[Doug64]

July 2, Saturday

Today Sherman judges the roads dry enough to begin the big move around the southern flank of the Kennesaw line. After nightfall he pulls McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee from his left and sends it marching south behind Thomas’ front to reinforce Schofield on the right. Brigadier General Kenner Garrard’s cavalry division takes McPherson’s place in the line.

Up on Kennesaw Mountain, the Confederates are also on the move this night. Once again, the cat-and-mouse game has begun. Anticipating Sherman’s turning maneuver, Johnston evacuates the line he has held so effectively for two weeks and withdraws to previously prepared works on a ridge astride the railroad at Smyrna, four miles southeast of Marietta.


In Virginia, Early’s Confederate column, heading north toward the Potomac, reaches Winchester with little opposition. At Bolivar Heights, West Virginia, Early’s outposts are active in driving in Federals.

The defense of most of the state of Maryland is the responsibility of Major General Lew Wallace, another lawyer who has shown some aptitude for leading men in combat. A lean, sharp-featured man with soulful eyes, Wallace’s most enduring fame will come later as the author of the novel Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ. His military career foundered at the Battle of Shiloh when his division took a wrong road and failed to arrive in time for the first day’s fighting. In the almost two years since, Wallace has received only insignificant assignments. Then last March Presiden Lincoln gave Wallace command of the Middle Department, with headquarters in Baltimore. Wallace gets the first hint of danger from the west from John W. Garrett, president of the B & O Railroad. Garrett calls at Wallace’s headquarters today to express concern about reports from his railroad agents near Harpers Ferry that large numbers of Confederate troops are approaching. Wallace immediately sees the prospect of another Confederate invasion of the North and dispatches Brigadier General Erastus B. Tyler’s brigade of Baltimore militia westward to meet the threat.


At Charleston Harbor Federal troops land on James Island and are checked at first, but the Confederate defenders fall back. Other action occurs near Secessionville, South Carolina.

In Mississippi, skirmishing occurs on the Byhalia Road near the state line south of Collierville, Tennessee. Farther south in Mississippi a Federal expedition moves from Vicksburg to the Pearl River and engages in several skirmishes en route; the affair will end by the 10th.

The Federal Congress grants public land in the Pacific Northwest for railroad and telegraph lines to Puget Sound, and also charters the Northern Pacific Railroad. President Lincoln signs this bill, which also opens land for settlement from Lake Superior to the Pacific. He also discusses the Treasury with Secretary Fessenden and the congressional proposal to confiscate Confederate estates with Representative George W. Julian of Indiana.

[Doug64]

July 3, Sunday

General Early’s Confederates are approaching Martinsburg, where General Sigel with a small force is defending the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley. There is skirmishing at Leetown, Darkesville, Martinsburg, North Mountain, North River Mills, West Virginia; and Buckton, Virginia. At the first whiff of danger, Sigel falls back across the Potomac and entrenches on Maryland Heights, opposite Harpers Ferry. The Federals burn the railroad and pontoon bridges behind them. Citizens north of the Potomac are in an uproar and even Washington is apprehensive. Is it only a raid or a serious invasion?


When Sherman finds the Confederates gone early this morning, he sends Thomas in quick pursuit through Marietta, Georgia. Sherman himself rides into town, pausing there long enough to administer a sharp reproof to General Garrard, who has moved too cautiously to suit him. Unaware of the strength of Johnston’s new line at Smyrna, Sherman is confident that the Confederate commander will keep retreating until he crosses the Chattahoochee, ten miles southeast of Marietta; and Sherman wants to catch him in the confusion of crossing. After all, Sherman tells Thomas this evening in a message revealing his respect for Johnston, “no general, such as he, would invite battle with the Chattahoochee nehind him.” Skirmishes erupt at Kingston, Ruff’s Mills, Big Shanty, and Sweetwater Bridge as cavalry operate in the rear of Federal lines.


In the Charleston Harbor area, Federals renew their efforts against the city and forts. Landing in barges, a Federal assault force fails in a dawn attack on Fort Johnson from Morris Island, and loses 140 as prisoners. James Island is also invaded by a strong column of 5,000.

Other fighting occurs in Platte County, Missouri; and for the rest of the month Federals operate around Baton Rouge and along the Amite River, Louisiana.

Secretary of the Treasury Fessenden tries to decline his new Cabinet post, but President Lincoln refuses.

[Doug64]

July 4, Monday

The first session of the 38th Congress of the United States adjourns amid new tensions over what will be the policy of reconstruction of the seceded states and who will control it—Congress or the President. President Lincoln signs many bills, including one setting up the office of Commissioner of Immigration, and one repealing certain exemption clauses of the Enrollment Act. But he doesn’t sign the controversial Wade-Davis reconstruction bill, to the chagrin of the ultraradical members of Congress. Frantic pressure is applied even at this late hour, but the President pocket-vetoes the bill backed by Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland. The bill calls for reorganization of a seceded state only after a majority of the enrolled white male citizens have taken an oath of allegiance and adopted a constitution acceptable to Congress and the President. No one who has held any Confederate state or national office or who has voluntarily borne arms for the South would be able to vote on or serve as a delegate to the convention whether he took the oath or not. The measure also calls for complete emancipation of slaves through congressional action rather than a constitutional amendment, plus further restrictions on officeholding and voting, as well as repudiation of all Confederate debts. In effect, it calls for Congress rather than the President to control reconstruction. Provisions of the bill as to voting would obviously make it extremely difficult to reconstruct a state and would lead to control by the Radicals of Congress. The President has already instituted much more lenient reconstruction in Louisiana and Arkansas, where ten percent of the previous voters can restore a state, and the oath merely calls for future support of the Union.


Johnston surprises Sherman by standing fast and inviting battle at Smyrna today. Sherman declines the invitation. He uses Thomas’ army to skirmish in front while bringing McPherson and Schofield on the extreme Confederate left. Sherman’s right flank is now closer to Atlanta than Johnston, actually touching the Chattahoochee. This Confederate flank is vulnerable, guarded only by cavalry and a division of 3,000 hastily trained young boys and old men belonging to the Georgia state militia, which has recently been called up by the Governor. Action is at Burnt Hickory, Rottenwood Creek, Campbellton, Ruff’s Mills, Neal Dow Station, and Mitchell’s Crossroads. An especially heavy engagement takes place at Vining’s Station as Federals press ahead.

Johnston responds to the threat and abandons Smyrna this night; but he fools Sherman again by remaining north of the Chattahoochee. His army retreats six miles to the north bank of the Chattachoochee, where for the past two weeks more than 1,000 slaves have been building unusually formidable fortifications. Johnston’s new line is six miles long and a mile deep, permitting all the infantry and artillery to be concentrated. The cavalry is dispatched to the south bank to guard crossings up and down the river. The line itself covers the railroad bridge and three pontoon bridges, which allows for a quick exit over the river. The fortifications have been designed by Johnston’s chief of artillery, Brigadier General Francis A. Shoup. In addition to the usual rifle pits, the works contain a series of redoubts made of logs and packed earth up to twelve feet thick. A stockade of vertical logs link these redoubts, which stand about eighty feet apart. The intervals are studded with artillery batteries and with heavy siege guns brought up from Mobile. Such is Johnston’s confidence in the new line that he feels certain he can hold Sherman north of the Chattahoochee River “a long time.”


General Early’s Confederates operate near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, preparatory to crossing the Potomac, and fighting breaks out at South Branch Bridge, Patterson’s Creek Bridge, and Frankford, West Virginia. Sporadic action continues on James Island in Charleston Harbor. Other action of the day occurs in Clay County, Missouri; Cross Bayou, Louisiana; and in Searcy County, Arkansas. For most of the month a Federal expedition operates from Memphis to Grand Gulf, Mississippi, with several skirmishes.

[Doug64]

July 5, Tuesday

Having drawn supplies from Federal warehouses captured in Martinsburg, Early’s Confederates cross the Potomac at Shepherdstown, and Gordon’s division tries to bluff General Sigel away from Maryland Heights. When the Federals resist, Early decides not to press the issue. His intent is to march on Washington before Grant has time to react, leaving both Sigel and Hunter in his wake. He will worry about extricating himself later. As a result, Confederates and Federals fight at Keedysville, Nolan’s Ferry, Point of Rocks, and Solomon’s Gap, Maryland.

Meanwhile, the call goes out for 24,000 militia from New York and Pennsylvania to help defend Maryland and the North. Washington and nearby areas are seriously alarmed now. In the early-morning hours, while Early is crossing the Potomac River, General Wallace rushes by train to the western boundary of his department—the Monocacy River. The railroad crosses the Monocacy 45 miles west of Baltimore and three miles southeast of the little city of Frederick, Maryland. Major roads lead from Frederick to both Baltimore and Washington, and Wallace concludes that whichever city the Confederates intend to strike, they will have to cross the Monocacy at this junction. Two miles upriver, north of the massive iron railroad bridge, is a stone bridge boasting an eight-foot-high, vaselike edifice for which the structure is nicknamed the Jug Bridge. This span carries the Baltimore pike across the river. Three hundred yards south of the railroad, the Georgetown Turnpike to Washington crosses the Monocacy via a covered wooden bridge.


In Georgia, Johnston isn’t the only one impressed by his new defensive lines. Sherman, too, admires the defenses on the north bank of the Chattahoochee. Riding down from Smyrna this morning, he views the new Confederate lines from a hill near Vining’s Station about two miles from the river. He thinks it “one of the strongest pieces of field fortification I ever saw.” But from the same hill Sherman glimpses something that excites him even more—for the first time in his two-month-long campaign the ultimate objective: Atlanta, with its spires and rooftops beckoning from a distance of no more than eight miles.

The urge to smash through Johnston’s line and march into the city must be powerful. This time, however, Sherman exercises patience and skillful planning. He posts the armies of Thomas and McPherson in front of the Chattahoochee fortifications to preoccupy the Confederates. He also sends a division of cavalry downstream to mislead them into thinking he intends a crossing to the south. But his real objective is to flank the Confederates from the north. Even as Sherman stands on the hill near Vining’s Station, the cavalry division of Kenner Garrard—the general he reprimanded two days ago for excessive caution—is hurrying toward the town of Roswell, twenty miles upstream, under orders to secure the bridge there.

