ATLANTA CAMPAIGN--BATTLES ABOUT KENESAW MOUNTAIN.
JUNE, 1864.
On the 1st of June our three armies were well in hand, in the
broken and densely-wooded country fronting the enemy intrenched at
New Hope Church, about five miles north of Dallas. General
Stoneman's division of cavalry had occupied Allatoona, on the
railroad, and General Garrard's division was at the western end of
the pass, about Stilesboro. Colonel W. W. Wright, of the
Engineers, was busily employed in repairing the railroad and
rebuilding the bridge across the Etowah (or High tower) River,
which had been destroyed by the enemy on his retreat; and the
armies were engaged in a general and constant skirmish along a
front of about six miles--McPherson the right, Thomas the centre,
and Schofield on the left. By gradually covering our front with
parapet, and extending to the left, we approached the railroad
toward Acworth and overlapped the enemy's right. By the 4th of
June we had made such progress that Johnston evacuated his lines in
the night, leaving us masters of the situation, when I deliberately
shifted McPherson's army to the extreme left, at and in front of
Acworth, with Thomas's about two miles on his right, and
Schofield's on his right all facing east. Heavy rains set in about
the 1st of June, making the roads infamous; but our marches were
short, as we needed time for the repair of the railroad, so as to
bring supplies forward to Allatoona Station. On the 6th I rode
back to Allatoona, seven miles, found it all that was expected, and
gave orders for its fortification and preparation as a "secondary
base."
General Blair arrived at Acworth on the 8th with his two divisions
of the Seventeenth Corps--the same which had been on veteran
furlough--had come up from Cairo by way of Clifton, on the
Tennessee River, and had followed our general route to Allatoona,
where he had left a garrison of about fifteen hundred men. His
effective strength, as reported, was nine thousand. These, with
new regiments and furloughed men who had joined early in the month
of May, equaled our losses from battle, sickness, and by
detachments; so that the three armies still aggregated about one
hundred thousand effective men.
On the 10th of June the whole combined army moved forward six
miles, to "Big Shanty," a station on the railroad, whence we had a
good view of the enemy's position, which embraced three prominent
hills known as Kenesaw, Pine Mountain, and Lost Mountain. On each
of these hills the enemy had signal-stations and fresh lines of
parapets. Heavy masses of infantry could be distinctly seen with
the naked eye, and it was manifest that Johnston had chosen his
ground well, and with deliberation had prepared for battle; but his
line was at least ten miles in extent--too long, in my judgment, to
be held successfully by his force, then estimated at sixty
thousand. As his position, however, gave him a perfect view over
our field, we had to proceed with due caution. McPherson had the
left, following the railroad, which curved around the north base of
Kenesaw; Thomas the centre, obliqued to the right, deploying below
Kenesaw and facing Pine Hill; and Schofield, somewhat refused, was
on the general right, looking south, toward Lost Mountain.
On the 11th the Etowah bridge was done; the railroad was repaired
up to our very skirmish line, close to the base of Kenesaw, and a
loaded train of cars came to Big Shanty. The locomotive, detached,
was run forward to a water-tank within the range of the enemy's
guns on Kenesaw, whence the enemy opened fire on the locomotive;
but the engineer was not afraid, went on to the tank, got water,
and returned safely to his train, answering the guns with the
screams of his engine, heightened by the cheers and shouts of our
men.
The rains continued to pour, and made our developments slow and
dilatory, for there were no roads, and these had to be improvised
by each division for its own supply train from the depot in Big
Shanty to the camps. Meantime each army was deploying carefully
before the enemy, intrenching every camp, ready as against a sally.
