It is a pleasure to be here this evening. We are going to
talk tonight in a relative brief period of time. Excuse me if we
don't get into as much detail on this as I would like to. But what
we are going to talk about, in my opinion is, arguably the single
most important campaign of the American Civil War and that is
Sherman's campaign to take Atlanta.
It is important for a variety reasons. One it is important
obviously because its strategic significance of Atlanta to the
Confederacy. It is also important because it is the start of what
many consider the first campaign of total
war.
Prior to the Atlanta Campaign, war from Napoleonic time
through the Civil War was fought as a series of set peak battles,
now the term Napoleonic fighting is used to describe many of the
early battles of the American Civil War. Sherman and Grant
understood that in order to bring the Civil War to a conclusion
that it was not going to be done in Napoleonic fighting; that
something more needed to be done to discourage the South from
wanting to continue the fight.
Even as late as 1864 when the Atlanta Campaign begins, the
fight and the hardships that the home front suffered it was clear
that there was still a great willingness to fight and there
appeared to be no abatement of that.
So Grant and Sherman needed to execute a campaign that would
destroy the home front's ability and will to fight so that the war
could be concluded. What I always try and do when I discuss any
particular battle of the American Civil War is not to look at it in
a vacuum, and it is very easy to fall into the trap of looking at
each battle occurring in a vacuum and looking at decisions that
were made by the generals associated with that battle in a vacuum.
I think that one of the things that we need to look at is the
situation of the South in 1864 at the start of this campaign. As
you can see at this point Chattanooga had fallen, the Mississippi
River or at least the mass majority of it was now in Union hands
and the issue was simply how do we draw this war to a close.
It was clear in 1864 that the South could not win the American
Civil War. It was probably clear in 1863. The real question is
how can we draw this war to a close. So Grant and Sherman knew
essentially what needed to be done. They needed to launch
simultaneous campaigns in the west and east that would prevent the
shipping of reinforcements between the theaters. Grant knew that
his campaign would essentially be one of attrition. Sherman, on
the hand, was looking at his campaign from a strategic point of
view. Not only the taking of Atlanta but the destruction of a
major warehouse, major industrial site and major rail depot for the
South but how he was going to get into the interior of the South
and dissuade southerners from continuing
the fight.
Before I go on any further to give credit where credit is due,
the art work that you see is primarily done by Mort Canwork. The
maps I've drawn from two sources, one is the Atlas of the American
Civil War from the West Point Military Press and also from Shelby
Foote's Involved Beyond the Civil War.
Sherman is, in my opinion, the single finest Union commander
of the American Civil War. You can get a lot of debate about who
thinks who was the best. I think that Sherman is arguably the best
single commander on the Union side of the American Civil War. I
think arguably he is the best commander of the American Civil War.
Obviously, Robert E. Lee was a fine commander but Robert E. Lee was
a commander in Napoleonic style. He understood Napoleonic
fighting, his approach to fighting was
Napoleonic.
Sherman on the other hand understood war in a different way
and understood what was necessary to successfully prosecute a war
in the middle of the nineteenth century. So, I think if you were
to look at Sherman's record throughout the war, interesting
anecdote in the beginning of the war, he was actually sent home for
being insane, because he was one of the very few generals who stood
up and said what the cost of the American Civil War was likely to
be. They literally thought he was insane and sent him home. As
the first battle proved, he was more than correct and he was
quickly recalled.
Obviously, in many ways he's looked at as a protege of Grant
and while I think that is true on the surface, I think there is
clearly a great amount of influence of both men on each other.
There's an enormous amount respect between both men. So, while
obviously Sherman served under Grant during most of his later
career, I think it's fair to say that both men equally influenced
one another.
On the southern side, Joe Johnston was not widely respected by
many authorities as a southern general. I think quite unfairly.
His initial campaign in 1862, the Peninsula Campaign, was very well
executed. His plan for the Battle of Seven Pines were very
thoughtfully laid out unfortunately very poorly executed but
thoughtfully planned out. He was an excellent commander in the
defense in particular. Most of his career he fought in the defense
simply because of the strategic position that he was placed.
Again, that is clearly true in the Atlanta
Campaign.
