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POST-MORTEM
On August 23, the day after Sherman definitely decided to swing the
bulk of his army to the south of Atlanta, Lincoln had the members of his
cabinet sign, unseen, a memorandum stating that "it seems exceedingly
probable that this Administration will not be reelected. Then it will be
my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect, as to save the Union
between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his
election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward."
On August 31, even as Sherman's army repulsed Hardee's attack at
Jonesboro and reached the Macon railroad, the Democratic national
convention, meeting in Chicago, nominated General George B. McClellan
for president on a platform that declared the war a failure and called
for "a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention
of the States or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest
practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal
Union of the States."
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UNION SOLDIERS PHOTOGRAPHED IN A FORT NEAR ATLANTA. (LC)
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Thus as August drew to an end both Lincoln and the Democrats expected
that a war-weary North, despairing of victory, would elect a president
committed to restoring the Union by means of peace rather than force.
And the same expectation prevailed in the South, where on August 20 the
Richmond Sentinel, which reflected the views of Jefferson Davis,
predicted that if the Confederate armies continued to hold Grant and
Sherman at bay for just six more weeks, "we are almost sure to be in
much better condition to treat for peace than we are now" for the North
no longer would be willing and therefore able to go on with the war.
Sherman's capture of Atlanta immediately and decisively reversed the
mood of the North and the expectations of Lincoln, the Democrats, and
the South. To the majority of Northerners it meant that the war was
being won and so should be continued until the Union was restored and
slavery, the thing that had caused the war, was totally eradicated.
Likewise, Lincoln's pessimism about his election prospects, which other
Republican leaders shared, turned to optimism, an optimism that proved
fully justified when he was reelected by a landslide majority. On the
other hand, the fall of Atlanta wrecked both the Democratic platform and
McClellan's candidacy. And in the South it became clear to all except
the most fanatical that the North would go on with the war until its
superior might prevailed, as it did, even though the dwindling remnants
of the Confederate army struggled on desperately for six more months
before Lee mounted the steps of the McLean house at Appomattox Court
House.
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SHERMAN ORDERED HIS MEN TO DESTROY PUBLIC BUILDINGS LIKE THIS BANK. BUT
NOT PRIVATE DWELLINGS OR ENTERPRISES. (LC)
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SHERMAN'S MEN MUTILATE THE RAIL LINES IN ATLANTA. (LC)
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Johnston blamed Davis and Hood for the loss of Atlanta and they in
turn blamed Johnston. Actually all three of them shared the
responsibility. Davis badly overestimated the military potential of the
Army of Tennessee and underestimated the power of the Federal forces
arrayed against it. Yet he furnished Johnston with more troops than Lee
had to oppose Grant (about 75,000, whereas Lee had about 60,000); he
retained Johnston in command until it became manifest that he could not
be relied on to make a whole-hearted effort to defend Atlanta, the sole
thing Davis asked of him; and he was justified in not sacrificing
Mississippi and Alabama by sending Forrest to attack Sherman's supply
line, for not only would this have deprived the Army of Tennessee of its
logistical base, it also probably would not have achieved any decisive
result: not once during the Civil War did cavalry raids on railroads
turn back the advance of a major army and it is extremely doubtful that
Forrest, military genius that he was, could have provided an
exception.
Johnston, as he was throughout his Civil War career, was more
concerned during the Atlanta campaign with avoiding defeat than gaining
victory. For this reason, and because of his inferior numbers, he for
the most part adhered strictly to the defensive. Later he claimed that
by so doing he preserved the strength of his forces while wearing down
that of Sherman's to a point where he could and would have, when the
Federals neared Atlanta, carried out a successful offensive had he not
been removed from command. In truth, however, the Confederate army
during May, June, and early July suffered a higher percentage of loss
from all causes (killed, wounded, sick, captured, and desertion) than
did the Union army, with the result that Sherman was proportionately
stronger when he crossed the Chattahoochee than he was when he advanced
from the Etowah. Furthermore Johnston's postwar assertions that he could
have, had he remained in command, held Atlanta "forever" or
"indefinitely" (whatever that means) are more than dubious, they are
fatuous. If Johnston could not effectively counter Sherman's flanking
maneuvers in the mountains of northern Georgia, what good reason is
there for believing he would have done so in the relatively flat terrain
around Atlanta? None. The most likely outcome of Johnston having
remained in command is that Sherman would have entered Atlanta in late
July instead of early September.
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THE CYCLORAMA
The hour of 4:30 on the afternoon of Friday, July 22, 1864, is
forever preserved on the half-acre canvas of the Atlanta Cyclorama at
Grant Park, on Boulevard in southeastern Atlanta. Even more impressive
than the better-known Gettysburg Cyclorama, which depicts the acme of
Pickett's Charge, this magnificent rendering of the Battle of Atlanta
stands fifty feet tall inside a marble pantheon not far from the actual
scenes portrayed.