Garrrard arrives in Roswell to find that the bridge has been destroyed. The town’s textile factories are operating full tilt, however, turning out cotton and woolen cloth for Confederate uniforms. Garrard burns every one of them, even a factory that is flying the French flag in a feeble show of neutrality. Under Sherman’s orders, Garrard arranges to send more than 400 employees—mostly women who originally came from the North—to Marietta for rail transport to Indiana and safety. While General Garrard scouts for a suitable ford across the rain-swollen Chattahoochee River, Sherman dispatches Schofield on a personal reconnaissance to find a closer crossing. Skirmishes flare at Pace’s Ferry, Howell’s Ferry, Turner’s Ferry, and Isham’s Ford, Georgia.


Hard on the heels of Brice’s Crossroads in mid-June, when he received orders from Sherman “to make up a force and go out and follow Forrest to the death, if it costs 10,000 lives and breaks the Treasury,” C.C. Washburn, the Memphis commander, assigned the task to A.J. Smith, reinforcing two of his divisions, just returned from their excursion up and down the Red River, with Bouton’s brigade of Black infantry and Grierson’s cavalry division, both of them recent graduates of the hard-knocks school the Wizard of the Saddle is conducting for his would-be conquerers down in Mississippi. Today this column of 14,200 effectives, mounted and afoot, supported by six batteries of artillery and supplied with twenty days of rations—“a force ample to whip anything this side of Georgia,” Washburn declares—sets out southward from La Grange, fifty miles east of Memphis. Sherman’s orders by now have been expanded; Smith and his gorilla-guerillas, who have polished their hardhanded skills under Banks, are to “pursue Forrest on foot, devastating the land over which he passed or may pass, and make him and the people of Tennessee and Mississippi realize that, although [he is] a bold, daring, and successful leader, he will bring ruin and misery on any country where he may pause or tarry. If we do not punish Forrest and the people now,” the red-haired Ohioan wound up, “the whole effect of our past conquests will be lost.”


Elsewhere, there are operations in western Missouri, a six-day Union expedition from New Madrid to Caruthersville, and Federal scouts along the Big Piney, Missouri. The 5,000 Federal troops invading James Island at Charleston Harbor have been driven back to the Stono, where they are covered by the Navy.

President Lincoln suspends the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in Kentucky, and proclaims martial law. The President states that many Kentucky citizens have joined or helped the “forces of the insurgents.” New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, long discontented with the Administration, receives a letter from Canada alleging that two emissaries of the Confederacy with powers to negotiate peace are in the country. Greeley urges the President to investigate the emissaries’ offer of a meeting.

[Doug64]

July 6, Wednesday

While Early’s Confederate infantry march eastward through Maryland this morning, Brigadier General John McCausland takes his brigade of cavalry north to Hagerstown and threatens to burn the place unless paid a ransom. He collects $20,000 (2020 ~$329,670) from the townspeople, the first reparation for Hunter’s destruction of private property in the Shenandoah. In Washington, Federal authorities confer on reinforcing the defenses of the capital.

Cavalry operations and reconnaissances continue on the Atlanta front, with skirmishing at Sandtown and Nickajack Creek. The Petersburg lines are sluggish, but some forces skirmish at Mount Zion Church near Aldie, Virginia. Other action includes a skirmish near Benton, Arkansas; operations the rest of the month in Missouri; Federal scouting in southeastern Arizona Territory; and a skirmish on the Little Blue, Jackson County, Missouri.

[Doug64]

July 7, Thursday

Federal troops and militia hurry toward Washington and Maryland to protect the North and its capital from Early’s “invading army.” The 3rd Division of VI Corps arrives at Baltimore from the Army of the Potomac at Petersburg. Fighting occurs at Middletown, Brownville, and Hager’s or Catoctin Mountain, Maryland. Over the past two days, General Wallace has gathered at Monocacy about 2,500 defenders and Captain Frederic W. Alexander’s Baltimore battery of six guns. It is a wobbly force of militiamen and home guards until, by a stroke of good fortune, Wallace is able to add to it 230 troopers from a veteran Illinois cavalry regiment who have been patrolling at Point of Rocks, near the confluence of the Monocacy and Potomac Rivers. Wallace desperately needs cavalry to locate his enemy, and Lieutenant Colonel David R. Clendenin responds immediately to the urgent summons—even though he isn’t under Wallace’s command.

The horsemen reached Frederick late yesterday. Then at daybreak they head west to find the Confederates. In Catoctin Pass, about five miles from town, they encounter and drive off a detachment of enemy riders. But once on the other side of the pass, they find serious trouble. Clendenin’s men spot four regiments of Virginia cavalry fanning out on either side of the road ahead. It is Brigadier General Bradley T. Johnson’s 800-man brigade, screening the advance of Early’s main body. Outflanked and outnumbered, the Federals fall back into the pass. Clendenin sees that he can’t hold and sends a rider across the river to warn Wallace that the Confederates will be in Frederick within hours. By midafternoon the tired Federal troopers are driven back to the town’s outskirts, where Wallace has deployed a regiment of Maryland militia, a small force of cavalry and three of Alexander’s guns. Johnson—a native of Frederick, fighting now to capture his hometown—makes his first charge on the thin Union line at 4 pm. Encouraged by the example of the stalwart Illinoi cavalry, the inexperienced Federals stand fast. After two hours of sparring, the Federals counterattack and force the Confederates to fall back to the Catoctin Pass.


In Charleston Harbor, Confederates attack Federal entrenchments on James Island and will carry them by the 9th. The Northern troops fall back, withdrawing from the islands and from the Stonoa. Federal losses in the ten days’ fighting, 330; Confederate, 163. A third major bombardment of sadly battered Fort Sumter begins. Federal guns throw 784 rounds at the mound of rubble that was the fort; four times the flag is shot away and four times restored.


In Georgia, General Schofield discovers a lightly guarded gap in the Confederate cavalry screen about eight miles upriver of the Confederate entrenchments on the Chattahoochee River, where Soap Creek empties into the Chattahoochee. Reconnaissance and raids on Sherman’s lines of communications bring fighting at Adairsville, Dark Corners, Vining’s Station, and Summerville, Georgia.

The fallback of Joseph E. Johnston to the Chattahoochee renders President Davis “more apprehensive for the future.” He writes his general that he is fearful of Johnston having the river in back of him but feels to cross it will give the enemy too much opportunity. Davis adds that he can send him no further reinforcements.


At Ripley, Mississippi, Union troops heading out from Memphis after Forrest again skirmish with Confederates. In east Tennessee a series of Federal scouts last several days each. Across the Mississippi, fighting breaks out at Parkville, Missouri, and Van Buren, Arkansas. Through the 12th there are small sea-land raids by the Union at Brookville and Bayport, Florida.

[Doug64]

July 8, Friday

President Lincoln proclaims his backing of a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, but declares that he is not prepared to support the idea that Congress has the authority to eradicate the institution. The proclamation is a statement of his pocket veto July 4th of the Wade-Davis reconstruction bill. He says he cannot be inflexible on any one plan of reconstruction or to set aside the new Federal governments in Arkansas and Louisiana, but if people of a state wish to choose the system of restoration in the bill, that would be proper.


Shortly after dawn, General Wallace is cheered by the arrival of the first reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac. A Vermont regiment, part of VI Corps’ 3rd Division under Brigadier General James B. Ricketts, is coming into Baltimore by steamer and is proceeding to Monocacy by rail. By now even Grant is alarmed; he has ordered the rest of VI Corps—and two XIX Corps divisions that are beginning to arrive at Fort Monroe by sea from Louisiana—to head for Washington. Wallace still has no idea of the size or the intent of the approaching Confederates. He posts the new men in Frederick, placing the entire command under Tyler. Throughout the day, the remainder of Colonel William Truex’s VI Corps brigade continues to come in by train. A Confederate infantry column is rumored to be moving toward Urbana, southeast of Frederick, and Wallace concludes that the raiders must be headed for Washington. He thinks his makeshift army is probably too small to defeat them, but certainly strong enough to gain time. He has made up his mind to fight.

This night, Wallace pulls all but a few skirmishers out of Frederick and deploys most of his forces on the eastern bank of the Monocacy, where he has the advantages of high ground, the river in his front and good roads behind him on which to make the inevitable retreat. He has by now received the last of his reinforcements, five regiments of Colonel Matthew R. McClennan’s two brigades of Ricketts’ division. General Tyler’s militia holds the Federal right, a two-mile stretch from the railroad north to the Jug Bridge. A detachment of skirmishers holds the bridgehead across the river on the Baltimore pike. Wallace, expecting the main Confederate thrust to be toward Washington, deploys Ricketts’ veterans across the Georgetown pike and along a low ridge that extends south from the river to an estate called Araby, with an imposing red-brick manor house, owned by the Kieffer Thomas family. Ricketts also posts men on the west bank of the river to defend the railroad bridge and the covered bridge for as long as they can. It is four in the morning before the Federal dispositions are complete.

Early’s men fight at Antietam Bridge, Frederick, and Sandy Hook, Maryland.


In Georgia this morning, while McPherson on the Union right feints at Turner’s Ferry, the resourceful General Schofield sets about securing a bridgehead on the south bank of the Chattahoochee near a Confederate cavalry outpost. He sends a detachment across on the piled-up rocks of a submerged fish dam situated a half-mile above the mouth of Soap Creek; nearer the creek, he launches an assault party in twenty pontoon boats. The two groups then team up on the south bank to scatter the Confederate troopers and capture their one cannon without sustaining a single casualty. Before midnight, Schofield has two pontoon bridges in place and an entire division across the river. Skirmishes are recorded at Cove Springs and Isham’s Ford.


Three days out and fifty miles down the road from La Grange, Tennessee, A.J. Smith shows that he is taking Sherman’s admonition to “devastate the land over which [Forrest] may pause or tarry,” by burning much of the town of Ripley, including the courthouse, two churches, the Odd Fellows Hall, and a number of homes.

Elsewhere, troops fight at Vienna, Alabama; near Richmond, Missouri; and near Kelly’s Mill, Mississippi.

[Doug64]

July 9, Saturday

As the fierce sun rises on the Federal dispositions along the Monocacy, and the heat regains its grip on the countryside, the waiting begins. Six thousand worried men scan the sky to the west, where dust clouds raised by the approaching Confederates are gathering. They believe they are greatly outnumbered.