He is placed in a situation where he is clearly on the
defensive and has designed a campaign to fight in that way. If you
were to look at the odds that he faced, Johnston was essentially
outnumbered two to one by Sherman's forces. A daunting enough task
in any circumstance somewhat mitigated by the defensive terrain
that he had to defend. The problem for Johnston is that most of
the defensive terrain that he would like to have held was terrain
that could be bypassed and so if the Union commander chose to
bypass that terrain, there was not much that he could do. But he
made very skillful use of the terrain, of the rail systems that
were available to him and of the men who were available to him.
So, as you can see he had an uphill task right from the start.
Also, in addition he was not in a position to replace casualties in
the same way that the Union was and so the disparity in numbers
would continue to grow as the action continued throughout the
campaign.
The Campaign kicked off in the beginning of May up here by
Rocky Face Ridge and obviously completed with the taking of Atlanta
in the beginning of September. So, as you can see from some of the
depology on this map, not necessarily great terrain for an
offensive. Lots of mountains and anybody who has been in this area
you know what it looks like; it's not a place that any commander of
the offensive would choose as ground of which he would like to
execute an offensive. Certainly a commander who was defending
ground, would like to defend in this area and so Sherman's task
really begins with how to deal with the Confederate position
defending Rocky Face Ridge. For those of you who may have seen
this, it is an ideal position for defense. Clearly something that
a commander with a defensive line particular Johnston would choose
as a place to initiate his defensive position.
Sherman on the other hand unlike a great many Civil War
generals was careful of the lives of his men. While he was
certainly willing to order frontal assaults and did during his
career and did during the Atlanta campaign that was not his
preference. His preference was through maneuver to force Johnston
to withdraw from excellent position.
Johnston on the other hand, his strategy was somewhat dictated
by forces involved and the terrain involved. His strategy was one
of hope that Sherman would frontally assault these wonderfully
prepared positions that he had and essentially smash his army to
bits and happen to take them. If that was not going to occur, to
continue to fall back the strongly defended positions that could be
held with a relatively small number of men and give him an
opportunity to concentrate on some larger portion of his army
against a small portion of Sherman's. So, one he hoped that
Sherman would just break himself to bits attacking these positions,
and two, if that didn't happen that Sherman would make some mistake
in handling his forces so that he could fall on a small portion of
those forces.
The strategy is virtually identical to the strategy used in
the Peninsula Campaign against McLaws. Again, I don't think it's
so much that Johnston lacked imagination as I think that if you
look at the circumstances of both campaigns they were very similar
and so the conclusions are fairly similar. If you have a much
smaller number of men, you either have to get your enemy to attack
you in positions you would like to be attacked in or find some way
to fall on a small portion of his army and try to defeat in detail.
The opening engagement was almost typical of a lot of the
engagements that would occur during the campaign. Sherman would
use Thomas who he had a great deal of respect for in terms of his
ability to be staunch. He was not the type to be panicked by
events but also knew that he was not a commander who was going to
move with a great deal of celerity. So, he typically would use
Thomas in holding actions, where Thomas would launch significant
assaults against the Confederate divisions but really with the
intent of a large scale demonstration as opposed to Sherman
believing that Thomas could take these positions by force.
So, the initial engagement on Rocky Face really set the stage
of what we are going to see over and over again throughout this
campaign. He would use McPherson and Scofield in striking
activities in an attempt to get around particularly to the right.
Sherman was very careful and he was very dependent of his rail
lines. All of his supplies and logistics came on that and so his
strategic mobility was restricted by the fact that he couldn't
uncover his supply line and so his approach was to frontally attack
these positions in large scale demonstrations and citadel to the
right to attempt to cut Johnston's access from his supply line.
What he hoped was that either he would literally ensnare Johnston's
army and trap him by cutting off his communication and then be able
to crush him by envelopment or simply force
his surrender.
The initial engagement was exactly that and would have been an
overwhelming success. As a matter of fact, when McPherson had gone
through Peach Tree Gap he sent a message to Sherman that that
occurred and Sherman replied "I got Joe Johnston". Well,
unfortunately it didn't quite work out the way it was planned.
McPherson's first target was to get to Rasacka and break this rail
link, by trapping Johnston's army at this position. From the time
that Sherman began to move in the beginning of May, it was clear to
Johnston what was going on. He was a very thorough planner and so
he petitions Jefferson Davis to have Lyle Pope and his army which
was essentially a corps of 19,000 men to join him and join the Army
of Tennessee.