The enemy's cavalry was also busy in our rear, compelling us to
detach cavalry all the way back as far as Resaca, and to
strengthen all the infantry posts as far as Nashville. Besides,
there was great danger, always in my mind, that Forrest would
collect a heavy cavalry command in Mississippi, cross the Tennessee
River, and break up our railroad below Nashville. In anticipation
of this very danger, I had sent General Sturgis to Memphis to take
command of all the cavalry in that quarter, to go out toward
Pontotoc, engage Forrest and defeat him; but on the 14th of June I
learned that General Sturgis had himself been defeated on the 10th
of June, and had been driven by Forrest back into Memphis in
considerable confusion. I expected that this would soon be
followed by a general raid on all our roads in Tennessee. General
G. J. Smith, with the two divisions of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Corps which had been with General Banks up Red River,
had returned from that ill-fated expedition, and had been ordered
to General Canby at New Orleans, who was making a diversion about
Mobile; but, on hearing of General Sturgis's defeat, I ordered
General Smith to go out from Memphis and renew the offensive, so as
to keep Forrest off our roads. This he did finally, defeating
Forrest at Tupelo, on the 13th, 14th, and 15th days of July; and
he so stirred up matters in North Mississippi that Forrest could
not leave for Tennessee. This, for a time, left me only the task
of covering the roads against such minor detachments of cavalry as
Johnston could spare from his immediate army, and I proposed to
keep these too busy in their own defense to spare detachments. By
the 14th the rain slackened, and we occupied a continuous line of
ten miles, intrenched, conforming to the irregular position of the
enemy, when I reconnoitred, with a view to make a break in their
line between Kenesaw and Pine Mountain. When abreast of Pine
Mountain I noticed a rebel battery on its crest, with a continuous
line of fresh rifle-trench about half-way down the hill. Our
skirmishers were at the time engaged in the woods about the base of
this hill between the lines, and I estimated the distance to the
battery on the crest at about eight hundred yards. Near it, in
plain view, stood a group of the enemy, evidently observing us with
glasses. General Howard, commanding the Fourth Corps, was near by,
and I called his attention to this group, and ordered him to compel
it to keep behind its cover. He replied that his orders from
General Thomas were to spare artillery-ammunition. This was right,
according to the general policy, but I explained to him that we
must keep up the morale of a bold offensive, that he must use his
artillery, force the enemy to remain on the timid defensive, and
ordered him to cause a battery close by to fire three volleys. I
continued to ride down our line, and soon heard, in quick
succession, the three volleys. The next division in order was
Geary's, and I gave him similar orders. General Polk, in my
opinion, was killed by the second volley fired from the first
battery referred to.
In a conversation with General Johnston, after the war, he
explained that on that day he had ridden in person from Marietta to
Pine Mountain, held by Bates's division, and was accompanied by
Generals Hardee and Polk. When on Pine Mountain, reconnoitring,
quite a group of soldiers, belonging to the battery close by,
clustered about him. He noticed the preparations of our battery to
fire, and cautioned these men to scatter. They did so, and he
likewise hurried behind the parapet, from which he had an equally
good view of our position but General Polk, who was dignified and
corpulent, walked back slowly, not wishing to appear too hurried or
cautious in the presence of the men, and was struck across the
breast by an unexploded shell, which killed him instantly. This is
my memory of the conversation, and it is confirmed by Johnston
himself in his "Narrative," page 337, except that he calculated the
distance of our battery at six hundred yards, and says that Polk
was killed by the third shot; I know that our guns fired by volley,
and believe that he was hit by a shot of the second volley. It has
been asserted that I fired the gun which killed General Polk, and
that I knew it was directed against that general. The fact is, at
that distance we could not even tell that the group were officers
at all; I was on horseback, a couple of hundred yards off, before
my orders to fire were executed, had no idea that our shot had
taken effect, and continued my ride down along the line to
Schofield's extreme flank, returning late in the evening to my
head-quarters at Big Shanty, where I occupied an abandoned house.
In a cotton-field back of that house was our signal-station, on the
roof of an old gin-house. The signal-officer reported that by
studying the enemy's signals he had learned the key, and that he
could read their signals. He explained to me that he had
translated a signal about noon, from Pine Mountain to Marietta,
"Send an ambulance for General Polk's body;" and later in the day
another, "Why don't you send an ambulance for General Polk?" From
this we inferred that General Polk had been killed, but how or
where we knew not; and this inference was confirmed later in the
same day by the report of some prisoners who had been captured.
