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.”