertheless, what one soldier called “the missionary
influence of the enemy’s cannon” and the constant presence of death and
suffering led many to seek comfort in religion.
Throughout the campaign, when the armies were in a relatively stable
situation, the men sometimes agreed not to shoot at one another.
Instead, they would meet between the lines to talk, swim, drink, bathe,
enjoy the sun, pick blackberries, exchange newspapers, swap Northern
coffee for Southern tobacco, play cards, wrestle, eat, sing, rob the
dead, and argue politics. Officers on both sides tried to prohibit this
fraternization, but the men in the ranks had the good sense to ignore
their orders. These informal truces would usually be respected by all,
and when they were over, fighting would not resume until every man had
gotten back to his own trenches. Much of the tragedy of the war was
reflected in a letter written by a Wisconsin soldier on June 24:
We made a bargain with them that we would not fire on them if they
would not fire on us, and they were as good as their word. It seems
too bad that we have to fight men that we like. Now these Southern
soldiers seem just like our own boys, only they are on the other side.
They talk about their people at home, their mothers and fathers and
their sweethearts, just as we do among ourselves.
However, regardless of the soldiers’ feelings about each other during
those times of truce, the war was being run by the generals and the
generals said it must go on.