Jubal Early still isn’t sure what awaits him along the Monocacy this morning. He can see that it is a sizable Federal force, and although Johnson has reported that the troops are raw militia and not a serious threat, Early cannot afford to make a mistake deep in enemy territory; his approach is cautious. He orders McCausland’s cavalry to move south to sever the railroad and telegraph lines to Washington; then McCausland is to cross the river and if at all possible seize the railroad bridge at Monocacy Junction. Meanwhile, Johnson is to take his cavalry around Frederick to the north, cut the railroads to Baltimore, threaten that city, and hold himself ready to undertake a possible secondary mission: releasing the 17,000 Confederates being held at Point Lookout, seventy miles southeast of Washington. General Lee, in his anguish over the dwindling size of his army, has become enthralled with the idea of freeing the prisoners, and he has encouraged Early to accomplish it somehow. Ramseur’s division quickly drives the Federal skirmishers out of Frederick and heads southeast along the Georgetown pike while Rodes takes his men east on the Baltimore pike. Early keeps Breckinridge’s two divisions with him near Frederick and waits to see what develops. The debt incurred by General Hunter is never far from Early’s mind; when he reaches Frederick at 8 am, the Confederate commander informs the mayor that the citizens must hand over $200,000 (2020 ~$3,296,960, McCausland had settled for a tenth of that amount at Hagerstown) or see their town burned. The residents beg for time to raise the cash—and, no doubt, to see how the impending battle comes out. Early gives them a few hours.

At midmorning Rodes encounters Tyler’s entrenched skirmishers, six companies of an Ohio regiment, two miles southeast of Frederick in front of the Jug Bridge. And Ramseur comes up against the similarly thin line across the road Early really wants—the Georgetown pike to Washington—more than two miles to the southeast. Rodes and Ramseur form lines of battle and begin to test the Federals’ strength with skirmishers and artillery. About 200 men of a Maryland Home Brigade militia regiment hold a portion of the line that includes a log blockhouse guarding the approaches to the B & O bridge and the nearby covered bridge. The Marylanders are joined by a company from a New York Heavy Artillery infantry regiment and by 75 men of the veteran Vermont regiment. George E. Davis, first lieutenant of the Vermonters, is in command; he places most of his skirmishers behind the railroad cut at the entrance to the bridges. His roughly triangular defense is covered by a 24-pounder howitzer mounted across the river on the bluff overlooking the bridges. The position is a strong one and the men have been ordered to “hold the bridges at all hazards.” Confederates of Colonel Charles C. Blacknall’s North Carolina regiment, from Brigadier General Robert D. Johnston’s brigade, rush the blockhouse, which is the key to the Federal defense. They push to within twenty feet of the structure before point-blank fire drives the survivors back. Colonel Blacknall narrowly escapes death as a bullet glances off his head, leaving him unconscious but alive. His men carry him to the rear as they retreat.

The respite for the Federals is brief. Brigadier General Armistead L. Long, Early’s chief of artillery, soon brings sixteen guns to bear on the Federals east of the river. The six Parrott rifles of Alexander’s battery, though severely outgunned, manage temporarily to keep the Confederates at bay. Early now realizes he is facing more than militia. The enemy’s position is too strong, and the difficulties of crossing the Monocacy under fire too great, to attack in front without greater loss than he is willing to incur. He rides south along the river instead, seeking a way to get across the Monocacy and at the Federal left. He spots McCausland’s cavalry, intent on its second assignment—taking the bridges if possible. McCausland’s troopers have found the ford for which Early has been searching. They splash across the river, drive away a company of Illinois cavalry, and canter into the yard of the Worthington family farm, which occupies the northern end of Brook’s Hill, a ridge overlooking Rickett’s line. From there they can see the blueclad ranks on either side of the Thomas house, and beyond them, the road to Washington. Presuming the enemy to be only militia, McCausland has his men dismount, send their horses to the rear, and advance through a field of waist-high corn.

General Wallace sees all this from his command on a hill overlooking the railroad and the covered highway bridge. He sits his horse, listening and watching. In response to the threat to his left, Wallace orders the covered bridge burned to keep Ramseur’s men on the other side of the river. Then he instructs Ricketts to change front to the southwest and face McCausland instead of Ramseur. Colonel McClennan’s five regiments hold Ricketts’ right, Colonel Truex’s five regiments the left. Their shift is made difficult by the enfilade fire of a section of Captain John L. Massie’s Virginia artillery, on a hill less than 800 yards away. Barely in time, one of Truex’s regiments, from Pennsylvania, gets into position behind a fence dividing the Thomas and Worthington farms and lies down, out of sight of the advancing Virginians. Without their horse-holders, the Confederates are only about 700 strong—and they are advancing against three times their number, “in perfect order, all the while shouting their ominous, defiant battle cry.” Suddenly the fence comes alive as the Federals leap to their feet and fire a murderous volley into the astonished Virginians, whose battle line all but disappears. The row of corn shelters from sight not only the dead and wounded but the crouched, running men as well. Shouting that they have been led into an ambush, the survivors reel back through the Worthington yard and keep going until they reach the edge of the river.

It takes almost two hours to re-form the line, but at 2 pm, incredibly, the Virginians attack again. This time they veer to the right, keeping cover between themselves and the deadly fence, feeling for the Federal flank. In response, the Pennsylvanians begin extending to the left on the run, trying to stay between the enemy and the Georgetown Turnpike; but the Federal line begins to bend back toward the yard of the Thomas house. Running, loading, and firing in the stifling heat, the Virginians push the thinned-out Federals from the Thomas house and cling there, on a slight rise of ground, under heavy fire. Wallace orders the Pennsylvanians and a New Jersey regiment to charge across the fields and retake the Thomas house. Just as the Federals begin to move, the Rebels come in force from behind the house. They advance over the crest on a line with the house before the firing grows heavy. The Federals also come under bombardment from the Confederate batteries across the river but fight hard, mowing down the first two lines of Confederates. Then the Federals at Thomas’ gate charge across his field right up to his house, and drive the Rebels around the corners, behind the barn. McCausland at last realizes the precariousness of his position and pulls his troops back.

General Early has ordered Breckinridge to move Gordon’s division across the river where the cavalry crossed and launch a flank attack to drive Wallace from his position. By the time Gordon can get his men in place it is midafternoon, and Gordon finds himself facing a confident enemy posted behind cover on high ground. His support, General Echol’s division, is marching from Frederick but won’t be up for some time. Worse, Gordon’s men must advance over fields laced with stout fences and, on the Thomas farm, studded with large shocks of grain. Nevertheless, Gordon orders an assault in echelon, with each brigade following the one to its right into action. Brigadier General Clement A. Evans’ Georgians will be in the lead; Brigadier General Zebulon York will commit his Louisiana brigade next; and Brigadier General William Terry’s Virginians will follow York’s troops in reserve. Gordon hopes to overlap the Federal left and roll it up toward the river with sequential thrusts.

About 3 pm, while Gordon’s division forms for the attack, General Wallace assesses the Federal situation. Ricketts’ division is in place in front of Gordon, but it is overextended and in the air on the left. To the north, Tyler’s men still hold the Jug Bridge, although they are being pressed hard by Rodes. Wallace has decided that it is time to get away. But he can’t safely disengage in the face of an attack, and now Evans’ Georgia brigade comes into view, crossing the fence on the crest of Brooks’ Hill and charging the left of Truex’s line. As the Federal skirmishers fall back, one of them fires from the dubious cover of a shock of wheat into the oncoming ranks of the Georgians—and dies with eighteen bullets in his body. Then the Georgians come to the second of the many obstacles in their way—a high, stout rail fence more than 100 yards from the Federal line. As the attackers clamber over this fence, they are met by a tempest of bullets. General Evans is struck down with a Minié ball in his side, and command of the brigade passes to Colonel E.M. Atkinson. Yet despite the heavy fire they make it across the field. With the shocks of wheat preventing them from closing their ranks or returning fire effectively, and with their comrades dropping around them with fearful frequency, the Georgians press on. Vermonter Major Edwin Dillingham stands in the partial cover of the Worthington’s sunken access road, “swinging his saber and yelling, ‘Give it to them boys! We have them on the flank! Pitch it into them! This is fun!’ ” The Confederate advance becomes disorganized; little semblance remains of brigade or regimental battle lines. The Georgians at last come to a standstill and General Gordon sends a message to Breckinridge, who is back at the Worthington house, asking that reinforcements be sent up.

Fortunately for the Confederates, several guns from Major William McLaughlin’s artillery battalion have been sent across the river already. Lieutenant Colonel J. Floyd King, second-in-command of Early’s artillery, has quickly positioned them on high ground overlooking the Federal line. One of the guns opens fire on the Thomas house, sending shot and shells crashing through its brick walls and dislodging the Federal riflemen there. Now General York brings his Louisianans into action to the left of Evans’ brigade. He deploys his men from column into line of battle in the face of the enemy and dashes forward, clearing the Worthington cornfield of Federal skirmishers. They drive Ricketts’ men from their front, then rush ahead and slam into the New Jersieyans. That regiment has already lost its commanding officer and his successor to the fire of Evans’ Georgians. In the renewed attack, more than 140 Federal soldiers are shot down. The regiment’s line sags in the center but holds; the attack rolls on into the Ohio regiments of the second Federal line. Ricketts has rushed so many of his men to bolster the hardpressed Federal left that his right is no longer anchored on the river. This is precisely what Gordon had hoped his attack would achieve, and he loses no time sending Terry’s Virginia brigade to thrust at Ricketts’ right flank.

