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that when he was at Lost Mountain,
or about that time, he ascertained that
Allatoona was garrisoned to guard
Sherman’s depot of provisions collected
or stored there for his march south.
As Sherman was then quiet in Atlanta
and Hood at Lost Mountain on the 2d
of October, why did he not move on
Allatoona and capture them ?
On the 4th he sent to General Stew
art, who was at Big Shanty the orders
copied in the first part of this article.
These two orders were handed to
General French by General Stewart.
Now is there a line or is there one
word in them intimating that Hood
even suspected that Allatoona was for
tified and garrisoned to protect Sher
man’s supplies.’
As bearing directly upon this point
the writer will state that since this ar
ticle was prepared be has had conver
sation with General A. P. Stewart, in
which General Stewart informed him
that, in addition to the instructions
contained in the two orders quoted,
General Hood also sent him word that
French’s division could get tools for
filling up the railroad cut from Gener
al Armstrong’s cavalry brigade; but,
he says, when General Armstrong was
applied to he answered that his com
mand had no tools and had not had
any. He also says that in none of
General Hood’s orders or messages did
he say anything to indicate that he
had any idea that Allatoona was forti
fied or a depot of supplies.
The truth therefore very evidently
is that General Hood knew nothing
about the works, garrison or supplies
at Allatoona, and sent French by there
on his way to the railroad bridge, and
ordered him incidentally to stop there
and “fill up the deep railroad cut ;”and
consequently when General Hood, in
his book, “Advance and Retreat,” on
page 257, writes:
As one of the main objects of the cam
paign was to deprive the enemy of provi
sions, Major-General French was ordered
to move with his division, capture the
garrison, if practicable, and gain posses
sion of the supplies,—
he, it seems clear beyond peradventure,
knowingly published to the world
what was altogether an afterthought,
to shield his own ignorance at the ex
pense of General French.
For a moment suppose Hood knew
Allatoona was for tided and garrisoned
by three regiments (about a thou
sand men) and that there Sherman
had stored his provisions, why in the
name of common sense did he not in
form French ? To omit doing so seems
what, by some, would be considered a
military crime of the first magnitude,
and unpardonable. If not then what
had this division or its cofnmander
done that they should, Uriah-like, be
sent into an enemy’s zone, beyond the
reach of support, and ordered to hurl
themselves against strong and ingeni
ously located and constructed works,
on a high and steep ridge, thus invit
ing apparently almost certain defeat
and death ?
As the main object of Hood in go
ins to the flanS and rear with his ar
my was to destroy and cut off provi
sions for Sherman’s army and to obtain
some for his own, why did he not
march direct to Allatoona with the
main body of his army, capture the
garrison, obtain two months’ supplies
for his entire army,* throw himself
on the strong ridge directly across
Sherman’s path, after having destroyed
the railroad south of this point and
the bridge over the Etowah north of
it, and starve him out? Why did he
not post his army on the fortified
heights of Allatoona, which are alike
* General Sherman’s letters written Oct. 7,
show that lie had 2,700,1)00 rations of bread stored
up at Allatoona on the date of the battle,
defensible on both sides, and declared
by Sherman, on page 49, of Vol. II
of his “Memoirs” to be “a natural
fortress ? ” Then Sherman would
have been obliged to fight Hood on
fortified lines of the latter’s own selec
tion. There would have been no out
flanking there! For once that army
could have laughed at Sherman’s
flanking.
Or, why did he not send Stewart’s
entire corps with all the empty provi
sion trains to capture the stores and
bring them away, as far as practicable,
for the use of his army? Evidently
because he knew nothing about Alla
toona, or the garrison or the stores
there; or he would have marched
there himself and been master of the
situation with abundant supplies.
A Federal General, high in Sher
man’s confidence in 1864, has stated to
the writer that had Hood gone to Alla
toona with his whole army he would
have run over Corse and captured the
place and everything there almost with
out effort.
Mortified that the prize had been
missed or lost, from want of informa
tion, he tries to shield himself under
the unsustained statement, which his
own orders, issued at the time, contra
dict, that he sent General French to
“gain possession” of the stores. Had
he known the stores were there (and
they were needed) he would have gone
there without fail, no doubt of that.
