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THE GREAT RETREAT.
Could Johnston Have Defended
Atlanta Successfully?
A Review of His Plan of Campaign.
The Policy of the Great Southern General
Defended and the Field Looked Over
in the Light of Events.
BY JOSEPH M. BROWN.
The above question has been very
frequently asked by military men and
by civilians, both Confederate and
Union; and the answers have never
been altogether according to the sec
tional bias ot those who discussed the
questions at issue.
The writer will premise by saying
that it is his firm conviction that Gen.
Johnston not only intended to defend
Atlanta, but that ho also could
and would have done so successfully
—certainly long enough to accomplish
the purposes he had in view, which
were the tiring down or wearing out
of the Federal army, and the entail
ment of such an enormous expense up
on the United States Government as
would have forced it to seek peace
rather than face the probability of na
tional bankruptcy.
General Johnston was removed
from the command of the Confederate
army just as it arrived before Atlanta,
after its famous retreat from Dalton.
The grounds upon which he was re
moved were,
First: That he would not promise pos
tively to defend Atlanta.
Secondly: That he would not let the Con
federate army under his command fight;
that he remained persistently on the defen
sive, and never sought or improved the op
portunity to strike an offensive blow in re
turn.
Now, the untenability ot these two
charges will be made manifest when
we analyze them in the light of the
knowledge of the present day. The
Richmond government and its defen
ders in this matter lay great stress on
the fact, that while the Confederate
army was lying at and before Dalton,
General Johnston was proffered about
thirty thousand men as re-enforce
ments on condition that he would as
sume the offensive.
The re-enforcements were, therefore,
promised on a contingency. What was
that contingency? That he would, as
above indicated, assume the offensive.
The offensive against what? Against an
army which would
OUT-NUMBER HIS OWN
even when its numbers were increased
by the proffered re-enforcements; an
army better equipped than his own
with all medical supplies, ammunition
supplies and food supplies; better
equipped with entrenching tools and
everything in that line; better equip
ped with small arms, and with immense
ly better artillery; an army toughened
and trained into veterans by three
years of marching, camping and fight
ing; an army filled with that confi
dence which was inspired by the
knowledge that it had wrested the
hostile portion of Kentucky and all
of Tennessee from this one which it
was proposed should be led against it,
while its comrade armies and navies
had conquered possession of the Mis
sisippi river from Cairo to the Gulf,
thus cutting the Confederacy in two,
and blockading every port on the bor
ders of the upwards of twenty-five hun
dred miles of sea coast of the new pow
er, and which were straining the strong:
est energies of theiropponents to hold
the seat of their against
aq fyrmy which had scarcely one hun
dred days before inflicted a disastrous
and demoralizing cfefefl-l u f otl
ry Confederate army, an army which
was securely posted behind the de
fense of a natural fortress, strengthened
to the utmost by artificial means, and
so strong that this very Confederate
army, even after routing it in the terri
fic battle of Chickamauga, had not
felt itself able to assail it there.
The Richmond government seemed
not to have learned—yea, more, evi
dently had not learned that the
raw levies whom its armies
had so often defeated, and some
times chased, in the first years of
the war had seen and done so much
fighting and campaigning that they,
too, had become cool soldiers; it would
not recognize the fact that shop clerks
could be trained by hardships and
combats into veterans, and, further
more, that the soldiery in the Federal
army at Chattanooga was not com
posed altogether of shop clerks; but of
the pioneers of the west and the hardy
sons of toil to whom fighting came
about as natural as it did to the Con
federates.
The administration seemed to cling
to the favored idea that one southern
man under all ordinary circumstances
could whip three yankees. The modi
fied rule was becoming the fact. In
these four years of war, with the field
of its resources contracted, with all in
tercourse with the outside world cut
off by blockade, it was becoming true
that one poorly-clad, poorly-fed and
poorly-armed southern soldier, sup
plied with poor arms and poor ammu
nition, had his hands full taking care
of less than three finely-armed, well
fed, well-clothed yankee veterans, wLo
had, furthermore the prestige of suc
cess on their side.