Just as Gordon’s Confederates begin their drive against Ricketts’ right, the situation for the Federal skirmishers across the Monocacy reaches a crisis point. The men have successfully withstood a Confederate attempt to cut them off from the railroad bridge; but as pressure mounts, the Maryland militia melt away across the bridge. Lieutenant Davis and his handful of Vermonters now face an entire Confederate division alone. When Gordon’s attack reaches its peak, a Carolina regiment charges the blockhouse. As the attackers surge forward, Davis can see the beginning of a Federal retreat across the river. The division headquarters flag is crossing the track in his rear, they have to leave now or never. Davis orders his men to cross the bridge. The retreating soldiers have to hop from tie to tie, exposed to enemy rifle fire. One poor fellow falls through the bridge to the river, forty feet below, and several are taken prisoners, thanks to the Confedferates being close on their heels all the way. But most of the Vermonters escape to rejoin their regiment, and Lieutenant Davis is later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Swarming Confederates soon drive the Federal skirmishers from the western end of the ridge that runs parallel to the Monocacy. General Terry sends Colonel J.H. Funk’s Consolidated Regiment—fragments of the old Stonewall Brigade—advancing to the left down the riverbank. Funk’s Virginians are hidden from the Federals by the ridge until they open fire at close range against an Ohio regiment, which is sheltering in the sunken access road. Terry’s other regiment, commanded by Colonel Robert H. Dungan, pushes down the center of the ridge through a cornfield. They’ve only gone a few steps when they come in view of Ohioans lying behind a post-and-rail fence, about 125 yards in their front. The Virginians start at them at the double quick only to be slowed to a walk by General Taylor, so they’ll still be able to fight when they reach the enemy. They walk to the fence, under fire all the way, stick their guns between the fence rails, and put a volley into the Federals. By this time Terry’s Virginians have brought Ricketts’ right flank under a galling enfilade fire that even the VI Corps veterans can’t withstand for long. The Ohioans fall back down the hill toward the Georgetown pike, but not before inflicting 59 casualties on Dungan’s regiment alone.

Terry’s men re-form and push farther along the river. The Ohio regiment Terry’s men have been pushing back and a New York Heavy Artillery regiment, in line as infantry near the river, catch the worst of the impromptu charge. The Virginians’ assault line is long enough to wrap around the Federal line almost in a semicircle, and the Federals break and flee. Among the wounded is the New York regiment’s commander, young Colonel William Henry Seward Jr., son and namesake of Lincoln’s secretary of state. Ricketts’ line is caving in, and he begins a difficult disengagement under fire. Thanks to the discipline of the VI Corps veterans, he is able to make a retrograde movement that is just measurably slower than a rout, along the river to the Baltimore pike. Tyler’s militiamen hold the Jug Bridge long enough for the remaining Federals to get past and away; by the time the firing sputters to a stop, it is too late in the day for Early to push on. There are dead to bury, wounded to tend, and scattered units to pull together. And there is the matter of that $200,000 ransom, which the city fathers of Frederick now hand over. The march to Washington will have to be postponed until tomorrow.

Wallace heads for Baltimore, having garnered 24 precious hours for the lashing together of a defense of the Federal capital. He has paid a price of 1,294 casualties. Confederate losses probably number close to 700—men Early can’t replace. Wallace’s achievement isn’t appreciated at first; he is relieved temporarily as Middle Department commander, but he is soon restored to the post by General Grant, who eventually concludes that Wallace has contributed more to the Federal cause by losing at Monocacy “than often falls to the lot of a commander of equal force to render by means of a victory.”


In Georgia, when General Johnston is alerted to the danger posed by Schofield’s mile-deep bridgehead eight miles upriver, he is compelled to abandon his fortifications on the north bank of the Chattahoochee. After nightfall another enactment of the now-familiar rituals take place: the tramp across bridges strewn with green cornstalks to muffle the sounds of retreat, the burning of the railroad trestle, the dismantling of pontoons. Severe skirmishing occurs during the day along the river and at Vining’s Station and Nickajack Creek. Sherman, with Schofield’s whole force already across the Chattahoochee to the north, builds up supplies and prepares for a full press forward.

Desperate to be apprised of Johnston’s intentions, President Davis dispatches to Atlanta a personal emissary, Braxton Bragg, the former commander of the Army of Tennessee and now the Confederate President’s chief military adviser. The choice of Bragg for such a delicate mission is hardly politic, because Joseph Johnston holds his predecessor and the President in equal scorn. Johnston has recently remarked of Davis: “He tried to do what God failed to do. He tried to make a soldier of Braxton Bragg, and you know the result. It couldn’t be done.”


Still mindful of his instructions to “punish Forrest and the people,” A.J. Smith presses on across the Tallahatchie and through New Albany, trailed by a swath of desolation ten miles wide. Ahead lies Pontotoc, and beyond it Okolona, where Sooy Smith came to grief five months ago, checked almost as disastrously as Sturgis had been at nearby Brice’s Crossroads, a month ago tomorrow.


On John’s Island in Charleston Harbor there is action on Burden’s Causeway. Federals also operate around Wellington, Missouri.

CSS Florida takes four prizes only 35 miles off the the eastern coast of Maryland.

In Washington, the President tells Horace Greeley that if anyone has a peace proposition in writing that includes the restoration of the Union and the ending of slavery, he should come to Lincoln.

[Doug64]

July 10, Sunday

Early’s Confederates move on, a bit more slowly now, fighting at Rockville and Gunpowder Bridge, very near Washington, D.C. Refugees fleeing before Early’s advance infect the citizens of Washington and Baltimore with wild rumors about Confederate numbers and atrocities. Officials representing the capital’s myriad civilian agencies and military commands are galvanized into frenzied activity. They dredge the hospitals and assemble squads of the walking wounded, gather improvised units of government employees, and march them to the city’s defenses, and prepare the Potomac River bridges for demolition. Chief of staff Halleck seethes at the confusion. When he receives an offer of help from yet another general, this one in far-off New York City, Halleck sends a scathing reply: “We have five times as many generals here as we want, but are greatly in need of privates. Anyone volunteering in that capacity will be thankfully received.” President Lincoln and his family come back to the White House due to possible danger at their summer residence at the Soldier’s Home. Lincoln tells a Baltimore group that he believes Early is moving on Washington and that “They can not fly to either place. Let us be vigilant but keep cool. I hope neither Baltimore or Washington will be sacked.”


At Petersburg circumstances are grim, for both the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. Lee is pinned behind his fortifications by the need to defend his rail network. He is barely able to feed his men, and there is some doubt as to how rapidly and efficiently he can move if he wants to; lack of forage for his horses has necessitated their dispersal and gathering them again would require time. Even Grant can no longer shrug off his casualties and press on. In addition to the men he has lost in combat, he has to watch several thousand experienced troops form up and march away North, their enlistment terms expired. Jubal Early’s drive north is forcing him to rush reinforcements to the defense of Washington. The Army of the Potomac is hemorrhaging manpower, yet it still has almost 70,000 men facing Lee’s 36,000 entrenched in Petersburg. At Bermuda Hundred and at Deep Bottom, a Federal bridgehead north of the James River, Butler’s 40,000-man Army of the James faces 21,000 men in Lee’s Richmond garrison.

The veterans who remain in the lines are suffering from severe combat fatigue, and their replacemetns have to be trained before they can fight. It is clear that both armies will have to be rested and rebuilt before they will be fit to make another assault of any kind. Thus the men have put aside their muskets for a while, taken up spades, and begun to dig. The Southerners dig because only massive fortifications can give them the edge they need to resist the superior numbers of the Federals. The Northerners dig because only when their line is strong enough to resist attack—even when lightly manned—can they dare to concentrate a force for an assault or a flanking movement. Yesterday, General George Meade issued an order that the campaign will progress by “regular approaches.” The phrase means traditional siege tactics—inching toward the enemy in trenches until his line can be cracked—although the Confederates aren’t surrounded and this technically isn’t a siege. The war has changed: Where there has been endless marching there is now perpetual digging. The men often turn out for duty at 4 am and work until evening, digging for two hours, then resting for two, through the blazing heat of the day.

Both sides dig far more than the usual Civil War breastworks, which consist of a ditch with a raised earthen parapet fronted by abatis made of sharpened tree branches. At Petersburg they throw up enclosed redans or forts as strong points for infantry and artillery. They also scoop out additional trenches behind, and parallel to, the forward line and connect the lines with zigzagging communication trenches. Then they link this labyrinth to the rear with covered ways—sunken roads along which men, guns, and wagons can move under cover from enemy guns. Normal field artillery with its flat trajectory and relatively small projectiles can’t do much damage to men in such burrows, but that soon changes. As early as April, Colonel Henry L. Abbot of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery had been ordered to organize a siege train from his 1,700-man regiment. Once the Federal line stabilized in June, Abbot brings up his formidable train and emplaces forty rifled siege guns and sixty mortars capable of lofting shells into the enemy trenches. The Confederates soon respond in kind, and the shelling becomes a daily, deadly factor in the life of the men, who immediately begin constructing bombproofs with timber-and-sod roofs in addition to their other excavations.

Even the weather conspires to make life miserable. It hasn’t rained since Cold Harbor; it has been hot; and now it becomes hotter than anyone can remember. Powdery dust, inches thick, covers everything, ready to well up in choking clouds at the slightest movement. Surface water virtually disappears, providing yet another motive for digging; not far down, a substratum of clay holds a ready supply of cool water. So the days of July pass, with the sun burning down and the men hot, sweaty, filthy, and frightened; with the musketry cracking along the trenches whenever a soldier shows himself to the enemy; and with the big guns and mortars thumping away.


By now, Johnston’s Army of Tennessee has left the Chattahoochee behind. Johnston marches the army a few miles east onto a ridge behind Peachtree Creek, a westward-flowing tributary of the river. This line, extending across the railroad to the Chattahoochee, faces north to cover Atlanta, which is merely five miles to the rear. President Davis and his Cabinet, having fretted for two months as Johnston retreats every step of the way from Dalton, now fear that he will fail to stand fast in front of Atlantal itself. Such is the strain between Davis and Johnston that every communiqué from the field is scrutinized in Richmond for hidden meanings. Today, for example, Johnston sends a message recommending the immediate evacuation of the big prison camp of Andersonville, 125 miles south of Atlanta. Johnston’s message is prompted by his concern that Sherman might send a flying column of cavalry to liberate the 30,000 Federals incarcerated there; Davis interprets it as an indication that his general is about to abandon Atlanta.

General Sherman celebrates his latest achievement by taking a much-needed bath in the river.


In Mississippi A.J. Smith’s Federal expedition skirmishes at Cherry Creek and Plentytude. Also in Mississippi, a skirmish takes place in Issaquena County, and a week-long Federal expedition moves from Vicksburg to Grand Gulf with some skirmishing against roving bands of Confederates. Lovell Harrison Rousseau, Federal cavalry commander, leads some 2,500 men from Decatur, Alabama, northeast of Atlanta to operate against the railroad line between Columbus, Georgia, and Montgomery, Alabama. By the 22nd he will be back in Marietta after wrecking a considerable amount of Southern rail line. Fighting in Georgia takes place at Alpharetta and Campbellton. In the West skirmishes erupt at Little Rock and near Petit Jean, Arkansas, and at Platte City, Missouri. Federals unsuccessfully attack Fort Johnson and Battery Simkins in Charleston Harbor.