But mark his further animus at his
own short coming. One of his main
characteristics was his propensity for
endeavoring to make scapt-goats of
his subordinates to cover his own igno
rance or errors in reasoning, and this
fault was constantly shown either in
positive assertions or by indirection.
He writes on the same page:
General Corse won my own admiration
by his gallant resistance, and not without
reason the Federal commander compliment
ed this officer through a general order so”
his handsome conduct in defense of Alla
toona.
This is very chivalrous so far as it goes;
but there is no “admiration” for the
Confederates. Hood saw things like
Polonius sometimes. If, as has been
stated, one man behind the breastworks
is equal to about five on the outside,
his own troops should have claimed
his “admiration” as well as those inside.
It might not be just to censure Hood
for not knowing there was a garrison
and stores at Allatoona, for even Gen
eral French, who was there did not
know until after he bad left the place
that it was a great depot for Sherman’s
entire army; but he certainly lays him
self liable to censure for claiming and
publishing that he knew it when his
every order shows that he did not, and
when he used his pretended knowledge
to cloak his failures and injure the re
putation of others. Such conduct sure
ly seems unbecoming a high-minded
and upright soldier?
And yet there is another statement
of Hood’s that is not correct, when he
says, on page 326:
Just at this critical juncture he (Gen
eral French) received information which
lie considered correct, but which subse
quently proved to be false, that a large
body of the enemy was moving to cut
him off from the remainder of the army ;
and he immediately withdrew his com
mand from the place without having ac
complished the desired object.
This is a bold declaration to say it
“was false”, because, to the contrary,
Sherman says, page 147, Vol. II of
his “Memoirs:”
We could plainly see the smoke of bat
tle about Allatoona and hear the faint
reverberation of the cannon. From Ken
nesaw*! ordered the 23d Corps to march
due west on the Burnt Hickory road,
and to burn houses or piles of brush, as
it progressed, to indicate the head of col
umn, hoping to interpose this corps be-
THE KENNESAW GAZETTE.
tween Hood’s main army at Dallas and
the detachment then assaulting Allatoo
na. The rest of the army was directed
straight for Allatoona , northeast, distant
eighteen miles.
And further on he says that French
got by on the Dallas road before the
23d corps reached it.
A gentleman who resided near Al’a
toona at the time of the battle, and
who was there that day, informs the
writer that a considerable body of Fed
eral infantry reached Allatoona from
the south hardly three hours after Gen
eral French’s rear guard left there, and
that other columns arrived during the
night.
The following summing up by Ma
jor Sanders of General Hood’s blun
ders in ordering this movement against
Allatoona is so clear and complete
hat it is inserted almost entire :
In a general way I make this observa
tion, having given this matter at various
times a great deal of consideration :
that at the time General Hood determin
ed to march French’s division to make
the assault at Allatoona, or rather to de
stroy the bridge across the Etowah Riv
er, there is this state of facts to be con
sidered : Stewart’s corps was stretched
on the railroad, destroying the rails and
cross ties, and filling up the cuts with
timber. The afternoon of the third, all
of that night and the forenoon of the 4th
of October, 1864, French’s division was
on that part of the line of road between
Big Shanty and Kennesaw Mountain.
Walthall’s division was immediately
north of French, and Loring’s division
north of Walthall’s, up at the town of
Acworth. This was the position of Stew
art’s corps on the 4th of October, 1864.
It might be borne in mind that French’s
division was the weakest in point of
numbers in the corps, and the farfbest
removed from Allatoona. Loring’s di
vision was more than double in strength
that of French, and several miles nearer
Allatoona and the Etowah River than
French’s division.
Now, why was it that General Hood
directed French’s division, the farthest
from the objective point, to march by
the divisions of Walthall and Loring to
Allatoona, when Loring’s division, doub
le in strength and fully 6 miles nearer,
could have been marched to Allatoona,
surrounded the fort by dark or a little
thereafter, and completely isolated the
garrison at Allatoona from all possibility
of being reinforced,as it was that night by
a portion of the division of Gen. Corse '!
At the same time, the divisions of Wal
thall and Loring were marched from the
railroad in a westerly direction and
joined Hood’s army at New Hope, thus
leaving French’s division in mid air,
northwest from Acworth, with good
roads for Sherman to march his infantry
whicn we knew at that time to be at
Marietta and also on the Kennesaw.
