A TALK TO OLD COMRADES

Address to Sixteenth Army Corps
Delivered at the National Encampment, G. A. R.
Washington, D. C., October, 1902
By Major-General Grenville M. Dodge

Comrades of the Sixteenth Army Corps:

The Sixteenth Army Corps was organized December 18th, 1862, and formed into two wings. General A. J. Smith commanded the right wing, and General G. M. Dodge the left wing of the Corps. The left wing was organized with the Corps, the right wing a year or more afterwards. The Corps, as a body, was never together, though it probably took part in more widely separated fields than any other Corps in the Army of the Tennessee. The right wing, under General Smith, was in the Vicksburg campaign, and after that it went to the Department of the Gulf, and was with General Banks in his movement up Red River, and saved that Army from defeat; of this there is no doubt. After that, it was sent after Forrest, and it was the only command that I know of that caught and whipped him. The left wing overtook General Forrest at Town Creek, in 1863, in its march to Decatur in the rear of Bragg's Army, but he did not stay long enough for us to get a good fight out of him.

From the campaign after Forrest, General Smith's command was sent to the Department of the Missouri to drive out Price. There I found them, in December, 1864, when I took command of that Department, in a deplorable condition,—without clothing, shoes, or camp equipage. Under an order from General Grant, I sent them to Nashville, with all the force in my department, some twenty thousand men all told, to help General Thomas, and I sent them everything they needed to clothe and equip them. You all remember how you were frozen in on the Mississippi, and had to take the cars. One of the pleasantest recollections of my life is that I received a letter from General Smith, thanking me for appreciating their condition, and having in Nashville when they arrived, everything they needed. He said that it was the first time they had been treated decently, and they were thankful they had fallen into the hands of some one who appreciated them.

At the Battle of Nashville it was General Smith, with the right wing of the Sixteenth Corps, and the troops of the Department of the Missouri, that turned the left flank of Hood's Army, and was practically in his rear when stopped; and I have heard many officers who were there say that if he had been let alone he would have captured or destroyed that wing of the Army. Thus ended the eventful career of the right wing, and its fortunes were cast with the Army of the Cumberland in its chase after Hood.

The left wing was organized from the troops I commanded in the District of Corinth, and had in it the old Second Division of the Army of the Tennessee that Grant organized at Cairo, that fought at Belmont, Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, and the two Corinths. It had on its banners, "First at Donelson." I took command right after the Battle of Corinth, where it had been censured by Rosecrans and praised by Grant for the part it took in the Battle of Corinth. General Grant held us at Corinth as a protection to his communications while the campaign against Vicksburg was going on. In a letter to me he said he had left us there to protect that flank, for he knew that if Bragg endeavored to break that line we would stay; so you see he still had faith in his old Division. From Corinth we marched with Sherman in his celebrated trip from Memphis to Chattanooga. We wintered on the line, and rebuilt the Nashville and Decatur Road, and in his Memoirs General Grant, after describing the condition of the Army, and the necessity for rebuilding the railway from Nashville to Decatur, speaks thus of the work of the Sixteenth Army Corps:

General Dodge had no tools to work with except those of the pioneer—axes, picks, and spades. With these he was enabled to intrench his men, and protect them against surprise from small parties of the enemy, and, as he had no base of supplies until the road could be completed back to Nashville, the first matter to consider, after protecting his men, was the getting in of food and forage from the surrounding country. He had his men and teams bring in all the grain they could find, or all they needed, and all the cattle for beef, and such other food as could be found. Millers were detailed from the ranks to run the mills along the line of the army. Where they were not near enough to the troops for protection they were taken down and moved up to the line of the road. Blacksmith shops, with all the iron and steel found in them, were used up in like manner. Blacksmiths were detailed and set to work making the tools necessary in railroad and bridge building. Axemen were at work getting out timber for bridges, and cutting fuel for locomotives and cars. Thus every branch of railroad building, making tools to work with, and supplying the workmen with food, was all going on at once, and without the aid of a mechanic or workman except what the command itself furnished. General Dodge had the work assigned to him finished within forty days after receiving his orders. The number of bridges to rebuild was 182, many of them over deep and wide chasms. The length of road repaired was 102 miles.

