This, one of the many instances of the loyalty displayed by the rank and file, should be told to coming generations that they may know how the Southern private never faltered, but was true to the core.
July 12th we crossed the Chattahootchee near Atlanta. July 18th we marched four miles and built breastworks. July 20th there was hard fighting at Peach Tree Creek in which we lost heavily. Our noble Captain Shoup was wounded and the command devolved upon Second Lieutenant Clay Lowe. He and John R. Loftin were the only commissioned officers we had left.
July 22 we marched ten miles to the right of Atlanta. Hardee had attacked the enemy in the rear and there had been a terrible struggle which lasted for hours. Toward evening we heard the Yankee Bands playing and the soldiers shooting and cheering and we knew they had won.
While Johnston was in command he had preserved his army, and inflicted upon the enemy a loss almost equal to our strength when we began the campaign. Our loss had been about nine thousand, which had been filled by the return of the wounded and furloughed men, so that General Hood received an army fully as strong as it was at Dalton. We were as ready to fight as ever although certainly disappointed at the loss of Johnston. We felt that no other general could do what he had done.
Soon after the war ended Johnston was going from Memphis to St. Louis. General Sherman and his staff were on their way to New Orleans. When Sherman learned that his former adversary was on board a certain boat he took passage for St. Louis on the same vessel. After supper he asked Johnston if he had any objection to going over with him the retreat from Dalton. Johnston said he had not. So Sherman spread his maps on the cabin table and, surrounded by a throng of listeners, they began. Sherman would ask about his line at a certain place, and Johnston would explain how his move was made. Sherman would point to his map and say: “How in the world did you get away from me here?” They talked all night. Johnston needed no map. He had been in the very thick of battle for seventy-four days; the map of campaign was burned into his brain, and he knew every foot of the ground. His retreat was a wonder to Sherman and to the world. Yet this great military genius was thrown out on the eve of his final and greatest assault upon Sherman. An assault which would have saved Atlanta to the Confederacy. Hood and Davis tactics prevailed after that and the splendid, unconquered army was swept off the earth into the grave.
Hood questioned the morale of his army, but as for that, our poor little Company G went into line under Hood as true as it ever had under Johnston. We fought for the cause, not the general. Jim Hensley, a boy who had been wounded severely, returned to the company. His physician had not reported him for duty, but had given him merely a pass to his command. I was in the field hospital when the order to forward was given. Hensley came to me saying: “Here, my dear old friend, is a little silver watch I wish to give you, for I shall be killed today.”
I told him he had not been reported for duty; that he was still far from well, and begged him not to go into battle, especially as he had a presentiment that he should be killed. He turned his soulful eyes upon me. “Will, do you think I am afraid because I know I am going to be killed?” Putting his hand on his breast he continued, “I have no fear of death. I am a Christian, and I know I shall be safe in heaven.” With tears we parted. He joined his brave comrades, Jim Murphy, John Baird and George Thomas on the left of Company G, after the line was in motion. They were moving against strong entrenchments heavily defended by abatis. These four boys saw they could crawl under the abatis without being seen and get close to the breastworks. After they started, the command was given to oblique to the left, but in the roar of the musketry the boys failed to hear it and went on alone. There were about a hundred Yankees on the breastworks watching our line which was advancing upon their rear. The four boys crawled close in, prepared, and opened up. At the first fire down came four Yankees. They were taken by surprise, not knowing there were any men at their front. The boys kept at their game until the Yankees ran. Then went forward to take possession of the works. Then they found themselves alone and two hundred of the enemy entrenched behind a second line! It was death anyway, so they ran forward firing on the troops with terrible accuracy. One man had a bead on Thomas when Murphy shot the fellow. One hinged for Murphy when Thomas bayoneted him. So they had it—hand to hand. Poor Hensley was killed, Murphy terribly wounded, Baird wounded, but Thomas would not surrender. He bayoneted them until they took his gun, then he kicked and bit until they finally killed him there. Four men had killed twenty-five Yankees, but only one of the four lived to tell the tale. To question the morale of such men is farcical. The battle on our left raged all day, and we were defeated. Our colonel lost his foot. One third of our regiment was gone. Great numbers were killed and wounded but the troops were as loyal and fought as bravely as any army on earth. This was Hood’s second defeat. In two battles, he had lost ten thousand men—more than we had lost in the whole campaign, in seventy-four days’ battles and skirmishes. It would not take long with such tactics to wipe out the rebel army.
July 29th we marched back to Atlanta. August 31st we marched to Jonesboro and on September 1st we moved to the right, threw up temporary works and Hardee’s corps fought the Battle of Jonesboro. Hood’s and Stewart’s corps were at Atlanta, twenty miles away, and we were entirely unsupported. We fought all day against seven corps of Yankees. We were surrounded and fought in front and in the rear. Fought as General Cleburne always fought. The Yankees charged our company seven lines deep, but our thin line held firm until some of the boys happened to discover a line of Infantry charging in the rear. Then they began to waver. Our Lieutenant Commander Clay jumped on top of the breastworks, waved his gun, (the sixteen-shooter which the officers of our company carried instead of sabres,) and called to his men to stand their ground. He was on the breastworks but a few minutes when he fell, pierced through by one of the thousand bullets fired at him. As he fell he saw for the first time why his men wavered. He ordered a hasty retreat to the right, and although dreadfully wounded successfully threw the line of battle to the rear. He fell in my arms and I got him to an ambulance and sent him to a hospital. In Macon we had only one commissioned officer left, John R. Loftin.
We would have been eaten up entirely, but for the coming of night, which gave Hardee a chance to unite his corps and throw up intrenchments. He displayed fine generalship throughout this engagement. Hardee had been offered the command of the army in Tennessee before Hood took it but had replied: “General Johnston is the only man able to command this army, and I will not have it.” Here was another terrible defeat for the new leader. Our loss at Jonesboro was about 2,500 men. The Yanks put our captured men on the train and sent them back over the old route. The fort at Dalton was garrisoned by negro troops. A great number of these negroes were at the station when the prisoners arrived. They insulted our men, and tried to take them from the train, yelling, “No quarter, if we get you on the field.” If white troops had not come to protect them there would have been serious trouble.