[Doug64]

July 11, Monday

Lincoln and Grant take a more sanguine view of the threat of Jubal Early’s army to Washington. The city is surrounded by a formidable ring of defenses bristling with more than 900 cannon and mortars. Fewer than 10,000 troops can be assembled this morning, but 15,000 men from VI Corps and XIX Corps are on the way. Their coolness is in short supply, though, as the inexperienced gunners and citizen-soldiers on Washington’s northern ramparts await the approaching enemy. At Rockville, the Confederate infantry turn east to Silver Spring and then south along the Seventh Street road. There, at midday, Early surveys Fort Stevens, the northernmost of Washington’s defensive works, while his cavalry fan out to probe the Federal line left and right.

Early’s first look at Fort Stevens tells him that there is still a chance to break through—the works are feebly manned. Beyond them, Early can see the dome of the US Capitol, five miles away, shimmering in the July heat. Early orders General Rodes, whose division is in the lead, to form a line of battle “as rapidly as possible, throw out skirmishers, and move into the works.” But the tantalizing prize is beyond reach. The Confederate soldiers are willing enough, but after a day of fighting, another day of hard marching in enervating heat, and a night so hot and humid that rest is impossible, they were exhausted when they began this morning’s march. They have fallen out by the hundreds, and those who are present to receive Early’s orders are too weak to do more than spar with the Federal skirmishers. Precious hours slip from the fuming Early’s grasp.

By midafternoon, the first detachment of VI Corps reaches the defensive line. The troops disembark from their steamers at the Sixth Street wharves and immediately fall prey to the confusion that grips the cpital. With their corps commander, Major General Horatio G. Wright, at their head, the men march toward Georgetown until staff officers sent by Halleck get them stopped and headed north up Seventh Street toward the enemy. Amid the shouting, marching, and clatter, one figure is notable for his calm—President Lincoln gnaws imperturbably on a piece of hardtack as he watches the arrival of the troops sent to save his capital. The reinforcements are merely the first of many. With their coming, as Lincoln knows, there is no longer any possibility of the loss of Washington. The Federal objective now is offensive, not defensive: Catch Early and punish him so severely that Confederates never again think of pushing across the Potomac.

Early and his four division commanders meet this night in a Silver Spring mansion owned by the absent Francis P. Blair, a close advisor to President Lincoln. The Confederate officers help themselves to the Blair wine cellar and talk about launching an assault on the city’s works in the morning. They joke about escorting Breckinridge to his former place as presiding officer of the US Senate, but they concede that their time is running out. During the night, Early learns that troops from two Federal corps are streaming into Washington from Virginia. That means he has accomplished a major objective of his raid—and that he is in increasing danger of being overwhelmed.


Sherman wires Washington, “We now commence the real game for Atlanta.” He spends the next six days moving everything into place. His armies build bridges, bring up supplies to a new rail depot at Vining’s Station, and expand three bridgeheads—at Roswell, at Soap Creek, and at a point just beyond a couple of miles upriver from the abandoned enemy fortifications. Meanwhile, the threat of Sherman’s armies arouses near-panic among the citizens of Atlanta. Wagons crammed with the household effects of fleeing Atlantans crowd the streets. Frightened people jam every train leaving town.


Skirmishing breaks out at Frederick, Maryland, and Fort Stevens near Washington, and Confederates capture Federal trains near Magnolia, Maryland.

Skirmishing increases in northern Mississippi, with action at and near Pontotoc as A.J. Smith’s expedition continues. Federals scout from Gunter’s Landing to Warrenton, Alabama. The US Navy destroys salt works near Tampa, Florida.

In the financial world the Federal dollar is worth only $0.39, lowest price for the dollar during the war.

[Doug64]

July 12, Tuesday

At first light, General Early surveys his situation; as expected, the faded blue uniforms of seasoned troops fill the Federal lines. He therefore reluctantly gives up any hopes of capturing Washington. The Confederates stay today, menacing and skirmishing. But there is no general assault. Bradley Johnson, who is pressing toward Point Lookout to free the Confederates there, is ordered by Early to abandon that mission and rejoin him.

The Federals don’t know of Early’s decision, of course, and they expect to do battle for the city. With large contingents of VI Corps and XIX Corps in place, confidence has returned to the general population overnight; civilians in a holiday mood flock to the fortifications to watch the contest. General Wright’s wife, escorting some ladies and gentlemen of society and several members of Congress and the Cabinet, joyously cheers every Federal movement as the armies jab at each other. At midafternoon the President and Mrs. Lincoln drive up to Fort Stevens in a carriage. General Wright goes out to welcome his commander and thoughtlessly invites him to see the fight in which the Federal troops are about to engage, without for a moment supposing Lincoln will accept. A moment after, he would give much to be able to recall his words as Lincoln eagerly takes his first opportunity to see a real battle. The President takes a position beside Wright on the parapet of the fort, exposed from the waist up to Confederate fire. Wright pleads in vain that Lincoln take cover. Bullets are sending little spurts and puffs of dust from the embankment on which he is standing. When a busy young lieutenant colonel named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. sees this unprepossessing civilian standing in the spray of bullets, he snaps: “Get down, you damn fool, before you get shot.” Only then does the future Supreme Court justice realize whom he is addressing. Lincoln compromises, sitting behind the parapet instead of standing on it. Still, he continually leaps up to see what is happening. As Lincoln watches, Brigadier General Frank Wheaton launches a Federal reconnaissance in force in preparation for an all-out attack. The Confederates don’t make it easy for them. Heavy fighting continues until well after dark. Most of the roughly 600 men killed or wounded in the two-day confrontation fall in the final fighting. It is “a bitter little contest.”

Early calls his commanders together after nightfall to give orders for the withdrawal to Virginia. “He seemed in a droll humor, perhaps one of relief,” Henry Kyd Douglas will remember, “for he said to me in his falsetto drawl: ‘Major, we haven’t taken Washington, but we’ve scared Abe Lincoln like hell!’” Lincoln has shown no fear, but the Union has been shaken to the core. The tremors affect not only politics but also the economy: Yesterday the Federal dollar reached its lowest value of the war—¢39. Shortly after Early issues the order, the Confederates quietly slip away. Not knowing whether General Hunter and Brigadier General Albion P. Howe, who has just relieved Sigel, have reached the mountain passes in pursuit of him, Early doesn’t retrace his steps but marches westward, parallel to the Potomac River. Prompt reinforcement has saved Washington from a major attack and, possibly, occupation. The raid has failed to be anything but a period of excitement. It doesn’t relieve Federal pressure on Petersburg or materially change the Confederate military picture.


Elsewhere, Federals scout in Lincoln County, Tennessee. Skirmishes flare at Campbellton, Georgia, and at Warwick Swamp Turkey Creek, north of the James in Virginia.

Greatly disturbed over Georgia, President Davis writes General Lee, “Gnl. Johnston has failed and there are strong indications that he will abandon Atlanta.... It seems necessary to relieve him at once. Who should succeed him? What think you of Hood for the position.”

[Doug64]

July 13, Wednesday

Jubal Early’s frustrated Confederate veterans hurry toward the Potomac at Leesburg. Grant orders Major General Horatio Wright and the VI and XIX Corps to pursue. By evening about 15,000 Federals are on the way. A slight affair at Rockville, Maryland, marks the retreat and follow-up.


As A.J. Smith’s Mississippi expedition continues, he encounters stiffer resistance. Butternut troopers have been hanging on the flanks of the column, as if to slow it down before it makes contact with whatever is waiting to receive it up ahead, perhaps at Okolona. Smith will never know; at dawn today, well short of any ambush being laid for him there or south of there, he abruptly changes direction and strikes out instead for Tupelo, Mississippi, fifteen miles to the east on the Mobile & Ohio, “his column well closed up, his wagon train well protected, and his flanks covered in an admirable manner.”

So Forrest’s scouts inform him at Okolona, where he is waiting—it is his 43rd birthday—for both Smith and Stephen Lee, who is on the way with 2,000 troops and has ordered him not to commit his present force of about 6,000 until these reinforcements get there to reduce the odds. Arriving from the south to find that the blue column has veered east, Lee takes charge of pressing the pursuit. His urgency is based on reports from Dabney Maury, at Mobile, that Canby is preparing to march from New Orleans and attack the city from the landward side; Lee wants Smith dealt with quickly so that the men he has brought to reinforce Forrest can be sent to Maury. “As soon as I fight I can send him 2000, possible 3000,” he explains in a dispatch to Bragg, though he adds that this depends on whether the Mississippi invaders do or do not “succeed in delaying the battle.” Smith is capable and canny, halting from time to time to beat off rearward threats while Grierson’s horsemen ride on into Tupelo and begin tearing up track above and below the town. All day the Federal infantry marches, then call a halt soon after nightfall at Harrisburg, two miles west of Tupelo, which has grown with the railroad and swallowed the older settlement as a suburb.

Forrest comes up presently in the darkness and discovers “the enemy strongly posted and prepared to give battle the next day.” Smith is at bay, and though his position is a stout one, nearly two miles long and skillfully laid out on a low, open ridge—flanks refused, rear well covered by cavalry, the line itself strengthened with fence rails, logs, timbers from torn-down houses, and bales of cotton—Forrest counts this a happy ending to an otherwise disappointing birthday. “One thing is certain,” he tells Lee; “the enemy cannot remain long where he is. He must come out, and when he does, all I ask or wish is to be turned loose with my command.” No matter which way Smith heads when he emerges fretful and hungry, Forrest says, “I will be on all sides of him, attacking day and night. He shall not cook a meal or have a night’s sleep, and I will wear his army to a frazzle before he gets out of the country.” Lee can see the beauty of that; but he has Mobile and Canby on his mind, together with the promises he has made to Bragg and Maury, and doesn’t feel that he can afford the time it would take to deal with the penned-up bluecoats in this manner. There are better than 14,000 of them, veterans to a man, and though Lee has only about 8,000 troops on hand he issues orders for an all-out assault in the morning. Forrest will take the right and he the left. Together they will storm the Union works, making up for the disparity in numbers by the suddenness and ardor of their charge.


