CAMPAIGN OF OCTOBER--HOOD MOVES UPON OUR COMMUNICATIONS
Hood's plan to transfer the campaign to northern Georgia--Made partly subordinate to Beauregard--Forrest on a raid--Sherman makes large detachments--Sends Thomas to Tennessee--Hood across the Chattahoochee--Sherman follows--Affair at Allatoona--Planning the March to the Sea--Sherman at Rome--Reconnoissance down the Coosa--Hood at Resaca--Sherman in pursuit--Hood retreats down the Chattooga valley--We follow in two columns--Concentrate at Gaylesville--Beauregard and Hood at Gadsden--Studying the situation--Thomas's advice--Schofield rejoins--Conference regarding the Twenty-third Corps--Hood marches on Decatur--His explanation of change of plan--Sherman marches back to Rome--We are ordered to join Thomas--Hood repulsed at Decatur marches to Tuscumbia--Our own march begun--Parting with Sherman--Dalton--Chattanooga--Presidential election--Voting by steam--Retrospect of October camp-life--Camp sports--Soldiers' pets--Story of a lizard.
General Hood had been pretty well informed of what was going on in Sherman's army, and was disposed to take advantage of the reduction of our forces by furloughs and the absence of numerous officers on leave. The Confederate President had visited him, and changes in his army had been ordered which made the organization more to his mind. Hardee being sent to Savannah to command a department on the coast, General Cheatham succeeded to the command of the corps. Hood proposed to cross the Chattahoochee some twenty miles west of Atlanta, and move on Powder Springs, where he could reach the railroad and force Sherman to attack him or to move south. In the latter case he proposed to follow, and had urged that the forces in central Georgia be increased so as to resist Sherman's progress if it should be toward Augusta or Macon. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. ii. pp. 847, 862.]
Mr. Davis had been convinced by the campaign just ended that Hood's fiery energy needed the guidance of a better military intellect, and the plan of placing a common head over Hood's and Taylor's departments had occurred to him. Beauregard was the officer whose rank, next to Johnston, indicated him for the command, but he was disaffected toward Davis, and his friends in Congress were active in opposition to the government. [Footnote: Ante, p. 183.] General Lee had suggested Beauregard to take Hood's place, and had sounded him as to his willingness to do so after discussing with him the whole situation in Georgia. Lee felt able, thereupon, to assure the President that Beauregard would accept the assignment; saying, "I think you may feel assured that he understands the general condition of affairs, the difficulties with which they are surrounded, and the importance of exerting all his energies for their improvement." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. ii. p. 846.] But having learned Hood's plan of operating upon Sherman's communications, and being impressed anew by his visit with the energy of Hood's nature, which quickly reacted from the discouragement following the fall of Atlanta, he partly accepted Lee's suggestion, modifying it by giving Beauregard the supreme direction of affairs in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, whilst leaving Hood free to carry out the plan of campaign which he proposed, and to retain the command of his army except when Beauregard might be actually present with it. [Footnote:Id., p. 880.]
General Forrest with his cavalry corps had already been ordered to make a raid upon the railways in Tennessee in pursuance of a suggestion of his own, and on September 16th he started northward. [Footnote: Id., pp. 818, 835.] This plan very well accorded with Hood's, and when the latter determined, later in the campaign, himself to invade Tennessee, Forrest's orders were extended so as to direct a junction with him. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 843.]
On September 24th Sherman learned that Forrest was at Athens and Pulaski on the railway from Decatur to Nashville. He had sent a detachment to burn bridges on the Memphis road also, and the whole of middle and western Tennessee was afire with the excitement of the new raid by the doughty Confederate leader. He received the surrender of the garrison at Athens without serious resistance, but by the time he approached Pulaski, burning bridges as he went, General Rousseau, who was in command of the district, had concentrated force enough to repulse him. [Footnote: Id., pt. ii. pp. 450, 455, 456, 870, 876, 879.] After that Forrest attacked no considerable post, and did not reach Sherman's principal line of communications, but making circuitous routes in the region about Columbia, finally retreated across the Tennessee River at Florence on the 5th and 6th of October. [Footnote:Id., pt. i. p. 547.]
On getting the news of Forrest's raid, Sherman sent back two divisions of the Army of the Cumberland to Chattanooga, and one from the Army of the Tennessee to Rome. He also sent General Thomas to Chattanooga to bring into co-operation all the troops posted in Tennessee and northern Georgia. This scattering of his forces to protect his railways proves how low an estimate he put upon the efficiency of Hood's army, and his willingness to receive an attack from it. When he moved northward after Hood, a week later, he left the Twentieth Corps to hold Atlanta, and had with him little more than half of the forces with which he had made the Atlanta campaign; but they proved enough.
My own command had been quietly resting at Decatur with nothing more exciting to do than to send out foraging parties and reconnoissances, when on Friday, September 30th, I got a dispatch from General Sherman which put us on the alert. He told me that Hood had part of his infantry over the Chattahoochee, and was evidently combining desperate measures to destroy our railways. After referring to his arrangements to checkmate Forrest, he gave the "nub" of his own ideas as follows: "I may have to make some quick countermoves east and southeast. Keep your folks ready to send baggage into Atlanta and to start on short notice.... There are fine corn and potato fields about Covington and the Ocmulgee bottoms. We are well supplied with bread, meat, etc., but forage is scarce, and may force us to strike out. If we make a countermove, I will go out myself with a large force and take such a route as will supply us and at the same time make Hood recall the whole or part of his army." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. ii. p. 540.] I answered that we would be "minute men," and also informed General Schofield by telegraph that we might resume active work any moment. [Footnote: Id., p. 541.]
Next day Sherman had evidence that Hood was crossing the Chattahoochee with his whole army, and wrote to General Howard and to me that if Hood should swing over to the Alabama railroad and try to get into Tennessee, he would, if Grant consented, draw to him the troops south of the Etowah, leave Thomas with the rest, and make for Savannah or Charleston by way of Milledgeville and Millen. By the destruction of the east and west roads, Georgia would thus become a break in the Confederacy. But should Hood move upon our communications between the Chattahoochee and the Etowah, he would turn upon him. [Footnote: Id., vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 6.] The latter was the movement Hood actually made, and the March to the Sea was postponed for a few weeks.
I need not repeat here the details of the October campaign, which I have given elsewhere. [Footnote: See "Atlanta," chap. xvii.; and for the growth and completion of the plan of the March to the Sea, reference is made to the Life of General Sherman (Great Commanders Series), chap. x.] On the 2d Sherman was aware that the enemy was advancing on Marietta; but far from hurrying to anticipate him there, we were held back yet another day that Hood might be lured far enough to let us strike him in rear. General Corse at Rome was ordered to reinforce Allatoona pass and hold stubbornly there, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 8.] and then, on the 3d and 4th, Sherman was in motion, trying to catch the enemy in that rough country on the border of the Etowah. On the 2d I had sent a division to make a strong reconnoissance eastward to Flat Rock, and a brigade to Stone Mountain to make sure that no enemy was near us in that direction, [Footnote: Id., p. 33.] and on its return we followed the rest of the army northward, Slocum's corps remaining in garrison at Atlanta, as before mentioned.