- 01 Sep 2022 13:35
#15245065
September 1864
It is increasingly apparent that Atlanta, second in importance only to Richmond, will soon have to yield to Sherman and his huge army. The siege at Petersburg, near the Confederate capital, is tightening but not yet critical. To the north Sheridan and Early spar back and forth. To the west the war consists mostly of raids and sporadic operations, although Forrest remains active and Price is on his way back to Missouri. Nevertheless, both nations now look mainly to the southeast.
On the homefronts, the fall harvests continue. So does political talk in the North. Three candidates for President are in the field: incumbent President Abraham Lincoln, aspiring General George B. McClellan, and Radical dissident General John Charles Fremont. The President and his followers show signs of nervous jitters. Voices of opposition from War Democrats, Peace Democrats, Copperheads, and others are coupled with loud, though perhaps not numerous, Radicals and ultra-Radicals, some of whom dream of dictating to every Southerner his future way of life. Election day is only two months away.
September 1, Thursday
Stephen Lee’s corps marches off toward Atlanta early this morning, taking a detour east of the Federal-held railroad and leaving Hardee holding the army’s supply trains—and in deep trouble. Contrary to Hood’s notions, not a single Federal column is poised to attack Atlanta. Instead, Sherman’s six-corps phalanx is concentrating for a final showdown with Hardee’s lone corps at Jonesboro. Hardee prepares for the worst. Now stripped of nearly half of his command, he stretches his own corps and some cavalry—no more than 13,000 men—in a single line to cover the ground occupied by Lee yesterday and to protect against Howard to the west. Just north of Jonesboro, he angles his right eastward to cross the railroad and guard against the onslaught that he expects from the northwest.
Hardee’s men have some time to dig in and build breastworks, thanks to Sherman’s leisurely pace today. Thinking that the Confederates still have two corps at Jonesboro, Sherman has kept Howard stationary there and insisted that Thomas and Schofield take the time to thoroughly destroy the railroad as they bear down from the north. It is nearly 3 pm before Sherman learns that Lee’s corps has departed Jonesboro—and thus Hardee stands alone. Hurriedly trying to make up for the hours wasted in twisting track, Sherman brings up XIV Corps—now commanded by the aggressive Jefferson C. Davis—to connect with Howard’s left north of town near the railroad. And in hopes of striking the Confederate rear, he sends orders to David Stanley’s IV Corps—two miles to the north—to stop bending iron and make haste to Jonesboro on the east side of the tracks. Sherman remarks to Thomas that if Stanley comes up in time, the Federals will have Hardee “just like this”: In demonstration he envelops the watch in his hand with fingers and thumb. But Stanley doesn’t appear; Sherman sends off two staff officers, and then Thomas himself, to hurry him forward. “That is the only time,” Sherman will write, “that I can recall seeing General Thomas urge his horse into a gallop.”
Unable to wait for Stanley, Sherman orders Davis’ corps to attack the northern part of the Confederate line. About 4 pm Davis launches two brigades in a preliminary action, which is quickly repulsed. He then brings up the bulk of his three divisions and, before 5 pm, orders a full assault across a cotton field. The attack centers on the angle where the Confederate line turns back to the railroad. As the Federals move forward on either side of this salient, they come under intense shelling and then blasts of double canister from two Confederate batteries posted near the angle. Davis’ men fall by the score. On the Federal right, a volley of canister fired from a range of only twenty yards blows a hole in the ranks of an Illinois regiment. In the center, in front of the angle, one of Major General Absalom Baird’s brigades lose one third of its men in just a few minutes. Baird himself has two horses shot from under him as he rides at the head of his division. Braving canister and bullets, Union soldiers rush into the Confederate defenses with bayonets at the ready. On both sides of the angle, men in blue and gray come face-to-face in mortal combat. Two color-bearers from a New York regiment storm into the rifle pits near the salient and begin beating the defenders over the head with their flagstaffs. A pair of Arkansans from Daniel Govan’s brigade rise up and run them through with bayonets. Farther to the Confederate right, Lewis’ Orphan Brigade of Kentuckians hold their ground with the same ferocity.