In Georgia, Sherman prepares to advance his whole force across the Chattahoochee and then around the north side of Atlanta toward Decatur on the east. Federal cavalry operate against bridges and railroads, but generally fail to wreck the railroads close to Atlanta.

President Davis tells General Lee that General Bragg has arrived in Atlanta to investigate what Davis believes to be Joseph E. Johnston’s failure to stop Sherman. “It is a sad alternative, but the case seems hopeless in present hands,” he writes. “The means are surely adequate if properly employed, especially the cavalry is ample.”

General Bragg, after his arrival in Atlanta today, meets several times with John Bell Hood, whose disparaging reports in the spring helped discredit his commander in Richmond. Hood again shades the facts, asserting that he has constantly urged Johnston to give battle and that Johnston has repeatedly missed opportunities to take the offensive. Bragg passes these damaging reports on to Richmond along with his own erroneous assessment that Johnston appears ready to evacuate Atlanta.


Elsewhere, action occurs at Camden Point and Versailles, Missouri. Skirmishing takes place near Brownsville, Arkansas. A Union reconnaissance probes from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and a four-day Federal expedition moves from Helena, Arkansas, to Buck Island in the Mississippi. In Kentucky, a skirmish breaks out at Bell Mines and a Union scout operates from Munfordville to Big Spring.

[Doug64]

July 14, Thursday

The morning dawns hot and still at Harrisburg, Mississippi, and Stephen Lee’s Confederates facing off against A.J. Smith’s entrenched army are vexed by delays in bringing several late-arriving units into position for the attack. Around 7:30 am, a Kentucky brigade near the center jumps the gun and starts forward ahead of the others, who follow piecemeal, left and right, with the result that what was to have been a single, determined effort, all along the line, breaks down from the outset into a series of individual lunges. Smith’s veterans, snug behind their improvised breastworks, blast each rebel unit as it advances. “It was all gallantry and useless sacrifice,” one Confederate will say. To Smith, the disjointed attack seems to be a foot race to see who should reach his lines first. The Confederates are allowed to approach, “yelling and howling like Comanches,” to within canister range. The Confederates are beaten back, rally, and charge again, with the same result. None get closer than thirty yards of the Federal batteries, and after two hours Lee calls a halt. He has lost 1,347 killed, wounded, and missing out of 9,500. Smith’s 14,000 suffer 77 killed, 559 wounded, and 38 missing for 674.


Jubal Early’s Confederates cross the Potomac at White’s Ford, thirty miles from Washington, and rest safely in Virginia at nearby Leesburg. The rearguard fights a skirmish with advancing Federals at Poolesville, Maryland. Northern commander Wright tells Washington that Early crossed before the Yankees could get there and doesn’t advise pursuing into Virginia.

This same day, General Hunter reappears at Harpers Ferry. On foot and by river steamer and railroad, he and his men have been making a circuit from Lynchburg west to Charleston, West Virginia, north to Parkersburg, and then back east to Harpers Ferry. Along the way, Hunter has continued his practice of burning homes, including the house of his cousin Andrew Hunter, a prominent Charles Town lawyer, and that of Edmund Lee, a cousin of the Confederate general. On his arrival at Harpers Ferry, Hunter finds orders waiting that instruct him to send his army to help VI Corps chase Early. But Grant has decided that General Wright, who is junior in grade to Hunter, should have “supreme command of all troops moving out against the enemy.” Hunter immediately asks to be relieved, “considering himself insulted by the proposition.” Once again, Hunter protests directly to Lincoln, and once again he is curtly rebuffed. Hunter is to remain in command of the department and turn his troops over to General Crook, who will report with them to Wright. Hunter rages, but obeys.


In Virginia, a slight action occurs at Malvern Hill. In Missouri skirmishing breaks out near Fredericksburg and Bloomfield; and there is action at Bayou des Arc, Arkansas. Skirmishing in Webster and Union counties of Kentucky will last four days.

President Lincoln moves back to the Soldiers’ Home after the Confederate invasion scare. Personality differences among Cabinet members concern him and he writes a memo that as President he will be the judge of how long an official remains in his Cabinet.

[Doug64]

July 15, Friday

General Lee’s engineers at Petersburg have dallied—only today, two weeks after General Porter Alexander’s warning, do orders finally go out to start countermines—on either side of Elliott’s Salient and at two other redans nearby. Every fifteen minutes the workers are to stop digging and listen attentively. If they hear the sound of picks, a charge is to be detonated in the countermine to cave in the Federal gallery. But days pass, and the Confederates hear nothing. The defenders take other steps to avoid a breach in the salient. Colonel D.B. Harris, Beauregard’s chief engineer, lays out a series of batteries covering the rear of the salient and begins a retrenchment—a covering trench for the main line—with a raised parapet, or cavalier, dominating Pegram’s redan. The Petersburg lines are quiescent except for sniper fire and fortifying operations.


At Harrisburg, Mississippi, Confederate skirmishing against A.J. Smith’s army resumes this morning, but so fitfully and cautiously that it seems to invite a counterattack. Smith instead clings fast to his position. He does, that is, until midday, when he is informed that much of the food in his train has spoiled in the Mississippi heat, leaving only one day’s rations fit to eat, and that his reserve supply of artillery ammunition is down to a hundred rounds per gun: whereupon he decides to withdraw northward, back in the direction he set out from ten days ago, even though this means leaving his more grievously wounded men behind in Tupelo. There follows the curious spectacle of a superior force retreating from a field on which it has inflicted nearly twice as many casualties as it suffered and being harassed on the march by a loser reduced to less than half the strength of the victor it is pursuing. In any case, after setting fire to what is left of Harrisburg, the Federals not only withdraw in good order and make excellent time on the dusty roads; they also succeed, when they make camp at sunset on Town Creek, five miles north, in beating off a rebel attack and inflicting on Bedford Forrest, whom Stephen Lee has put in charge of the pursuit—and whom Smith has been told to “follow to the death”—his third serious gunshot wound of the war. The bullet strikes him in the foot, causing him so much pain that he has to relinquish command, temporarily at least, and retire to a dressing station.


In the east Early’s Confederates remain just south of the Potomac at Leesburg. The Federals under Wright are just north of the Potomac. Light skirmishing breaks out near Hillsborough, Virginia.

The roll of action elsewhere includes an affair at Accotink, Virginia; an affair at Lindley in Grundy County, and action at Huntsville, Missouri; and a five-day Federal expedition from Jacksonville, Florida.

In his talks with Johnston, Bragg has concealed the purpose of his mission, insisting that the visit is unofficial. In any event, he apparently is able to learn little from Johnston. “He has not sought my advice and it was not volunteered,” Bragg telegraphs President Davis today. “I cannot learn that he has any more plans in the future than he has had in the past.”

In Washington, President Lincoln is unhappy that Early’s Confederates have gotten away freely from Washington.

[Doug64]

July 16, Saturday

General Early leaves Leesburg, Virginia, near the Potomac, and heads back toward the Shenandoah Valley, unimpeded except for action near Purcellville and at Wood Grove, Virginia. Elsewhere in Virginia there is fighting at Four-Mile Creek and Malvern Hill. A.J. Smith’s and Forrest’s men skirmish at Ellistown, Mississippi, as Federals continue their retreat from Tupelo. In Missouri skirmishing erupts on Clear Fork near Warrensburg and on the Fayette Road near Huntsville; and in South Carolina on James Island near Charleston.


Sherman’s major move across the Chattahoochee and out around the north side of Atlanta toward Decatur on the east gets underway, though not without delays. Johnston and the Confederates plan to attack as Sherman moves around the city, when the wings of his army might be separated from the center. Meanwhile, Johnston continues work on fortifications extending from near the Chattahoochee south of Peachtree Creek around to the Atlanta & Decatur Railroad. During the various movements there is skirmishing at Turner’s Ferry.

President Davis sends a firm wire to General Johnston in Georgia: “ ... I wish to hear from you as to present situation and your plan of operations so specifically as will enable me to anticipate events.” Much later Johnston will assert that he has had a plan in mind all along. According to his memoirs, he intends to wait for the Federal armies to become divided while crossing Peachtree Creek, then pounce on them separately. But he stubbornly refuses to take the President into his confidence. Now, in reply to Davis’ wire, he offers only vague generalities: “As the enemy has double our number, we must be on the defensive. My plan of operations must therefore, depend upon that of the enemy. It is mainly to watch for an opportunity to fight to advantage. We are trying to put Atlanta in condition to be held for a day or two by the Georgia militia, that army movements may be freer and wider.”


President Lincoln, still cautiously interested in possible contacts by Confederate representatives looking for peace, sends Secretary John Hay to New York to consult with those involved.

[Doug64]

July 17, Sunday

Sherman’s advance on Atlanta begins this morning. All three Federal armies are now across the Chattahoochee, marching from their bridgeheads on an enormous wheeling maneuver designed to bear down upon the city from north and east.

Come night, at the Confederate headquarters at Nelson House on the Marietta road three miles northeast of Atlanta, Johnston confers with his chief engineers about strengthening the city’s fortifications to meet the Federal advance. At 10 pm, the arrival of a telegram interrupts the meeting; it is from Richmond, from the Confederate Army’s adjutant and inspector general, Samuel Cooper, who notifies Johnston: “I am directed by the Secretary of War to inform you that as you failed to arrest the advance of the enemy to the vicinity of Atlanta, far in the interior of Georgia, and express no confidence that you can defeat or repel him, you are hereby relieved from the command of the Army and Department of Tennessee, which you will immediately turn over to General Hood.”

John Bell Hood, impetuous and a fighter, will now take over in place of the cautious, careful Johnston. Many in the Confederate Army protest the move, but others cheer, including most Federal officers, believing they can trounce the Confederates in the expected fight. Now that Hood possesses what he has so avidly sought—at the age of 33, promotion to full general and command of the Army of Tennessee—he seems strangely reluctant to sieze control. The news from Richmon so astounds and overwhelms him, he will later write, that he remains “in deep thought throughout the night.”