On the 15th we advanced our general lines, intending to attack at
any weak point discovered between Kenesaw and Pine Mountain; but
Pine Mountain was found to be abandoned, and Johnston had
contracted his front somewhat, on a direct line, connecting Kenesaw
with Lost Mountain. Thomas and Schofield thereby gained about two
miles of most difficult, country, and McPherson's left lapped well
around the north end of Kenesaw. We captured a good many
prisoners, among them a whole infantry regiment, the Fourteenth
Alabama, three hundred and twenty strong.
On the 16th the general movement was continued, when Lost Mountain
was abandoned by the enemy. Our right naturally swung round, so as
to threaten the railroad below Marietta, but Johnston had still
further contracted and strengthened his lines, covering Marietta
and all the roads below.
On the 17th and 18th the rain again fell in torrents, making army
movements impossible, but we devoted the time to strengthening our
positions, more especially the left and centre, with a view
gradually to draw from the left to add to the right; and we had to
hold our lines on the left extremely strong, to guard against a
sally from Kenesaw against our depot at Big Shanty. Garrard's
division of cavalry was kept busy on our left, McPherson had
gradually extended to his right, enabling Thomas to do the same
still farther; but the enemy's position was so very strong, and
everywhere it was covered by intrenchments, that we found it as
dangerous to assault as a permanent fort. We in like manner
covered our lines of battle by similar works, and even our
skirmishers learned to cover their bodies by the simplest and best
forms of defensive works, such as rails or logs, piled in the form
of a simple lunette, covered on the outside with earth thrown up at
night.
The enemy and ourselves used the same form of rifle-trench, varied
according to the nature of the ground, viz.: the trees and bushes
were cut away for a hundred yards or more in front, serving as an
abatis or entanglement; the parapets varied from four to six feet
high, the dirt taken from a ditch outside and from a covered way
inside, and this parapet was surmounted by a "head-log," composed
of the trunk of a tree from twelve to twenty inches at the butt,
lying along the interior crest of the parapet and resting in
notches cut in other trunks which extended back, forming an
inclined plane, in case the head-log should be knocked inward by a
cannon-shot. The men of both armies became extremely skillful in
the construction of these works, because each man realized their
value and importance to himself, so that it required no orders for
their construction. As soon as a regiment or brigade gained a
position within easy distance for a sally, it would set to work
with a will, and would construct such a parapet in a single night;
but I endeavored to spare the soldiers this hard labor by
authorizing each division commander to organize out of the freedmen
who escaped to us a pioneer corps of two hundred men, who were fed
out of the regular army supplies, and I promised them ten dollars a
month, under an existing act of Congress. These pioneer
detachments became very useful to us during the rest of the war,
for they could work at night while our men slept; they in turn were
not expected to fight, and could therefore sleep by day. Our
enemies used their slaves for a similar purpose, but usually kept
them out of the range of fire by employing them to fortify and
strengthen the position to their rear next to be occupied in their
general retrograde. During this campaign hundreds if not thousands
of miles of similar intrenchments were built by both armies, and,
as a rule, whichever party attacked got the worst of it.
On the 19th of June the rebel army again fell back on its flanks,
to such an extent that for a time I supposed it had retreated to
the Chattahoochee River, fifteen miles distant; but as we pressed
forward we were soon undeceived, for we found it still more
concentrated, covering Marietta and the railroad. These successive
contractions of the enemy's line encouraged us and discouraged him,
but were doubtless justified by sound reasons. On the 20th
Johnston's position was unusually strong. Kenesaw Mountain was his
salient; his two flanks were refused and covered by parapets and by
Noonday and Nose's Creeks. His left flank was his weak point, so
long as he acted on the "defensive," whereas, had he designed to
contract the extent of his line for the purpose of getting in
reserve a force with which to strike "offensively" from his right,
he would have done a wise act, and I was compelled to presume that
such was his object: We were also so far from Nashville and
Chattanooga that we were naturally sensitive for the safety of our
railroad and depots, so that the left (McPherson) was held very
strong.
About this time came reports that a large cavalry force of the
enemy had passed around our left flank, evidently to strike this
very railroad somewhere below Chattanooga. I therefore reenforced
the cavalry stationed from Resaca to Casaville, and ordered forward
from Huntsville, Alabama, the infantry division of General John E.
