THE ASSAULT.
Cockerell was at length ordered forward and the attack began. According to French’s account, everything went as successfully as possible. He represents the triple lines of intrenchments and Redoubts on the west side as being captured one, after another, his troops resting but briefly at each to gather strength and survey the work before them, and again rushing forward in murderous hand-to-hand conflict that left the ditches filled with dead, until they were masters of the “Second Redoubt,” and the “Third or Main Redoubt” was filled with those driven from the captured works and further crowded by the refugees from the eastern fort and its defences, who had been driven out by the attack of Sears. He represents the Federal forces, their fire almost silenced, as being herded into the one Redoubt on the west, of which French’s troops occupied the ditch and were preparing for the final attack.
At this critical moment, with the garrison and the precious stores, as it were, in the hollow of his hand, French received word that General Sherman, who had been “repeatedly signalled during the battle,” was close behind him with his whole army, and within two miles of the road he would have to take to rejoin his corps.
On this point of Sherman’s proximity to French as his reason for leaving, we have not only full knowledge of the exact position and movement of our troops to show that such was really not the case, but a brief piece of testimony from the other side in the shape of a dispatch from Major Mason, Hood’s adjudant-general, from which it is evident that French, becoming hopeless of success, had sought in advance to justify at headquarters the failure of his enterprise. The date and hour of this dispatch, which reads as follows, are of interest:
“Carley’s House, Oct. 5, 1864. 8:15 p. m.
Lt. Gen’l Stewart,
Com’d’g Corps.
General French’s dispatch, forwarded by yourself, is just received. Gen. Hood directs me to say that he does not know where a division could march at this time to give any assistance to Gen. French, but that you will endeavor to send some scouts to him, and direct him to leave the railroad and march to the West, to New Hope Church.
Gen. Hood does not understand how Gen. French could be cut off at the point he designates in his dispatch, as he should have moved directly away from the railroad to the West, if he deemed his position precarious.
A. P. M.”
It is of course obvious from the map that if French found Sherman approaching from the South, he had only to follow westward the road up which he had been charging at Allatoona all day and free himself from danger in an hour. It would be of interest to see this dispatch of French’s and observe the hour when sent, but it is not forthcoming. The hour of the reply is significant. It need not have taken a mounted man three hours to get word to Stewart, then near a junction with Hood and to Hood himself, less than 15 miles away. The reply, made at once, is written at 8:15 p. m., and French’s message must certainly have been sent later than 4 p. m. French had probably been gone from Allatoona an hour or more when he bethought him to send the request for a division to extricate him.
The facts are, that it was not until the night of Oct. 5th that the nearest troops of Sherman’s went into camp at Brushy Mountain, 11 miles distant in an air line, and none reached Allatoona until the 7th.
But to return to French. It was really an immense pity that he should feel obliged to leave just when he had but to put forth his hand to snatch the prize; but then it would not do to have his division cut off from the army, and on the whole it might be well to start, and if so, why not at once?
So about 1:30 he says an order was sent to Sears and Cockerell to withdraw. The ground was too rough to carry badly wounded men over it, so that those who could not get away on their own feet had to be left.
The artillery, unable to operate effectively with the assaulting column close up on the works, had already been in part ordered to take the road, and after the assaulting troops had left, French went to the two regiments who had supported it, and sent a battery to the block house at the railway crossing of Allatoona Creek, fired fifty shots at it, knocked it about the ears of the garrison, and setting fire to it, smoked them out and marched them off as prisoners.
French’s report of this affair, written a month later, from which the above is condensed, is very interesting and dramatic, and regarded as a literary composition, of no mean merit. He has certainly made the best of a bad business, and if his facts do not quite tally with those of his opponents, at least the discrepancies were not officially noticed at headquarters, nor probably would a gloomier account of the affair have been considered more inspiriting. Those rations would have been extremely convenient, could they, or even a part of them, have been hauled away for distribution among the hungry Confederates, and if that were impracticable, it would have been at least a noble stroke to have destroyed them. On this head French’s report is silent; nor does he endeavor to explain how it happened that so vital a part of his own program was omitted. In effect, the play had been badly broken up by the attentions of the gallery, and Hamlet had slipped out of it.
French is without excuse for his fear of Sherman’s approach, baseless as we know it to have been. Armstrong is responsible for despatches to him suggesting it. All the same, the evidence is conclusive that French was beaten, that he knew it, and that he had to withdraw quite independently of Sherman’s movements.
A Confederate historian, K. S. Bevier, writes as follows on this point: “The men of French’s Division had now become so much scattered that it was impossible to gather a sufficient number to give any hope of successful assault on the Fort.”
What can wholly be pardoned to French is the unstinted commendation he bestows on the gallantry of his men.
These poor fellows, ragged and hungry, with but a handful or two of parched corn in their haversacks, had marched all day on the 3rd; had worked all that night destroying the railroad; had worked and marched all day on the 4th; had marched to Allatoona during that night, and had fought nearly all day on the 5th. Nor is it forbidden to those who felt the vigor of their dashing onset and the undaunted determination with which they rallied again and again to the assault of the intrenchments, or who witnessed the hand-to-hand encounters with sword and bayonet, with butts of guns, and even with loose pieces of rock, to appreciate the intrepidity and resolution with which they hung to their bloody and fruitless task.
Brave men may honor bravery the world over. We can in all sympathy and common brotherhood say: “They were of our blood and race. Peace to their ashes. Give us the like to stand side by side with us, and we could fear no quarrel, were it with the whole round world.”