The writer is arrogant southerner en
ough (if that is the correct term,) to
believe that
A SOUTHERN SOLDIER,
supplied with all that is necessary for
his training and business, is more
than a match for any other soldier on
the globe; but during the latter half,
particularly, of the great civil war, al
most all equal advantages were lacking
to him.
Under such circumstances, to as
sume the offensive would, in plain
words, have required General John
ston with the promised 75,000 men to
have assaulted Chattanooga, which
was garrisoned by a splendidly equip
ped
FEDERAL ARMY OF 80,000 MEN,
To assault thesi 80,000 veterans
(who would probably have been re-en
forced by at least 50,000 more when
it was ascertained that Johnston’s
army was being heavily re-enforced,)
behind the entrenchments about Chat
tanooga, would have been sheer mad
ness, and to have attempted any
movement on their flank would only
have forced them to leave a strong
garrison in Chattanooga, and then to
have faced their opponents in the
most mountainous portion of Tennessee,
where failure to succeed in a single
assault would have been disastrous to
the Confederate army and cause.
All the natural advantages of posi
tion would have been more decidedly
with the Federals than with the Con
federates, because, in addition to the
rough, mountainous country in which
the operations must have been carried
on, the Federals could draw their sup
plies from Nashville and from Knox
ville, and, besides, from the rich farm
ing country along the Tennessee river
which was patrolled by their gun-boats.
Therefore, it is not considered neces
sary to elaborate in arguing against a
positions© manifestly untenable.
So far as concerns the charge that
Qeneraf Johnston had not given any
assurance that he would defend Atlan
ta, it is only necessary to state that be-
THE KENNESAW GAZETTE.
fore his army had fallen back to the
city he had caused constructed strong I
defences around it. These were about
being
STRENGTHENED BY HEAVY SIEGE GUNS
which he had ordered sent to the city.
They were not sent previously
to his arriving at the city
with his army for the rea
son that they could doubtless be better
used at other points than to be on de
fences which were several days march
from the scene of active hostilities; and,
as General Johnston has stated in his
writings, the removal of certain stores,
etc., from the city was not an evidence
of an intention to evacuate it; but
were such steps as common prudence
would have dictated. He evidently
intended to strengthen the city, but to
strip it of many useless encum
brances, so that it could be ready for
a siege with the certainty of not losing
valuable property in case any unex
pected fortune of war should bring
about its fall.
But in answer to the charge that he
would not
“PROMISE TO DEFEND ATLANTA,”
we may say that he did not prom
ise, in 1862, to defend Richmond; but
he was desperately wounded in its de
fense. He “did not promise to defend
Atlanta,” because he did not suppose
that any one doubted that he
would. His industrious pre
parations for its defense spoke
for themselves. And he was not
questioned at the time, as the official
correspondence will show.
We will now turn to the consideration
of the second reason, or excuse, rather,
which was given for the removal of
General Johnston from the command
of the Confederate army.
This, as before stated, was that he
would not let the army fight. Bear in
mind the fact that, when the cam
paign opened, Sherman, by his official
figures, had a total of 98,798 men and
254 cannon; Johnston had, by official
reports, 42,,856 men and 120 cannon.
The Federal army, therelore,
OUTNUMBERED THE CONFEDERATE
by more than two to one, both in its
number of men and in its number of
cannon.
The fighting done by the Confeder
ate army; despite the criticisms of the
Richmond government and its advo
cates, proves that its fighting qualities
were fully equal, man to man, to those
of the Federal army; in fact, that it
was more than equal, man to man, to
the Federal army. The Federal super
iority in its artillery service was over
whelming. It had the finest rifled
cannon which the genius of that day
had invented; whereas, the Confeder
ate artillery consisted mostly of Napo
lean guns and otherwise those of old
style. There was scarcely a Parrott
gun in the entire list of those which
Johnston’s army had, the only excep
tion being a few which, I believe, the
army had captured from the Federals
in the Cnickamauga campaign.