Davis had indeed done so, and as a matter of fact he ordered
a division of Pope's army to join Johnston. He also gave Pope the
latitude to bring his whole army, all 19,000 and that was latitude
that Pope exercised.
So, as McPherson approached Resaca, an area where he did not
expect to find any significant Confederate replacements, he ran
smack into the first elements of Pope's army as they were coming
up. He actually ran into a fairly well entrenchment of about 4,000
men. McPherson had roughly 20,000 men with him. Certainly enough
to overwhelm that position but he hesitated. He hesitated simply
because he found significant numbers of Confederate forces where he
didn't expect any. McPherson has been criticized
for this.
Sherman despite the fact that McPherson was a close friend and
really was considered the heir apparent to the command of the west
really gave him a tongue lashing for not taking this position. My
opinion, however, is that it is very easy when you sit here in the
comfort of your library to say "boy, he should have taken this
position." Here's a man with very little intelligence about what's
going on around you, he has this force which is less than half its
total size of Johnston's army, in the rear of Johnston's army not
knowing what's going on. So, McPherson decided to err on the side
of caution and so he retreated to Snake's Creeks Gap and prepared
for his defense.
Obviously, this was reported to Johnston. He immediately
decided to give up his Rocky Face Hill position. He could see the
threat that was going to occur here. So, he began to pull those
troops away from there very rapidly that evening. One of the
things that you will again see throughout this was that Johnston
was very ready to give up an excellent defensive position. He
scouted very thoroughly all of the terrain between Rocky Face Ridge
and Atlanta and knew where the defensivable terrain was and in many
cases had pre-developed entrenchments so that his forces could fall
back into these positions. An excellent job in terms of executing
a defensive campaign.
At the conclusion of this, what ended to be a relatively large
scale battle occurred around Rasacka as Johnston deploys his forces
here, the rest of Sherman's forces made a series of assaults
against this position unsuccessfully.
Again, ultimately as Sherman has tested that position he
decided that again he was going to outflank that position and he
did that rather quickly and forced the withdrawal of Johnston from
the Rasacka position. Again, you will see this three column
approach that he had for the forces. Again, McPherson on the
right, Thomas in the middle and Scofield on the left. This,
however, gave Johnston the opportunity that he was looking for.
I mentioned earlier one of the things that Johnston wanted to
do was to have an opportunity to throw the majority of his army
against the smaller portion of Sherman's. The obvious place for
retreat for Johnston was Kingston. He did everything he possibly
could to make Sherman think that's exactly where he was going. In
reality he sent a relatively small number forces there about 1/3
and the other 2/3's essentially were laying in ambush in the
capitol area for Scofield if he came to
town.
Now, the attack was planned where Hood and Pope, but
particularly Hood, would catch Scofield coming up unprepared and
ambush him and hopefully destroy Scofield in the protest. It is
almost proto-typical of Civil War campaigns. An incident occurred
for no particular reason that ended up canceling the entire attack.
A Brigade of Hooker's near McCooks got lost, literally. They had
taken a wrong turn, ended up coming down almost behind Hood's
division. So, literally as Hood was getting ready to attack
Hooker, who did not know he was there, on his right actually
slightly behind his right flank, a relatively large number brigade
of Union soldiers ended up being there. Again, Hood had absolutely
no way of knowing what the size of that force was. He made the
assumption that he was being outflanked. He reported back to
Johnston. Johnston said "impossible, it can't be". However,
despite the fact that he didn't believe it, Johnston not thinking,
a cautious general, acted on it, called off the attack and decided
to withdraw again from this area.
And so, an attack that had probably the single best chance of
being successful in damaging a significant portion of Sherman's
army went out the window simply because a brigade took a wrong turn
and got lost. I find that to be not only ironic but almost proto-
typical of so many of the problems that occurred in commanding and
controlling in the American Civil War.
The next position that Johnston had in mind was an extremely
strong position up here near Altoona. This was, probably from a
geographical point of view, the most significant defensive position
that he had. It was so good that Johnston was very concerned that
Sherman would not even attempt to attack it, that it was so
daunting. Sherman actually spent a fair amount of his younger life
as a Army Engineer in these mountains and so, he had a good
understanding of what the terrain was like. Well, that turned out
to be exactly the case that Sherman never considered attacking the
Altoona position and moved his entire army to the right. Again, in
attempt to cut off his retreat.
