Chapter XXIII
GENERAL WHEELER’S PURSUIT AND DEFEAT
OF GENERALS STONEMAN, GARRARD AND
McCOOK, JULY 27-AUGUST 5, 1864
By July, 1864, the storms were beating heavily and mercilessly upon the Confederacy. The power of numbers was beginning to tell. The resources of the South, month by month, were more and more impaired. Munitions of war and supplies of food became the controlling elements, and in these the Confederates fared most grievously. The arsenals and manufactories were worked to their utmost limit, and one of the most marvelous things connected with the Confederate war was the ability of its people to supply the necessities of the fighters. The disparity of fighting men was tremendous, and the difference in resources and supplies was to the South appalling. That the war lasted so long is a most magnificent tribute to the loyalty and the patience of the people of the Confederate states. Few nations ever continued so fierce a struggle with such inadequate resources for so lengthened a period. The closest scrutiny of the conditions under which the South made the contest only adds wonder to the spirit and valor of those who thus hampered by adversity and inadequate resources faced so resolutely the losses, privations and sacrifices of so many battles through such lengthened years.
Most of the adversities, as well as much of the severest fighting, marked the campaigns in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. These states covered a vast boundary and into their very heart flowed many navigable streams. The Mississippi, the Ohio, Cumberland, Barren, Tennessee and Yazoo Rivers penetrated or skirted the regions this army was required to defend, and rendered defense not only more difficult, but made the movements of the armies more hazardous.
No such disaster as at Fort Donelson or Vicksburg was possible save in the territory defended by the Army of Tennessee.
The Virginia campaigns were pressed into very narrow limits and comparatively few miles of navigable water affected its strategic movements. Indeed, the James River was the only stream up which to any great extent gunboats could float.
The Army of the Tennessee was to defend the line from Pound Gap to the Mississippi River, a distance of about five hundred miles. It was vulnerable at many points, and the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland not only brought legions of troops to important military positions in this boundary, but also gave strongholds from which operations at many points, for a thousand miles, might be inaugurated. It was a long distance from Paducah to Vicksburg. On the navigable streams that bounded the western lines of this army, forts and stations could be at various points successfully established, and Paducah, Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga and Vicksburg were centers from which forays could be successfully made for nine months in the year. There was nothing but bad roads and the Confederate cavalry to defend this territory from invasion or occupation.
Atlanta was evacuated on the 1st of September, 1864. General Joseph E. Johnson had been relieved on the 17th day of July, 1864, and General Hood assumed command. The enemy were close to the coveted situation. Slowly, but surely, the cordon were closing around Atlanta; and, as the flanks of the Federal Army stretched far out, east and west of the doomed city, the Federals began to employ their cavalry in harassing the rear of the Confederates and in destroying railroads south of General Hood’s position, rendering not only its occupancy difficult, but the feeding of his armies almost impossible.
The Federals never lacked for serviceable horses. True, they were not up to the standard which the Southern cavalry had taken into the war in 1861 and ’62; but well-fed, they could carry their riders, at a moderate rate of speed, a long distance in the day. Month by month, the Federal cavalry began to be better disciplined and better drilled, and became a great force in destroying the Southern armies. It required months, many months, for the Federals to learn successfully the plans under which the Confederate cavalry operated and along which they had so often disturbed and destroyed their communications; and now, at least, when Hood was at bay in Atlanta, the Federals, using their experience and the experience of the Confederates to the best advantage, began their raids. General Johnston had turned over to General Hood, according to Johnston’s statement, forty-one thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry.
General Joseph Wheeler’s marvelous courage and enterprise had greatly endeared him to all the soldiers of the army of Tennessee. There was no service he would not accept. There was no risk he would not assume. On July 26th, 1864, with his limited command, he had relieved Hardee’s corps, and taken the place of the infantry in the breastworks. While thus occupied, General Wheeler was informed that large cavalry forces had started in the small hours of the night, with ten days’ rations, marching eastwardly, westwardly, southwardly from the rear of Sherman’s army. Sherman’s front covered a space along the Chattahoochee for twenty-five miles. It became apparent to General Wheeler than an extremely formidable cavalry raid was being inaugurated, and one which had most important bearings on the maintenance of Hood’s army about Atlanta. He chafed with the knowledge that his dismounted men were in the infantry breastworks, while the Federals were going out to forage and desolate the country south of Atlanta, and wreck the railroads upon which Atlanta relied alone for food.
On the morning of July 27th General Wheeler was directed to still hold the breastworks from which Hardee had been removed, and to send such force as he could spare in pursuit of the Federal cavalry raiders. He could only put into this service, immediately, fifteen hundred men, and he could only hope that they would be able to delay and harass and not destroy the enemy. The Federal raiders had begun their march at daybreak, on the 27th, and by nightfall had covered twenty-five miles to the south. All through July 27th, at two o’clock, at five o’clock and at six o’clock, Wheeler was interchanging despatches with General Hood. Wheeler was longing to go after the Federal raiders, but he was denied, by General Hood, this opportunity. At length the menace became so portentous that General Hood dare not ignore its consequences. Realizing that unless the Federal expedition was stayed, Atlanta must fall, with reluctance and many misgivings, he consented to turn General Wheeler loose, to try his hand upon the numerous, vigorous and aggressive foe. At nine o’clock at night came the order that General Wheeler himself might go in pursuit of the enemy. A great strategist himself, General Wheeler figured in his mind about where the Federals would strike the Macon railroad, which he foresaw and calculated would be either at Jonesboro, fifteen miles, or Lovejoy Station, twenty miles south of Atlanta.