General Wright and his two divisions have followed General Early to Leesburg, Virginia, skirmishing there with the Confederate rear guard. Wright’s force is joined by Ricketts’ VI Corps division and another division from XIX Corps under Brigadier General William H. Emory. But without cavalry to force Early to stop and deploy, the infantry can do little more than march along in the raiders’ footsteps. By today, however, Crook is at Purcellville, Virginia, seven miles due west of Leesburg, with Brigadier General Jeremiah Sullivan’s 7,000 infantrymen and General Duffié’s 2,000 troopers. For a few hours it seems that Wright and Crook might catch Early between them. But the Confederates slip through Snicker’s Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains—eight miles west and slightly south of Purcellville—and camp at Berryville, just west of the Shenandoah River.


Skirmishing occurs at Vining’s Station, Georgia, and at Herring Creek, Virginia. Other action takes place at Fredericksburg in Ray County, Missouri, and at Davison’s Ford near Clinton, Louisiana. Federals scout from Columbus to Hickman, Kentucky, and on the South Platte River in Colorado Territory.

President Lincoln, apparently disturbed over the uproar attending Federal casualties in the Virginia Campaign, writes Grant that he is glad to hear he plans to make a desperate effort to get a position at Petersburg and hopes “you may find a way that the effort shall not be desparate [sic] in the sense of great loss of life.”

[Doug64]

July 18, Monday

President Lincoln issues a call for 500,000 volunteers, thus emphasizing the need to refill army ranks after the severe fighting in Virginia. Editor Horace Greeley travels to Niagara Falls to speak with those said to represent Confederate peace feelers. The effort comes to nothing, since the Confederacy still demands independence. In Washington this is emphasized when J.R. Gilmore, who has talked with President Davis, tells President Lincoln that any terms must be based on recognition of the Confederacy. On the other hand, Lincoln has given a document to Greeley which says that any proposition must include restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery. This, for all intents and purposes, ends the flurry of peace overtures.


As General Crook’s troops are crossing the Shenandoah, or the “Shining Door,” as they like to call it, Early smashes into them with his whole force. The West Virginians are “driven back in intense disgust.” They suffer 422 casualties in a short but fierce skirmish.


Before dawn in Georgia, two members of Hood’s staff help their crippled commander to mount his horse and strap him into the saddle. Then Hood rides to Joseph Johnston’s headquarters northwest of Atlanta with an unusual request. He wants Johnston to retain command until the military crisis has passed. “Pocket that dispatch,” he pleads with Johnston, “leave me in command of my corps and fight the battle for Atlanta.” But Johnston refuses to postpone the change of command. So does President Jefferson Davis, despite a joint telegram from Hood and the other two corps commanders urging him to delay the order “until the fate of Atlanta is decided.” Johnston departs this afternoon, bound for Macon, where he and his wife, Lydia, have taken up temporary residence. Before he leaves, however, the troops pour out their admiration for the jaunty little general who restored their hope last winter at Dalton and who has retained their loving respect even in retreat. Several of his old regiments march out the Marietta road this morning to take up new positions north of Atlanta near Peachtree Creek. When they reach the two-story white house that has served as Johnston’s headquarters, the general steps outside. He stands with his head uncovered. The regiments remove their own hats and pass silently, with heads uncovered. Some of the officers break ranks and grasp his hand, as tears pour down their cheeks.

Hood’s regret at Johnston’s quick departure stems less from personal affection than from his reluctance to deal with the perilous situation confronting his army. With the enemy threatening the city, two of his three top generals—Alexander Stewart, who now leads Polk’s former corps, and Benjamin F. Cheatham, who Hood has named to lead his own corps temporarily—are untested in high command. And his one veteran corps commander, William Hardee, is so miffed at being passed over for command of the army that he asks for a transfer; his request is turned down. Hood himself, though a superb commander at the division level, has yet to prove himself at managing large numbers of troops. “Hood is a bold fighter,” his old chief, Robert E. Lee, had wired the President before the change. “I am doubtful as to other qualities necessary.” Hood’s physical infirmities—his shattered left arm and missing right leg—cast doubt on his ability to lead an army. By the accounts of some contemporaries, Hood suffers such intense pain that he is taking laudanum, an opiate that can impair mental judgment.

Whatever the truth of this surmise, Hood has been known as headstrong and rash long before giving an arm and leg for the Confederacy. As soon as William Sherman learns of the change in command—from a Southern newspaper smuggled out of Atlanta by a spy—he consults two of his army commanders, James McPherson and John Schofield, who had known Hood intimately at West Point in the class of 1853. Schofield had roomed with Hood and helped prevent his expulsion by tutoring him in mathematics. He warns Sherman that Hood will attack: “He’ll hit you like hell, now, before you know it.” Though Sherman immediately cautions his division commanders, he professes to be pleased. After ten frustrating weeks of trying to trap the elusive Johnston, he welcomes the prospect of fighting “in open ground, on anything like equal terms, instead of being forced to run up against prepared entrenchements.”

Near Peachtree Creek, north of Atlanta, skirmishing at Buckhead presages more severe action to come. Other skirmishing breaks out at Campbellton and along the Chattahoochee.


Otherwise things are fairly quiet, with an affair at Kabletown, West Virginia, near the Shenandoah; Union scouting from Falls Church, Virginia; Federal scouting in Shannon County and southwest and southeast Missouri. In Arizona Territory a Yankee expedition to the Pinal Mountains against Amerinds is underway.

At Richmond, President Davis names George A. Trenholm, a wealthy Charleston merchant, Secretary of the Treasury, replacing Christopher Memminger. Trenholm reluctantly accepts—the job is certainly not one anyone would wish on himself.

[Doug64]

July 19, Tuesday

Sherman soon gets his chance for an open battle. General Hood sees a flaw in the Federal alignment and makes his first move. The Federal armies, from their bridgeheads across the Chattahoochee, are now converging on Atlanta in a broad arc. Sherman intends to sever the Georgia Railroad, which runs from Atlanta eastward to Augusta and then makes connections north to Richmond. By so doing, he can prevent reinforcements from Lee’s army in Virginia. Today McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee is astride that railroad, marching toward Atlanta from Decatur, six miles to the east, destroying the rails as it comes. Schofield’s Army of the Ohio, connecting with McPherson’s right, is heading toward Atlanta along a road a mile or so north of the railroad and parallel with it. And George Thomas’s Armyof the Cumberland is much farther to Schofield’s right. Marching south, Thomas’s troops are nearing Peachtree Creek, behind which the bulk of Hood’s Confederates are deployed on ridges. As Hood quickly perceives, the gap between the advancing armies of Thomas and Schofield is more than two miles wide. Moreover, a maze of small streams—headwaters of Peachtree Creek—lace the marchy ground in and around the gap, making necessary a roundabout detour if one Federal army has to come to the aid of the other. This situation gives Hood an opportunity that he now plans to exploit.

Hood outlines a plan at a meeting tonight at his headquarters on Whitehall Street in Atlanta. He proposes to take advantage of the Federal gap by attacking tomorrow with the corps of Hardee and Stewart when Thomas’s army is crossing Peachtree Creek. These two corps are to drive Thomas’s lead elements into the creek, oblique to the left, and crush the remainder of Thomas’s troops in the pocket formed by the confluence of the creek and the Chattahoochee River. Meanwhile, on the right of the Confederate line, Cheatham’s corps—with the help of the cavalry and the state militia—will hold off McPherson and Schofield. Then, after Thomas is defeated, Hardee and Stewart will join Cheatham in destroying the other two Federal armies. (It will be debated whether this is Johnston’s plan or Hood’s.) The prospect of defeating Sherman greatly excites Hood. A reporter who talks with him after the meeting writes that the general’s eyes flash with “a strange indescribable light.” But the upcoming battle will be Hood’s first as an independent commander, and he makes some mistakes in coordinating the attack. Although he hopes to catch Thomas’s columns while they are crossing the creek and before they can entrench, he unaccountably schedules tomorrow’s attack for the comparatively late hour of 1 pm.


In the Valley, General Wright shows no eagerness to engage the enemy that has at last deployed to face him. Instead, he spends today looking for another way across the Shenandoah River. Hunter, despite having washed his hands of the whole affair and having predicted its failure, sees a chance to help and does so at once. William Averall’s cavalry and the rest of Crook’s infantry have just arrived at Harpers Ferry, and Hunter sends them south to attack Early’s flanks. Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, with the infantry, is stopped ten miles from Snicker’s Ferry, but Averell drives from Winchester and by late in the day has reached Stephenson’s Depot, six miles from the city and well behind the Confederate position. There is a series of skirmishes at Ashby’s Gap and Berry’s Ford, Virginia, and Darkesville, Charles Town, and Kabletown, West Virginia. The engagement at Berry’s Ford on the Shenandoah is particularly sharp; Early throws a major portion of his force against the advancing Federals. Come night, Early, threatened from three directions, marches most of his army south toward Srasburg. But he sends Ramseur’s division to stop Averell. Ramseur, who has just written to his wife “I may be pardoned for saying that I am making a reputarion as Major General,” advances confidently.


Additional events include a skirmish on the Benton Road near Little Rock, Arkansas; a Confederate attack on Webster, Washington County, Missouri; a Federal scout to Taos, Missouri; a week of Confederate guerilla operations along the White River, Arkansas; and a skirmish at Iron Bridge, Indian Territory.

[Doug64]

July 20, Wednesday

Outside Atlanta, Georgia, readjustments in the Confederate corps alignment causes delays, pushing up the already late 1 pm hour for the assault on Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland. It is almost 4 pm by the time Hood’s assault formations finally start forward from the fortifications a mile south of Peachtree Creek. By now, most of Thomas’s Federals have crossed to the south bank, and the opportunity to catch the Army of the Cumberland athwart the creek has been lost. Confederate mistakes persist. Hood’s plan calls for the assault to be made in echelon by three of Hardee’s divisions and two of Stewart’s, with each corps retaining a division in reserve. Hardee’s rightmost division under William Bate is to attack first. When it has advanced about 150 yards, the next division on the left will follow—and so on in staircase succession. This textbook maneuver quickly falls apart. Some of Stewart’s men jump the gun, preceding Hardee’s main attack, and then the divisions advance pell-mell with little regard for the precise timing Hood had envisioned.