What occurred is that in the New Hope Church area, Thomas who
was moving in this direction, ran smack into Hood who had been
withdrawing. Hood and Thomas ran into each other in this area.
Again, after a series of assaults, not
terribly high casualties.
In the entire month of May, there were only about 20,000 casualties
on both sides not high by Civil War standards. Sherman decides to
call off the direct attack and again attempts to flank the right
position. Johnston was forced to withdraw from his position, an
actual line that roughly went in front of Pine Mountain in this
area. Over that period of time a couple of interesting anecdotal
things happened.
Pope and Johnston were actually reconnoitering position here
on Pine Mountain under the guns of the Union they were concerned
that this position was too exposed. It was too far in front of
their established line. A great position had commanded the
surrounding area but was exposed and so Pope and Hardee and
Johnston went there for themselves. Whether this is true or not
but that Sherman saw Confederate officers on that hill where there
batteries in place and was annoyed that they were on that mountain,
that he ordered a battery to open fire on the position. Well, one
of those shells that killed Bishop Pope, along with being a general
and a West Point graduate, Pope was also a bishop in the Episcopal
church and so he was killed on that spot by a single shell which
hit him. The odds of that are pretty slim and he obviously had a
little bad luck on Pine Mountain.
It clearly convinced Johnston that he needed to withdraw to
the Kenesaw Mountains which he felt was his best defensive position
in this area.
On June 27th, both armies were in position in and around
Kenesaw Mountains. After this point in time, most of the frontal
attacks that Sherman had launched had either been holding actions,
deprobing actions or attacks not executed with a lot of vigor
simply because his intention was to flank the position. Sherman in
this case decided to change that tactic. He decided that he was
going to launch a full bloodied assault against this prepared
position. This is a significantly prepared position and he started
that by probing on both flanks hoping to again convince Johnston to
withdraw from the area, however, Johnston did not. There was
nothing on either one of the flank probes that convinced him that
he needed to move. And so Sherman launched an all out assault by
all three armies against his position.
The assault was a disaster not in a cold hearted sense but
certainly a disaster. Sherman's army took over 3,000 casualties
while inflicting less than 500 on the Confederate
division.
Sherman always said that he did that for two reasons: that
there was always the opportunity to break into the enemy position
and clearly in terms of the tactics and the mobility available to
American Civil War generals the best way, probably the only way, to
destroy an enemy army was to break into the middle of the division.
Lee attempted to do that the third day of Gettysburg. Fortunately,
Sherman did not have as much to gamble or as much to lose as Lee
did and so he called the attack off relatively early. He took
3,000 casualties, certainly not a large number of casualties again
by Civil War standards, particularly this
time in the war.
With that Sherman said, "that if I broke into the position,
great, if I did not I've accomplished two things: I've convinced
Johnston that I will attack a fortified position so that he must
defend them properly and he cannot assume that I'm always going to
move around. Two, my troops need to also know that I will on
occasion attack this type of position so they are ready for that."
Some people say that's simply justification for the failure of the
attack but again if you look at the way the attack was executed and
how quickly Sherman called the attack off, I think that it made
sense in terms of what he was trying to
accomplish.
I think that he hoped to get lucky at Kenesaw Mountains and
break into position. He had hoped that because it was such an
obviously defendable position that it wouldn't be properly
defended. Again, very similar reasoning that Robert E. Lee used in
the third day at Gettysburg. However, the attack was a failure and
he called it off and quickly began again to move by the right to
outflank these positions.
This point on July 8th, this was a point in time where
Johnston was starting to get a lot of pressure from Richmond, the
Georgia government about his continuing to give up ground. A
commission was sent to Johnston to say, "when are you are going to
fight, when are you going to attempt to attack the invader and
drive him from Georgia". His response was about what you would
expect. "I will attack when I have an opportunity or some
reasonable chance for success." He had not found that, he almost
found it in Gapville but because of the phantom brigade he didn't
get a chance to launch that. But he was determined to maintain
exactly the same strategy that he had all along - that he was
heavily outnumbered and I will fight from a defensive position and
I will only attack when I can throw my whole army on a small
portion.