The painting was begun in Milwaukee two decades after the battle and
was the collective creation of ten German artists who labored for a year
and a half to include every possible detail of the action. The
best-recognized feature of the painting is the brick, hip-roofed Troup
Hurt house, an unfinished structure standing near the Georgia
Railroad—a little nearer in the painting than it was actually
situated, in fact. Around the house swarm Alabama and South Carolina
troops belonging to the brigade of Brigadier General Arthur Manigault,
engaged with Midwesterners (mostly from Illinois and Ohio) under
Brigadier General Joseph Lightburn. To the right of this, the
Mississippians of Colonel Jacob Sharp's brigade can be seen moving
against the newly arrived brigade of Colonel Augustus Mersy, whose men
also hailed from Illinois and Ohio. Over the carnage soars an eagle,
said to represent "Old Abe," the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteers,
which took flight whenever its regiment went into action; if that is the
intention, the bird represents a flaw in the painting's accuracy, for
Old Abe and the 8th Wisconsin were hundreds of miles to the west, in
Mississippi, during the Battle of Atlanta.
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A SMALL PORTION OF THE CYCLORAMA. (NPS)
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Lightburn's Federals fell back in disorder when Manigault's and
Sharp's Confederates pierced their line: the Southerners poured through,
overrunning two Illinois batteries and rolling up the Union trenches.
They threatened to force the Federal XV Corps backward onto the rear of
the XVI and XVII Corps, which were already under attack from the front
by William Hardee's corps, but General Sherman ordered up additional
artillery and John Logan shifted Mersy's fresh brigade from the Union
left to help patch the breach. With rallied troops of Lightburn's,
Mersy's brigade swept forward to regain their lost works. It is at this
juncture that the action of the cyclorama is frozen. Battery horses lie
dead or dying between the lines, killed so the Confederates could not
carry away the artillery pieces they had overrun; Southern sharpshooters
have taken refuge in the brick house; a cleated tree that served as an
impromptu Union signal tower stands abandoned; an ambulance carries away
the grievously wounded Union general, Manning Force, who survived a
hideous wound to the upper part of his face; soldiers fight hand-to-hand
for the entrenchments.
Originally housed under a dome on Edgewood Avenue more than a century
ago, the cyclorama was later moved to Grant Park, where it was
extensively renovated in the early 1980s.
>—William Marvel
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Hood attempted to do what Davis wanted done: shatter Sherman's army
or at least damage it so badly that it would be compelled to retreat.
Obviously he failed. Although excellent in concept, his battle plans
were unrealistic in practice, for they required too few troops to do too
much without a sufficient margin for time and error. Consequently, it
might have been better if Hood, while fighting aggressively, had sought
less ambitious objectives that were more suited to the limited offensive
capability of his army, with the purpose of throwing Sherman off
balance, putting him on the defensive, and thus denying him Atlanta as
long as possible—mayhap until after the North's presidential
election. But Hood could not have done this and still be Hood; he would
have had to been Lee. And that he was not, even though he tried his best
to be.
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AMID THE RUBBLE OF THE ROUNDHOUSE SIT UNSCATHED LOCOMOTIVES AND FREIGHT
CARS. (LC)
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SHERMAN (LEANING ON CANNON AT RIGHT) AND STAFF PHOTOGRAPHED AFTER THE
CAPTURE OF ATLANTA. (LC)
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On the Union side the campaign for Atlanta was, as Grant declared in
a telegram of congratulations to Sherman, "the most gigantic undertaking
given to any general in the war." Sherman owed his success mainly to
Confederate mistakes, to not making any irreparable blunders of his own,
and above all to the superior power and high quality of his army, which
he maintained by not, like Grant in Virginia, repeatedly engaging in
bloody offensive battles designed to knock out the enemy with one mighty
blow but instead employing flanking moves to compel the Confederates to
abandon one strong position after another and finally Atlanta itself.
His sole major failure, one stemming from his concept of warfare and a
fixation with capturing Atlanta to the near exclusion of all other
objectives, was not to take advantage of the numerous opportunities he
had to destroy the opposing army in Georgia or mangle it so badly as to
render it strategically impotent. As a consequence, Hood's forces,
although badly battered, remained a source of danger and trouble until
Thomas finally smashed them at the Battle of Nashville in December
1864.
But if Sherman failed to do as much as he could and should have done,
he accomplished what he set out to do and had to do: take Atlanta. And
in doing that he guaranteed the North's victory by depriving the South
of its last chance of winning—of winning by not losing.
On January 1, 1864, Mary Chesnut of South Carolina had written in her
diary: "God help my country!" Nine months later, on learning of
Atlanta's fall, she wrote: "No hope." Those two words said it all.
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Back cover: Federal Attack on Kennesaw Mountain, by Thure de
Thulstrup. Courtesy of The Seventh Regiment Fund, Inc.
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