I only quote a small part of what General Grant says in this connection, to show you that while the Sixteenth Corps had its share of fighting, and praise for it, still it was a Corps that Grant called upon in an emergency, and when he wanted great deeds done; and proves not only what they could turn their hands to when necessary, but is also a sample of what our great army was made of.

In the spring of 1864 we became a part of the great Army in the Atlanta campaign. When we arrived at Chattanooga, on the 5th of May, I called at General Sherman's headquarters. General McPherson, our Army Commander, was there. Sherman said to him: "You had better send Dodge to take Ship's Gap." "Why, General," replied McPherson, "that is thirty miles away, and Dodge's troops are not yet unloaded, and he has no transportation with him." Sherman said: "Let him try it, and have the transportation follow." We struck out, and that night at midnight Sprague's Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Sixteenth Corps had gained the Gap. The enemy appeared the next morning. This opened the way through Snake Creek Gap, planting us in the rear of Johnston's Army, and forcing him to abandon his impregnable position at Dalton.

Our battles in the Atlanta campaign were those of the Army of the Tennessee. The left wing received continual commendation until the great battle of the 22d, when it happened to be in the rear of our Army, and received and defeated the celebrated movement of Hood to our rear. Sprague's Brigade fought all day at Decatur, and saved our trains. In the battle of the 22d of July we had only five thousand men in line, but met and repulsed three Divisions of Hardee's Corps, and McPherson, who stood on our right and witnessed the fight, watching the charge of Fuller and Mersey, and the breaking of two of the enemy's columns, spoke of us in the highest terms, and five minutes later was dead. Our Army, who knew and loved him, never could reconcile ourselves to his great loss.

The Battle of Atlanta was one of the few battles of the war where the attack on the Sixteenth Army Corps caught it on the march in the rear of the Army, without intrenchments or protection of any kind, both sides fighting in the open.

In his address describing the battle of the 22d of July, General Strong, of General McPherson's staff, says:

General McPherson and myself, accompanied only by our orderlies, rode out and took position on the right of Dodge's line, and witnessed the desperate assaults of Hood's army. General McPherson's admiration for the steadiness and bravery of the Sixteenth Corps was unbounded. Had the Sixteenth Corps given way the rebel army would have been in the rear of the Seventeenth and Fifteenth Corps, and would have swept like an avalanche over our supply-trains, and the position of the Army of the Tennessee would have been very critical.

General Frank P. Blair pays this tribute to the fighting of the Sixteenth Army Corps, in his official report of the Battle of Atlanta:

I started to go back to my command, and witnessed the fearful assault made on the Sixteenth Army Corps, and its prompt and gallant repulse by that command. It was a most fortunate circumstance for the whole army that the Sixteenth Army Corps occupied the position I have attempted to describe at the moment of attack; and, although it does not belong to me to report upon the bearing and conduct of the officers and men of that Corps, still I cannot withhold my expression of admiration for the manner in which this command met and repulsed the repeated and persistent attacks of the enemy. The attack upon our flank and rear was made by the whole of Hardee's corps.

Under General Howard, a part of the left wing took part in the battle of the 28th of July. On August 19th I was given a Confederate leave, when that beau-ideal of a soldier, my old schoolmate and comrade, General T. E. G. Ransom, took command of the Corps. The right wing knew him, for he was with you in the Red River campaign. He died on a stretcher in command of the Corps in the chase after Hood. The old Second Division had its innings with General Corse, at Altoona, where the fighting has been immortalized in verse and song. My fortunes took me away to the command of the Army and Department of the Missouri, and the two Divisions of the left wing were merged one into the Fifteenth and the other into the Seventeenth Corps, and, so far as the campaigns were concerned, the Corps fought in two units, the right and left wings, and each was a Corps command.

The grave of that remarkable soldier, General A. J. Smith, whose distinguished services were so often recognized by Generals Grant and Sherman, has not a stone to designate it. The Society of the Army of the Tennessee is aiding in raising the funds to commemorate his memory and deeds by erecting a monument in his home in St. Louis.

The Sixteenth Army Corps had great opportunities in the campaigns it took part in, and never failed to make the most of them. They went cheerfully to any work assigned to them. They have left in the war records a history that they may well be proud of, and every work they have undertaken has received the strong commendation of their superior officers.

MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE G. MEADE

Commander
Army of the Potomac
1864