Sherman, however, was unfortunately at least from Johnston's
point of view, not the type of general to make those mistakes.
This point in time the pressure began to build up. The armies face
each other on the other side of the Chattahoochie River here which is
the last real natural barrier to breaking into Atlanta. Johnston
had decided to withdraw across the Chattahooci, not to defend on
that side of the Chattahooci and that was in the end enough for
Jefferson Davis. He had decided that he was going to relieve
Johnston from command.
Johnston was relieved from command on the 18th of July and
there are a series of interesting anecdotes associated with that.
No one including Robert E. Lee whose advice they would ask thought
it was a good idea to relieve a general on the eve of his battle.
He was a general who was very well respected and loved by his
troops. He was associated with the Army of Tennessee. So, Lee had
recommended against it because Davis had asked him his opinion of
Hood as a commander for this army. Lee responded that he didn't
think it was a good idea to relieve Johnston particularly at this
juncture. Also, Hood while he was an excellent fighter whose
bravery was unquestioned, an excellent divisional commander was
lacking in what was necessary to be an army commander. Lee was
fairly blunt particularly for Robert E. Lee because he knew Hood,
he knew what his strengths were and he knew what his weaknesses
were.
Essentially, the Confederates were looking for a general who
would go over to the offensive against Sherman. Hood was certainly
that general. He certainly picked the right man based on what they
wanted to do. Whether he was the right man in this situation we
could debate.
One of the interesting anecdotes was when Johnston was
relieved, Hood was beside himself. Hood did not really want this
command. He begged Johnston to pocket the order and ignore it.
Johnston said, "no, I am a professional soldier, I have my orders,
I am relieved and I will be relieved." In the end he did and also
did something that was out of character for Johnston. Hood when he
clearly could not convince Johnston to stay in command asked
Johnston to stay on in a staff position because Hood didn't even
know the deployment of the corps. He did not know what plans had
been made and so asked Johnston to stay on in an advisory capacity
which Johnston agreed to. He said, "he simply had to make a trip
to Atlanta to take care of some details and would return." For
reasons that have never really been discovered, he did not return.
He simply kept right on going. I certainly don't think it was
cowardice on Johnston's part, he repeatedly demonstrated his
bravery under fire but for whatever reason changed his mind about
accepting that staff position and left
without advising anyone.
My guess is he was distraught from being relieved, maybe felt that
the weight of this was removed from shoulder and he could exit
gracefully. But he did break his promise
to Hood.
So, Hood being Hood was determined to go directly onto the
offensive. On the 20th of July the Battle of Peach Tree Creek
occurred. His plan again - pretty reasonable plan, he knew Thomas
was in the process of a river crossing over the Chattahooci. He
knew that the best time to hit a enemy particularly in the American
Civil War is when he is halfway astride a river crossing, so he can
attack essentially half of the army or a smaller portion of the
army. The only problem with that as a strategy is that it requires
pretty reasonable timing for the attack.
The attack was scheduled primarily to be carried by Stuart and
Hardee in the morning of the 27th. Unfortunately because of a
series of delays primarily by Hardee, the attack did not go in
until late in the afternoon. Unfortunately at that point, most of
Thomas' army was across the river and all they really got for their
trouble was a real bloody nose as they attacked this position.
Hood's first sortie cost him almost 9,000 casualties attempting to
drive them back. Would it have been more successful if it had gone
in on time. Possibly, but there's no way of knowing that.
Clearly, even at the time the attack was originally scheduled
Thomas had significant resources across the river and certainly it
would have been more successful but whether it would have
accomplished the goal of destroying the front part of Thomas' army
as he came across the river is unlikely.
And so Hood's first sortie ended in disaster. He lost as many
men in that attack as Johnston had lost in the entire previous
month. To make matters even worse, the casualty ratio was roughly
3 to 1 and so they lost three times in casualties what the Union
did and they were in a position where the Union had already
overwhelmingly superior numbers. They could not afford to exchange
casualties on a one to one basis never mind three to one basis.
Hood's first action was a decided defeated which he blamed on the
lateness of Hardee and they went on from
there.