And yet, despite all the delays and the Confederates’ lack of coordination, the attack catches the Federals off guard. Thomas has seven divisions on an irregular front about three miles wide and roughly parallel to Peachtree Creek. It is a hot, lazy day, and only General John Newton, commanding the easternmost division, has been concerned enough to halt and throw up temporary breastworks. The rest of the Federal troops either are still moving up or have just stopped and are sprawled about resting, playing cards, or picking blackberries. A New York regiment has gotten word they will probably camp for the night where they are. They are congratulating themselves on their unexpected good luck, when suddenly there is a rifle shot on their front. It is as unexpected “as would be thunder from out of a clear sky.”

Hardee’s attack slams into the four divisions on Thomas’s left. Newton’s men, deployed on a ridge astride the Peachtree road about a half mile south of the creek, gets a double dose. His troops are hit in front by William Walker’s division and in the left flank by Bate’s. federal teamsters climb trees in the rear and report that “the Johnnies” are “charging by the acre.” Bate’s troops pour around Newton’s left. Struggling through thickets and swampy ground, the columns rout two Federal regiments, which escape only by plunging into Peachtree Creek and swimming to the north bank.

The Federal commander, George Thomas, watches from the north bank of the creek with growing apprehension. The attackers are headed directly toward a crucial bridge over the creek in Newton’s left rear; if they capture it, the main Federal line of withdrawal will be severed. Never known for alacrity—“Old Slow Trot,” some call him for his refusal to ever hurry his horse—Thomas is always at his best in such moments of defensive crisis. Now he swings into action. He calls up a battery and hurries the horses across the bridge, slapping them with his hand as they pass. The battery is joined in line by six of Newton’s guns and four of his regiments, which have redeployed to face east in front of the bridge. The Federals open fire as Bate’s men emerge from the thickets and start to rush across open ground to the bridge. The concentration of fire breaks the charging Confederate columnsthe leading companies, or what is left of them, surging backward upon those in the rear. They in turn break, and then all go in wild disorder back to the friendly cover of the timber.

Newton, having repulsed the assaults on his left flank and front, faces a new threat on his right. The adjoining division under Brigadier General William T. Ward, posted behind a ridge several hundred yards in the rear, hasn’t come in line; Ward’s absence has created a quarter-mile-wide gap between Newton’s right and the next Union division. Into this pocket marches Cheatham’s division under the temporary command of Brigadier General George E. Maney. As Newton’s men hurriedly face right to enfilade this Confederate wedge, a crucial conversation is occurring behind the Federal line. Two of General Ward’s brigade commanders—Colonel John Coburn and Colonel Benjamin Henry Harrison, the future President—appeal to Ward for permission to move their men forward. Ward at first refuses, saying that it is against the orders of his corps commander, General Joseph Hooker; but at the last possible moment Ward relents and permits the counterattack to proceed. Harrison sends his men forward; supported by Coburn’s troops, he puts spurs to his horse and dashes forward up the hill, in front of his brigade. Both brigades run rapidly up the road, cheering as they go. Ward’s remaining brigade follows, and the sudden appearance of the entire division on the crest of the ridge throws the Confederate assault into confusion. Little by little, the Cofnederates are forced to yield ground until a final lunge gains the Federals control of the ridge and the surrounding fields.

Back on the north bank of the creek, George Thomas awaits the outcome of this fight, worriedly working his short, thick whiskers “all out of shape.” But when he sees Maney’s Confederates break in front of Ward’s men, he throws his hat to the ground in delight and shouts, “Hurrah! Look at the 3rd Division. They’re driving them!” The Harrison-led charge mends the breach on the Federal front; farther west down Thomas’s line, in savage fighting, the Confederates are able to penetrate the defenses in places, but they can make no lasting gains. After two hours of fighting, the Confederate attack is stymied—from Hardee’s own corps on the right to Stewart’s corps on the left.

It is time for William Hardee to play his trump card. All afternoon he has kept in reserve the toughest division in Hood’s army—that of Patrick Cleburne. Now Hardee decides to unleash Cleburne against Thomas’s far left with the hope that he can salvage a victory. At 6 pm, just as Cleburne gets his men in line for the assault, a courier comes galloping up with urgent orders from Hood. McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee is advancing on Atlanta with alarming speed. At noon these Federals had been midway between Decatur and Atlanta, well within artillery range of the city, and McPherson had ordered the first artillery bombardment. Captain Francis DeGress unlimbered one of his battery’s 20-pounder Parrotts and fired the first shot. The shell arched over the woods and fell about two and a half miles away at the intersection of Ivy and Ellis Streets. A little girl walking there with her parents and her dog was killed instantly—the first civilian casualty of the campaign. Now McPherson’s troops are threatening to flank Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry off a patch of high ground near the Georgia Railroad a few miles east of Atlanta. Hood needs a division of infantry to support Wheeler. So Hardee reluctantly calls off Cleburne and sends him marching southeastward to block McPherson.

Cleburne’s departure and the approach of darkness ends the Battle of Peachtree Creek. Hood’s first gamble in his new command has failed. He has gained not an inch of ground, and his troops have suffered nearly 3,000 casualties of almost 20,000 engaged—a large price when compared with the Federal toll of about 1,700 from slighty more than 20,000. The ridge where Cleburne reinforces Wheeler’s cavalry this night is bare of trees and is therefore called Bald Hill.


Late in the afternoon at Stephenson’s Depot, just north of Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley, acting on an erroneous report that the enemy’s numbers are small, Ramseur forms his Confederates in a line of battle and pitches into Averell’s force. Too late, Ramseur realizes that he is facing infantry as well as cavalry, and that the Federal line overlaps his left by 200 yards. He tries to shift his reserve brigade to meet the threat, but before it can get into position the Confederate left breaks and runs like sheep. Ramseur loses 203 killed and wounded, along with four guns and more than 250 men captured by the Federals. “My men behaved shamefully,” Ramseur says, and he burns for a chance to remove the blotch from his record. The main body of Early’s troops continue to withdraw southward toward Strasburg.

Acting on Grant’s instructions that he follow Early only long enough to be sure that the Confederates are headed back to Richmond, General Wright does an abrupt about-face and heads for Washington.


Other action for the day is at Philomont, Virginia; in Blount County, Tennessee; in La Fayette and Johnson Counties and at Arrow Rock, Missouri. A long Federal expedition from Fort Boise to Boonville in Idaho Territory begins lasting until August 17th. At Fort Sumter the current major bombardment continues. Commandant J.C. Mitchel is mortally wounded. During the fourteen days the Federal throw 4,890 rounds at the fort once more battering the already nearly wrecked work.

[Doug64]

July 21, Thursday

At daybreak outside Atlanta, McPherson’s artillery opens up against Cleburne and Wheeler on and around Bald Hill. The Confederates are particularly hard hit by the 20-pounder Parrotts of Captain DeGress, who fired the first shells into Atlanta yesterday. In a few minutes forty men are killed and over 100 wounded by that battery alone. In one company of Texas cavalry, seventeen of eighteen men are “placed hors de combat by one shot alone.” After the bombardment, Federal infantry move forward. A brigade of Brigadier General Mortimer Leggett’s division, under Brigadier General Manning Force, storms the hill, supported on the right by a division under Brigadier General Giles Smith. Thursday is so hot that three Federal officers fall from sunstroke on the slopes of the hill; the action is so furious that Patrick Cleburne will call it “the bitterest fighting” of his life. By afternoon, the Federals have control of the crest—at a cost of 750 casualties—and have begun emplacing artillery there. From this strong point, McPherson’s guns can command the Confederate extreme right flank.

To John Bell Hood, it is clear that McPherson is now in a position to flank the Confederate right on the south and march into Atlanta practically unimpeded. Or McPherson can skirt the southern edge of the city and strike westward for the Macon & Western Railroad, Atlanta’s most important remaining supply line, and thus isolate both the city and Hood’s army. To forestall these possibilities, Hood presents a daring plan to his commanders this night.in conception, it borrows from those brilliant flanking marches in Virginia—designed by Robert E. Lee and executed by Stonewall Jackson—that got in the rear of the Federal armies at 2nd Bull Run/Manassas and Chancellorsville. Hood intends to get in the rear of McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee. Although McPherson is solidly anchored on Bald Hill, his extreme left, farther south, is exposed. Unprotected by terrain or by a screen of cavalry to warn of impending attack, this flank is “up in the air.” To cover his strike, Hood orders two of his corps—Stewart’s and Cheatham’s—to withdraw this night into new fortifications bordering Atlanta on the north and east. Meanwhile, Hardee is to march his four divisions south through Atlanta and then turn northeastward to reach McPherson’s rear. Wheeler’s cavalry will accompany Hardee’s infantry but then proceed to Decatur to destroy McPherson’s wagon train, which is encamped in the woods just south of the little town. At dawn, Hardee is to hit McPherson’s exposed left from flank and rear. When Hardee’s attack is well under way, Cheatham will assault McPherson from the west. Once the young Federal general is caught and crunched in this vise, the Confederates will deal with the two remaining enemy armies.

Hood’s plan requires Hardee to make a difficult night march of more than fifteen miles. The march immediately falls behind schedule. Cleburne’s troops have difficulty disengaging from the Federals at Bald Hill, and it is past midnight when his men finally break contact and join the rear of the column marching south through Atlanta. There are further delays. Hardee’s men are exhausted from the fighting and oppressive heat. Stumbling along back roads in pitch darkness, they struggle to keep their feet; many fall by the wayside.


Unaware of the highly fortunate (for the North) wounding of Forrest, A.J. Smith has continued his retreat from Harrisburg, Mississippi through New Albany and across the Tallahatchie. Midway between there and La Grange he encountered a supply train sent to meet him. He kept going despite this relief, and returns to his starting point today, after sixteen round-trip days of marching and fighting. “I bring back everything in good order, nothing lost,” he informs Washburn, who finds the message so welcome a contrast to those received from other generals sent out after Forrest that he passes it along with pride to Sherman. Far from proud, Sherman is downright critical, especially of the resultant fact that Forrest has been left to his own devices, which might well include a raid into middle Tennessee and a strike against the blue supply lines running down into north Georgia. Engaged in moving against Atlanta, Sherman replies that Smith is “to pursue and continue to follow Forrest. He must keep after him till recalled.... It is of vital importance that Forrest does not go to Tennessee.”


Otherwise the record includes a skirmish at Atchafalaya, Louisiana; a Confederate attack on Plattsburg, Missouri; and a five-day expedition by Federals from Barrancas, Florida, with several skirmishes.