Smith, to hold Kingston securely.
While we were thus engaged about Kenesaw, General Grant had his
hands full with Lee, in Virginia. General Halleck was the chief of
staff at Washington, and to him I communicated almost daily. I
find from my letter-book that on the 21st of June I reported to him
tersely and truly the condition of facts on that day: "This is the
nineteenth day of rain, and the prospect of fair weather is as far
off as ever. The roads are impassable; the fields and woods become
quagmire's after a few wagons have crossed over. Yet we are at
work all the time. The left flank is across Noonday Creek, and the
right is across Nose's Creek. The enemy still holds Kenesaw, a
conical mountain, with Marietta behind it, and has his flanks
retired, to cover that town and the railroad behind. I am all
ready to attack the moment the weather and roads will permit troops
and artillery to move with any thing like life."
The weather has a wonderful effect on troops: in action and on the
march, rain is favorable; but in the woods, where all is blind and
uncertain, it seems almost impossible for an army covering ten
miles of front to act in concert during wet and stormy weather.
Still I pressed operations with the utmost earnestness, aiming
always to keep our fortified lines in absolute contact with the
enemy, while with the surplus force we felt forward, from one flank
or the other, for his line of communication and retreat. On the
22d of June I rode the whole line, and ordered General Thomas in
person to advance his extreme right corps (Hooker's); and
instructed General Schofield, by letter, to keep his entire army,
viz., the Twenty-third Corps, as a strong right flank in close
support of Hooker's deployed line. During this day the sun came
out, with some promise of clear weather, and I had got back to my
bivouac about dark, when a signal message was received, dated--
KULP HOUSE, 5.30 P.M.
General SHERMAN:
We have repulsed two heavy attacks, and feel confident, our only
apprehension being from our extreme right flank. Three entire
corps are in front of us.
Major-General HOOKER.
Hooker's corps (the Twentieth) belonged to Thomas's army; Thomas's
headquarters were two miles nearer to Hooker than mine; and Hooker,
being an old army officer, knew that he should have reported this
fact to Thomas and not to me; I was, moreover, specially disturbed
by the assertion in his report that he was uneasy about his right
flank, when Schofield had been specially ordered to protect that.
I first inquired of my adjutant, Dayton, if he were certain that
General Schofield had received his orders, and he answered that the
envelope in which he had sent them was receipted by General
Schofield himself. I knew, therefore, that General Schofield must
be near by, in close support of Hooker's right flank. General
Thomas had before this occasion complained to me of General
Hooker's disposition to "switch off," leaving wide gaps in his
line, so as to be independent, and to make glory on his own
account. I therefore resolved not to overlook this breach of
discipline and propriety. The rebel army was only composed of
three corps; I had that very day ridden six miles of their lines,
found them everywhere strongly occupied, and therefore Hooker could
not have encountered "three entire corps." Both McPherson and
Schofield had also complained to me of this same tendency of Hooker
to widen the gap between his own corps and his proper army
(Thomas's), so as to come into closer contact with one or other of
the wings, asserting that he was the senior by commission to both
McPherson and Schofield, and that in the event of battle he should
assume command over them, by virtue of his older commission.
