The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 2

by Jefferson Davis

"During all the time, a telegraphic correspondence was kept up with General Johnston—the object being to ascertain if he would make a determined fight to save Atlanta. His answers were thought to be evasive. Finally, the question was put to General Johnston categorically to this effect: 'Will you surrender Atlanta without a fight?' To this the answer was regarded as not only evasive, but as indicating the contemplated contingency of surrendering Atlanta, on the ground that the Governor of the State had not furnished, as expected, sufficient State troops to man the city while the army was giving battle outside. 'This evasive answer to a positive inquiry,' said one of the Cabinet to me, 'brought the President over. He yielded very reluctantly.' I was informed of the result at once, and was also informed that Mr. Davis was the last man in the Cabinet to agree to the order of removal.". . .

General Hood assumed command on the 18th of July. In his report of the operations of the army while under his command, he states that the effective strength of his force on that day was forty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty men of all arms.

Feeling that the only chance of holding Atlanta consisted in assuming the offensive by forcing the enemy to accept battle, General Hood determined, on the 20th of July, to attack the corps of Generals Thomas and Schofield, who were in the act of crossing Peachtree Creek, hoping to defeat Thomas before he could fortify himself, then to fall on Schofield, and finally to attack McPherson's corps, which had reached Decatur, on the Georgia Railroad, driving the enemy back to the creek and into the narrow space included between that stream and the Chattahoochee River. Owing to an unfortunate misapprehension of the order of battle and the consequent delay in making the attack, the movement failed. On the 21st, finding that McPherson's corps was threatening his communications, General Hood resolved to attack him at or near Decatur, in front and on flank, turn his left, and then, following up the movement from the right to the left with his whole army, force the enemy down Peachtree Creek. This engagement was the hottest of the campaign, but it failed to accomplish any other favorable result than to check General McPherson's movement upon the communications of our army, while it cost heavily in the loss of many officers and men, foremost among whom was that preux chevalier and accomplished soldier, Major-General W. H. T. Walker, of Georgia.

Beyond expeditions by the enemy, for the most part by cavalry, to destroy the lines of railroad by which supplies and reënforcements could reach Atlanta, and successful efforts on our part to frustrate their movements, resulting in the defeat and capture of General Stoneman and his command near Macon, the utter destruction of the enemy's cavalry force engaged by General Wheeler at Newnan, and the defeat of Sherman's design to unite his cavalry at the Macon and Western Railroad, and effectually destroy that essential avenue for the conveyance of stores and ammunition for our army, no movement of special importance took place between July 22d and August 26th, at which latter date it was discovered that Sherman had abandoned his works upon our right, and, leaving a considerable force to hold his intrenched position at the railroad-bridge over the Chattahoochee, was marching his main body to the south and southwest of Atlanta, to use it, as he himself has expressed it, "against the communications of Atlanta, instead of against its intrenchments." On the 30th, it being known that he was moving on Jonesboro, the county town of Clayton County, about twenty miles south of Atlanta, General Hood sent two corps under General Hardee to confront him at that point, in the hope that he could drive him across Flint River, oblige him to abandon his works on the left, and then be able to attack him successfully in flank. The attack at Jonesboro was unsuccessful. General Hardee was obliged, on September 1st, to fall back to Lovejoy's, seven miles south of Jonesboro, on the Macon and Western Railroad. Thus, the main body of the Federal army was between Hardee and Atlanta, and the immediate evacuation of that city became a necessity. There was an additional and cogent reason for that movement. Owing to the obstinately cruel policy which the United States Government had pursued for some time, of refusing on any terms to exchange prisoners of war, upward of thirty thousand prisoners were at Andersonville in southwestern Georgia at this time. To guard against the release and arming of these prisoners, General Hood thought it necessary to place our army between them and the enemy, and abandon the project, which he thought feasible, of moving on Sherman's communications and destroying his depots of supplies at Marietta.

Upon abandoning Atlanta, Hood marched his army in a westerly direction, and formed a junction with the two corps which had been operating at Jonesboro and Lovejoy's under General Hardee.

General Sherman, desisting from any further aggressive movement in the field, returned to Atlanta, which had been formally surrendered by the Mayor on September 2d, with the promise, as reported, on the part of the Federal commander, that non-combatants and private property should be respected. Shortly after his arrival, the commanding General of the Federal forces, forgetful of this promise, and on the pretense that the exigencies of the service required that the place should be used exclusively for military purposes, issued an order directing all civilians living in Atlanta, male and female, to leave the city within five days from the date of the order (September 5th). Since Alva's atrocious cruelties to the noncombatant population of the Low Countries in the sixteenth century, the history of war records no instance of such barbarous cruelty as that which this order designed to perpetrate. It involved the immediate expulsion from their homes and only means of subsistence of thousands of unoffending women and children, whose husbands and fathers were either in the army, in Northern prisons, or had died in battle. In vain did the Mayor and corporate authorities of Atlanta appeal to Sherman to revoke or modify this inhuman order, representing in piteous language "the woe, the horror, and the suffering, not to be described by words," [110] which its execution would inflict on helpless women and infant children. His only reply was:

"I give full credit to your statements of the distress that will be occasioned by it, and yet shall not revoke my order, because my orders are not designed to meet the humanities of the case."

At the time appointed, the women and children were expelled from their houses, and, before they were passed within our lines, complaint was generally made that the Federal officers and men who were sent to guard them had robbed them of the few articles of value they had been permitted to take from their homes. The cowardly dishonesty of its executioners was in perfect harmony with the temper and spirit of the order.

During the month of September the Federal army in and around Atlanta made no movement beyond strengthening its defenses and collecting within it large quantities of military supplies. General Hood, meantime, held his troops in the vicinity of Jonesboro. His reports to the War Department represented the morale of his army as "greatly impaired by the recurrence of retreat," decreasing in numbers day by day, and the surrounding country devoid of natural strength or any advantageous position upon which he could retire. With a view to judge better the situation, and then determine after personal inspection the course which should seem best to pursue, I visited General Hood's headquarters at Palmetto. The crisis was grave. It was not to be expected that General Sherman would remain long inactive. The rapidity with which he was collecting recruits and supplies at Atlanta indicated that he contemplated a movement farther south, making Atlanta a secondary base. To rescue Georgia, save the Gulf States, and retain possession of the lines of communication upon which we depended for the supplies of our armies in the field, an effort to arrest the further progress of the enemy was necessary; and to this end the railroads in his rear must be effectually torn up, the great railroad-bridge over the Tennessee River at Bridgeport destroyed, and the communication between Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Nashville completely cut off. Could this be accomplished, all the fruits of Sherman's successful campaign in Georgia would be blighted, his capture of Atlanta would become a barren victory, and he would probably be compelled to make a retreat toward Tennessee, at every mile of which he might be harassed by our army. Or, should he, relying on Atlanta as a base, push forward through Georgia to the Atlantic coast, our army, having cut his communications north of Atlanta, could fall upon his rear, and, with the advantages of a better knowledge of the country, of the surrounding devoted population, of the auxiliary force to be expected under the circumstances, and our superiority in cavalry, it was not unreasonable to hope that retributive justice might overtake the ruthless invader.

My first object was to fill up the depleted ranks of the army, to bring the absentees and deserters back to the ranks, and induce the Governor and State officials to coöperate heartily and earnestly with the Confederate Government in all measures that might be found necessary to give the proposed movement a reasonable prospect of success.