But at the angle and farther left, Govan’s brigade begins to give way. And the two Confederate batteries—already so riddled by enemy artillery fire that several of the gun carriages lie on the ground in splinters—are overwhelmed by the onrushing Federals, who capture all eight pieces. Govan’s infantry fight on with clubbed guns and bayonets. In a short time, however, these Arkansans succumb to the mass of attackers. About 600 members of the brigade are forced to surrender, including Govan himself. Govan’s capitulation opens a wide gap to the left of the angle. Federals swarm through to threaten the rear of Lewis’ Kentuckians on their left and Granbury’s Texas Brigade on their right. But both Confederate brigades manage to fall back in good order, and with the help of reinforcements and massed artillery, they create a new defensive line. The new line holds until darkness stops the fighting around Jonesboro.
Sherman’s assault with a single corps costs him nearly 1,300 casualties and the opportunity to trap Hardee. The Federal IV Corps, getting tangled up in the woods after a slow start, deploy east of the railroad too late to join the fray. Though Sherman privately faults David Stanley’s tardiness, his own obsession with tearing up the railroad contributed to the delay. And Sherman has only himself to blame for failing to seal off the area south of Jonesboro. Too late in the day, he sent Blair’s XVII Corps marching there from Howard’s army, and Blair is able to move only a couple of miles before night ends his advance.
Given this welcome reprieve, Hardee begins withdrawing his battered units from the Jonesboro line shortly before midnight. Among the troops are the remnants of three of the best and proudest brigades in the Confederate Army: Lewis’s, Govan’s, and Granbury’s. Lewis’ Orphans, who started the campaign with 1,500 men, can now count scarcely one third that number, and the great majority of these survivors have been wounded, some twice. As for Govan’s brigade, the day’s surrender has so mortified the handful of survivors that, in the morning, a delegation of Arkansans will go to Granbury’s men seeking reassurance that the Texans haven’t lost confidence in them. Hardee forms his columns to face south, away from Atlanta. Then, slipping out of Sherman’s noose, they start the retreat to Lovejoy’s Station, six miles farther down the Macon & Western Railroad.
Hardee’s aren’t the only Confederate soldiers marching south this night. Earlier today, Hood finally realized the extent of the Federal threat and ordered the evacuation of Atlanta. At 5 pm—just as Hardee braced for the Federal assault at Jonesboro—Stewart’s corps began the withdrawal. Sad-faced and weary, the men marched south toward McDonough, singing the mournful ballad “Lorena,” whose lyrics speak of happier days: “’Twas flow’ry May, / When up the hilly slope we climbed ...” Lee’s corps, which had been heading toward Atlanta, was stopped short and diverted east to McDonough. From there, all will reunite with Hardee at Lovejoy’s Station, ten miles to the west.
The only Confederates still in Atlanta are rearguard cavalry. Just after midnight, these troopers set fire to the army’s reserve ordnance train and other valuable matériel that the chief quartermaster—rumored to be “too much addicted to drink of late to attend to his duties,” according to Hood—neglected to send to safety while the railroad was still operating. 5 locomotives, 81 rail cars, 13 siege guns, countless shells—all go up in an inferno that continues to blaze for more then five hours and shakes the earth for miles around. To Wallace Reed, one of the few thousand civilians remaining in Atlanta this night, it is “more terrible than the greatest battle ever fought.” Sherman, at Jonesboro, hears the explosions; he suspects the truth but cannot be certain. Earlier, he sent orders for Major General Henry Slocum, new commander of XX Corps, guarding the railroad bridge at the Chattahoochee, to probe toward Atlanta. It is possible, Sherman realizes, that Slocum has provoked Hood into a mighty battle.
John Hunt Morgan is informed that a blue column has set out from Knoxville, Tennessee, for a strike at Saltville and the lead mines in southwest Virginia. He leaves Abingdon, Virginia to intercept them. Sheridan’s Union army regroups and begins to threaten Winchester, Virginia, once more. One of many skirmishes flare along Opequon Creek north of Winchester. Another Northern powder raft explodes without effect at Fort Sumter. Skirmishes break out at Tipton, Missouri, and Fort Smith and Beatty’s Mill, Arkansas. Scouts and cavalry operate in Johnson County, Missouri. During most of the month Federals scout from Camp Grant to the North Fork of the Eel River, California. Federal operations against Amerinds in the Trinity River Valley, California, continue through the fall.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke
- By skinster