They appealed to me to protect them. I had heard during that day
some cannonading and heavy firing down toward the "Kulp House,"
which was about five miles southeast of where I was, but this was
nothing unusual, for at the same moment there was firing along our
lines full ten miles in extent. Early the next day (23d) I rode
down to the "Kulp House," which was on a road leading from Powder
Springs to Marietta, about three miles distant from the latter. On
the way I passed through General Butterfield's division of Hooker's
corps, which I learned had not been engaged at all in the battle of
the day before; then I rode along Geary's and Williams's divisions,
which occupied the field of battle, and the men were engaged in
burying the dead. I found General Schofield's corps on the Powder
Springs road, its head of column abreast of Hooker's right,
therefore constituting "a strong right flank," and I met Generale
Schofield and Hooker together. As rain was falling at the moment,
we passed into a little church standing by the road-side, and I
there showed General Schofield Hooker's signal-message of the day
before. He was very angry, and pretty sharp words passed between
them, Schofield saying that his head of column (Hascall's division)
had been, at the time of the battle, actually in advance of
Hooker's line; that the attack or sally of the enemy struck his
troops before it did Hooker's; that General Hooker knew of it at
the time; and he offered to go out and show me that the dead men of
his advance division (Hascall's) were lying farther out than any of
Hooker's. General Hooker pretended not to have known this fact. I
then asked him why he had called on me for help, until he had used
all of his own troops; asserting that I had just seen Butterfield's
division, and had learned from him that he had not been engaged the
day before at all; and I asserted that the enemy's sally must have
been made by one corps (Hood's), in place of three, and that it had
fallen on Geary's and Williams's divisions, which had repulsed the
attack handsomely. As we rode away from that church General Hooker
was by my side, and I told him that such a thing must not occur
again; in other words, I reproved him more gently than the occasion
demanded, and from that time he began to sulk. General Hooker had
come from the East with great fame as a "fighter," and at
Chattanooga he was glorified by his "battle above the clouds,"
which I fear turned his head. He seemed jealous of all the army
commanders, because in years, former rank, and experience, he
thought he was our superior.
On the 23d of June I telegraphed to General Halleck this summary,
which I cannot again better state:
We continue to press forward on the principle of an advance against
fortified positions. The whole country is one vast fort, and
Johnston must have at least fifty miles of connected trenches, with
abatis and finished batteries. We gain ground daily, fighting all
the time. On the 21st General Stanley gained a position near the
south end of Kenesaw, from which the enemy attempted in vain to
drive him; and the same day General T. J. Wood's division took a
hill, which the enemy assaulted three times at night without
success, leaving more than a hundred dead on the ground. Yesterday
the extreme right (Hooker and Schofield) advanced on the Powder
Springs road to within three miles of Marietta. The enemy made a
strong effort to drive them away, but failed signally, leaving more
than two hundred dead on the field. Our lines are now in close
contact, and the fighting is incessant, with a good deal of
artillery-fire. As fast as we gain one position the enemy has
another all ready, but I think he will soon have to let go Kenesaw,
which is the key to the whole country. The weather is now better,
and the roads are drying up fast. Our losses are light, and,
not-withstanding the repeated breaks of the road to our rear,
supplies are ample.
During the 24th and 25th of June General Schofield extended his
right as far as prudent, so as to compel the enemy to thin out his
lines correspondingly, with the intention to make two strong
assaults at points where success would give us the greatest
advantage. I had consulted Generals Thomas, McPherson, and
Schofield, and we all agreed that we could not with prudence
stretch out any more, and therefore there was no alternative but to
attack "fortified lines," a thing carefully avoided up to that
time. I reasoned, if we could make a breach anywhere near the
rebel centre, and thrust in a strong head of column, that with the
one moiety of our army we could hold in check the corresponding
wing of the enemy, and with the other sweep in flank and overwhelm
the other half. The 27th of June was fixed as the day for the
attempt, and in order to oversee the whole, and to be in close
communication with all parts of the army, I had a place cleared on
the top of a hill to the rear of Thomas's centre, and had the
telegraph-wires laid to it. The points of attack were chosen, and
the troops were all prepared with as little demonstration as
possible. About 9 A.M. Of the day appointed, the troops moved to
the assault, and all along our lines for ten miles a furious fire
of artillery and musketry was kept up. At all points the enemy met
us with determined courage and in great force. McPherson's
attacking column fought up the face of the lesser Kenesaw, but
could not reach the summit. About a mile to the right (just below
the Dallas road) Thomas's assaulting column reached the parapet,
where Brigadier-General Barker was shot down mortally wounded, and
Brigadier-General Daniel McCook (my old law-partner) was
desperately wounded, from the effects of which he afterward died.