Hood's second sortie had more promise from a strategic point
of view. Hood had always regretted that he was not with the Army
of Northern Virginia in Chancellorsville. He admired the success
that Lee and Jackson had against Hooker in the flanking movement
that Jackson used to defeat Hooker at Chancellorsville. So, his
intention was to duplicate that. Again, to withdraw out
significant portions of his forces into the fortifications around
Atlanta where they could be held with a relatively small number of
men, particularly with the help from about 5,000 Georgia militia
men that Governor Brown provided.
His intention was to send Hardee on a very wide flanking
movement to smash into the flank of McPherson. It was scheduled to
be a night movement. The attack was scheduled to go in at dawn.
Those were also Stonewall Jackson's plans. Again, in the American
Civil War, timing was never anything that was typically executed
the way anybody thought it would be. So, by the time Hardee was
actually in position to attack, McPherson had gotten enough
information that there was something put on his right and had
actually prepared a defensive across that access of attack. So,
when Hardee finally arrived to put in the assault, the division
that was put in defense had been there for approximately two hours.
They had a chance to prepare their positions.
The real tragedy in this for Hood, is if the attack had gone
in anywhere near the time planned it would have fallen directly on
McPherson's flank. There was every opportunity to roll McPherson's
flank up in the same way that Howard was rolled up at
Chancellorsville. However, again attacks that depend on time very
rarely went in on time and this did not. This ended up to be
another very bloody nose. There were in excess of 8,000
Confederate casualties attempting to storm
this position.
Again, a much small number of Union casualties and the second
sortie also ended up to be a complete failure. The only thing that
occurred here that could be considered a success is McPherson was
killed in Hood's sortie. He was reconnoitring this position and
had gotten further out in front than he had realized and ran into
a Confederate patrol and was shot off his horse. McPherson's army
retook the position, recovered his body but his was a loss that
Sherman and Grant and most of the North really regretted because he
was clearly a rising star - a man of great talent and great ability
to lead. He was a clear loss to the Union Army. That was the only
positive spin on Hood's sortie. Again, he expended a significant
number of men that he could not afford to lose. Was this an
improper attack. This was an opportunity for him to be successful.
The first sortie was a mistake. There were probably no real
chances of him being successful in the first one. Clearly in the
second sortie he had an opportunity to
win.
Hood's third sortie was similar in many regards. His
intention was again to attack on the flank. However, Sherman had
decided at this point that he wanted to begin a movement to
outflank Atlanta and he has detached Howard who had taken over for
McPherson in a round about around position that was going to come
in here. Unfortunately, S.D. Lee went head on into Howard. Again,
a very bloody affair but not as bad as the previous two. Again,
ended in a significant Confederate defeat. All the time using men
they simply could not afford to lose.
The final phase of the campaign really is the end game. This
looks very familiar to what you have seen of all the other phases
of this campaign. Sherman left a single corps under Slocum to
protect his supply line, sent the rest of the army in a wide
sweeping movement to break in behind Atlanta - cuts it off from his
rail supply. This rail line that you see here, the Northwestern
Rail line, was his last major supply link into Atlanta. Once that
fell, simply nothing was going to save Atlanta. In the midst of
that, Hardee again became involved in what's known as the fourth
sortie.
There had been reports that there were Union forces moving in
this direction. Hood had no idea that there was essentially the
entire Union army and so he had detached Hardee to stop those
forces but withdraw him very quickly when it was pretty clear that
it was the entire Union army who was around
his flank.
On the evening of September 2nd, Hood makes the decision to
withdraw from Atlanta. It was either that or to lose his army.
So, at the end he probably ended up making the exactly the same
decision that Johnston would have made, could Johnston have done
any better in terms of trying to defend Atlanta. Probably not,
certainly the Battle of Peach Tree Creek wouldn't have been
executed, Hood's second sortie certainly would have been. It's
something that I could picture Johnston doing. Would it have been
anymore successful? No. Once the Chattahooci had been breached,
there was very little in terms of favorable geography that was
going to save Atlanta.
And so in the end Johnston had gambled that Sherman would
blunt himself attacking fortified positions that Sherman was not
about to do or that he would make a mistake that would allow him to
destroy Sherman's army in detail. He did that only once. One of
things that you will find when you look at the plans of various
generals is that they always talk about the destruction of the
man's army. How many armies were destroyed in the American Civil
War? None. It was not going to occur simply because of the lack
of mobility that these forces had. The ability to have good
intelligence about positions. All you could really do is
significantly damage of your opponent. So, at the end of this
Johnston really had no opportunity to defeat Sherman. If he had
faced a lesser general, clearly he would have had an opportunity.