The artillery ammunition which the
Confederate army had was limited as
to quantity, and, as compared with
that of the Federals, was of decidedly
infetior qualify. It was a matter of
daily boasting among the Federals, dur
ing the campaign, of the effectiveness
of their artillery service, and it was
an admitted source of daily annoyance
and danger to the Confederates.*
The expenditure of artillery and in
fantry ammunition during the cam
paign, statement of which will be given
further on, was the highest practical
evidence of the almost limitless r sourc
es of the army opposed t> General
Johnston. It also constitutes one of the
highest practical compliments which
can be paid the Confederate soldiers, i
wheq tfie record st?fid§ that they faced
such fearful odds, and yet were
NEVER DRIVEN BY ASSAULT
from a single general position occu
pied by them during the entire cam
paign.
In fact the slowness with which they
were dislodged from their successive
positions in north Georgia continually
upset sherman’s confident prophe
sies.
For instance, he telegraphed on May
24, 1864, from Kingston, Ga., as fol
lows:
“Horse arrived all safe and sound and
looks well, and I will rfde him tomorrow
across the Etowah, which is the Rubicon of
Georgia. We are now all in motion like
a vast hive of bees, expecting to swarm
along the Chattahoochee in five days.”
It was actually forty seven days be
fore he forced the Confederate army
across the Chattahoochee. This was
only one of several instances where
“great expectations” were brought to
naught by Johnston’s consummate
ability.
Sherman’s army, by the way, differ
ed with the Confederate govern mi nt
in the belief that the Confederate ai my
under General Johnston’s command
“did not fight.” For instance, Gen
eral Sherman himself says (“Memoiis,”
volume IL, page 44):
This point, New Hope, was the accident
al intersection of the road leading from
Allatoona to Dallas with that
from Van Wert to Marietta, * * ® *
and from the bloody fighting there for the
next week was called by these soldiers
“Hell-hole.”
A name which certainly suggests
brimstone, and anything else but peace
over-caution, timidity, or inability or
unwillingness to “fight.”
General Howard, who, with two di
visions and a brigade, had a fight with
General Pat Cleburne’s division on
May 27, at Pickett’s mill, near New
Hope church, no doubt felt sure that
if he had been a swearing man he
could have made oath to the fact that
the army under General Johnston’s
command
WOULD AND DID FIGHT,
after this one division, without any
entrenchments met his two divisions
and one brigade in an open forest and
inflicted a bloody defeat upon them,
after less than two hours ot fighting.
The account of this battle does not
occur in General Sherman’s “Memoirs,”
but the battle itself occurred in Pauld
ing county, Ga., as can be indisputa
bly proven by official documents and
the mouths of many living witnesses.
This was just alter General Sher
man had authorized the statement to
the quartermaster general of the Unit
ed States, “that he was supplied with
everything he wanted, and said that
no army in the world was ever better
provided.” (Telegram from Robert
Allen, chief quartermaster and briga
dier general, May 23, 1864.) Yet
that army, than which none in the
world was ever better provided, con
sumed almost two months in forcing
one with about half its numbers, and
with almost a poverty of army sup
plies, a distance of forty miles to At
lanta, its stronghold, a d only dislodg
ed it from each general position l»y
flanking it and threatening iis only
line of communication with its has ;
never by outfight'ng it.
S » also we might instance various
other comba’s where Sherman’s sol
diers were fully convinced that John
ston would and did ‘ let the army fight;”
but that he chose times and places tor
its fighting which weie not at all to its
enemy’s comfort or safety.
The difference between Johnston’s
and Hood’s ideas of “letting the army
fight” was that
JOHNSTON FJUGHT WITH JUDGMENT
and with a careful regard for the cir-