By 11.30 the assault was in fact over, and had failed. We had not
broken the rebel line at either point, but our assaulting columns
held their ground within a few yards of the rebel trenches, and
there covered themselves with parapet. McPherson lost about five
hundred men and several valuable officers, and Thomas lost nearly
two thousand men. This was the hardest fight of the campaign up to
that date, and it is well described by Johnston in his "Narrative"
(pages 342, 343), where he admits his loss in killed and wounded
as
Total ............. 808
This, no doubt, is a true and fair statement; but, as usual,
Johnston overestimates our loss, putting it at six thousand,
whereas our entire loss was about twenty-five hundred, killed and
wounded.
While the battle was in progress at the centre, Schofield crossed
Olley's Creek on the right, and gained a position threatening
Johnston's line of retreat; and, to increase the effect, I ordered
Stoneman's cavalry to proceed rapidly still farther to the right,
to Sweetwater. Satisfied of the bloody cost of attacking
intrenched lines, I at once thought of moving the whole army to the
railroad at a point (Fulton) about ten miles below Marietta, or to
the Chattahoochee River itself, a movement similar to the one
afterward so successfully practised at Atlanta. All the orders
were issued to bring forward supplies enough to fill our wagons,
intending to strip the railroad back to Allatoona, and leave that
place as our depot, to be covered as well as possible by Garrard's
cavalry. General Thomas, as usual, shook his head, deeming it
risky to leave the railroad; but something had to be done, and I
had resolved on this move, as reported in my dispatch to General
Halleck on July 1st:
General Schofield is now south of Olley's Creek, and on the head of
Nickajack. I have been hurrying down provisions and forage, and
tomorrow night propose to move McPherson from the left to the
extreme right, back of General Thomas. This will bring my right
within three miles of the Chattahoochee River, and about five miles
from the railroad. By this movement I think I can force Johnston
to move his whole army down from Kenesaw to defend his railroad and
the Chattahoochee, when I will (by the left flank) reach the
railroad below Marietta; but in this I must cut loose from the
railroad with ten days' supplies in wagons. Johnston may come out
of his intrenchments to attack Thomas, which is exactly what I
want, for General Thomas is well intrenched on a line parallel with
the enemy south of Kenesaw. I think that Allatoona and the line of
the Etowah are strong enough for me to venture on this move. The
movement is substantially down the Sandtown road straight for
Atlanta.
McPherson drew out of his lines during the night of July 2d,
leaving Garrard's cavalry, dismounted, occupying his trenches, and
moved to the rear of the Army of the Cumberland, stretching down
the Nickajack; but Johnston detected the movement, and promptly
abandoned Marietta and Kenesaw. I expected as much, for, by the
earliest dawn of the 3d of July, I was up at a large spy-glass
mounted on a tripod, which Colonel Poe, United States Engineers,
had at his bivouac close by our camp. I directed the glass on
Kenesaw, and saw some of our pickets crawling up the hill
cautiously; soon they stood upon the very top, and I could plainly
see their movements as they ran along the crest just abandoned by
the enemy. In a minute I roused my staff, and started them off
with orders in every direction for a pursuit by every possible
road, hoping to catch Johnston in the confusion of retreat,
especially at the crossing of the Chattahoochee River.
I must close this chapter here, so as to give the actual losses
during June, which are compiled from the official returns by
months. These losses, from June 1st to July 3d, were all
substantially sustained about Kenesaw and Marietta, and it was
really a continuous battle, lasting from the 10th day of June till
the 3d of July, when the rebel army fell back from Marietta toward
the Chattahoochee River. Our losses were:
Killed and Missing Wounded Total
Loss in June Aggregate 1,790 5,740 7,530
Johnston makes his statement of losses from the report of his
surgeon Foard, for pretty much the same period, viz., from June 4th
to July 4th (page 576):
Killed Wounded Total
Total............ 468 3,480 3,948
In the tabular statement the "missing" embraces the prisoners; and,
giving two thousand as a fair proportion of prisoners captured by
us for the month of June (twelve thousand nine hundred and
eighty-three in all the campaign), makes an aggregate loss in the
rebel army of fifty-nine hundred and forty-eight, to ours of
seventy-five hundred and thirty--a less proportion than in the
relative strength of our two armies, viz., as six to ten, thus
maintaining our relative superiority, which the desperate game
of war justified.