His strategy certainly gave him every opportunity possible to
defeat Sherman.
Sherman did not give him that opportunity. Sherman used his
resources, used his command of the railroads. One of the things
that Sherman did prior to the execution of this campaign is that he
spent as much time training rail gangs as he did his troops because
his intention was to repair that rail line mile by mile right
behind the advance of the troops which
is exactly what they did.
A lot of the troops talked about winning a battle in the morning
and hearing the rail whistle behind them in the evening. And so
Sherman was very prepared from a logistical point of view, very
prepared from a tactical point of view and never gave Johnston an
opportunity to do anything other than what
he did.
Johnston would certainly have withdrawn from Atlanta before
Hood did. The Army of Tennessee would have been in much better
shape to resist what Sherman was intending on doing afterwards and
at the end of the day, maybe that's the most important thing that
Atlanta was lost almost from the beginning and the strategy should
have been how they were going to prevent Sherman from breaking into
the middle of the Confederacy. Based on what Hood did there was no
opportunity to do that. As a matter of fact, he so weaken his army
that the only strategy that was left was essentially to go north
back into Tennessee on the hopes that Sherman
would follow.
Problem was at that point, the Union had such overwhelming numbers
that Sherman simply detached a part more than large enough to deal
with that if that happened and smashed on Franklin and continued
his march to the sea.
So, once Sherman had possession of Atlanta his intention was
to make the town hell. There's was nothing that stood between him
and Savannah except parts of the Confederacy that had never been
exposed to war. He was determined to destroy anything that was
conceivably considered strategic to the South's military efforts in
a march to the sea. In addition, along with the march to the sea,
he marched to Savannah simply because that was the best place to
resupply his army after the march.
He essentially took with him only ammunition and basically his
comment was, "a million people live in Georgia, where a million
people live, my army of 100,000 can survive." His intent was
clearly to live off the land and he went. Also, destroy as much of
the Southern economy as he possibly could
which he did.
There are a lot myths about Sherman's march to the sea. In
general, it was conducted in very good military order. Obviously,
there were individual instances of crimes committed against
civilian population but very small. Sherman had offered very
specific orders for those things not to occur and punished a great
deal men for those things.
He did burn plantations because he considered plantations and
their crops such as cotton to be a strategic resource of the South.
Cotton was essentially gold. Cotton could be traded to Europe for
weapons and so he destroyed every part of the plantation system
that he could lay his hands on. So I think a lot of the resentment
against Sherman in the march to sea and the burning of homes per se
was the burning of the plantation system as he went through. Now,
were any small farmers homes burned, certainly. Was that the
direct order of Sherman, certainly not. And it did not by and
large go on. It certainly occurred on an incidental basis. There
was nothing in the South to stop him from doing this. Hood had
detached and attempted to draw him north simply by invading
Tennessee but Sherman wasn't interested because he simply had the
forces to deal with both.
After taking Savannah, his march took him through the middle
of South Carolina interestingly enough not through Charleston.
There was a great deal of sentiment for Sherman to burn Charleston
to the ground. Charleston was considered to be the hot bed of
secession and where the idea of secession came from. He wasn't
interested because Sherman was interested in the strategic.
Charleston had no military value and while it clearly had some
political value, it had no military value. His intention was to
drive northward as rapidly as he could so that he would fall on the
rear of Robert E. Lee assuming Robert E. Lee still had a hold on
Richmond and Petersburg. In the end he did not need to go that far
obviously but clearly his march through South Carolina into North
Carolina convinced the South, Robert E. Lee and everyone that the
war was over. There was nothing. Even if Robert E. Lee wanted to
withdraw from Richmond, wanted to withdraw from Petersburg and set
up a defensive line south - where? Sherman was coming the other way and
so at the end Robert E. Lee was crushed between the anvil of Grant
and Sherman.
So, I think when you look at the campaign both the Atlanta,
the March to the Sea, and subsequent march north clearly the single
most strategic campaign of the American Civil War. I believe a
campaign that had more to do with ending the war than any other
single campaign.