The order of Hood directing the move
ments of the divisions of this corps was
of such an astounding character that I
hardly know how properly to character
ize his action as a General commanding
troops in active operation in the field.
He knew that Sherman was alert and
brave, with veteran troops well armed,
throughly disciplined, and commanded
by accomplished officers, and who could
be relied upon to march rapidly and as
sault with intrepidity any position which
the Confederates might occupy. He
knew, morever, that selecting French’s
command, and placing it up at Allatoona,
with Sherman’s army at Kennesaw to
march unobstructed to the relief of the
garrison at Allatoona, while French’s
Hanks and rear in the mountains were
menanced, though not harrassed by
Baum’s division of cavalry, which was
between the Etowah River and Allatoo
na, and also the garrisons at Kingston
and Rome, without the possibility of be
ing reinforced by the troops under his
command which occupied the old lane
at New Hope Church, certainly was an
unjustifiable order ; one more unjustifi
able fora General commanding an army
cannot be found in the history of the
late war than that given by Gen. Hood
to French on this occasion.
Without sagacity, without information,
without knowledge of the topography of
the country, although he had marched
over it as a corps commmander in the
spring, he deliberately marches this di
vision, being the farthest from the objec
tive point, to what proved to be the as
sault of a fortified post, and at the same
time moved the balance of the corps, to
gether with the other corps of his army,
to a position in which he is absolutely
disabled either to assist, reinforce, pro
tect or relieve this division as the ex
igencies might arise from the offensive
operations of Sherman’s troops. * * *
Never was an assault made with more
gallantry, determination and rapidity
than that of French’s division up the
mountain sides of Allatoona on that
October morning in 1864, and it can be
said with equal truth, that the Federals
with equal determination fought and de
fended their lines until the assaulting
troops were mingled indiscriminately
with those in the fort. It was the only
time within my knowledge and observa
tion that bayonets and clubbed muskets
were used.
Van Horne, in his history of the
Army of the Cumberland, Vol. 11, page
161,says:
The gallant resistance of the garrison
and the movement of the 23d Corps to
his left induced General French to with
draw entirely during the afternoon; and
his division remained in rear of the army
and offered such resistance to Gen’l
Elliott that it was impossible to tell the
direction the enemy’s standards were
pointing.
The last four lines of this quotation
would seem to indicate that if the sol
diers of French’s division, on withdraw
ing from Allatoona, were as badly dem
oralized as the Federal writers would
have us believe, they very strangely
recovered almost at once courage enough
to hold at bay fresh troops in larger
numbers than those they encountered
in the works at Allatoona.
Here, then, is ample evidence that
Armstrong’s dispatch was correct, and
that to have remained much longer at
Allatoona was at the risk of being cut
off from Hood’s army.
It is difficult to conjecture why Gen
eral Hood should have ventured to write
in his book that he ordered General
French to ‘ ‘capture the garrison if prac
ticable, and gain possession of the sup
plies” unless he supposed that his orders
to French would never be produced to
expose his misleading statement.
No doubt, in after years, Hood felt
very keenly the regret that he did not
obtain the information about Sherman’s
supplies, and capture them, as could
readily have been done had he march
ed for that purpose.
Hood on the heights of Allatoona
with his army supplied with two months’
provisions could not have been a fail
ure, considering the mountain range,
and that Sherman could obtain no sup
plies south of the Etowah. Besides Hood
could have burnt the bridge over the
Etowah after the capture of Allatoona.
He had all the advantage of Sher
man in the movement he made, but he
was not aware of it until it was too late.
The want of provisions alone forbade
him assuming a position across the road
of Sherman’s supplies at the “natural
fortress’of Allatoona; but the provisions
were already there, but alas! he knew
it not!
Sherman, on page 42 of his “Me
moirs”, says he knew in former years
that “the Allatoona Pass was very
strong,” and would “be hard to force”
so he resolved to get to Marietta by
way of Dallas. Therefore again he
would have been obliged to fight Hood
at the pass or return west through
upper Alabama and cross the Etowah
where he did when he out-flanked
Johnston. In the latter case Hood
would have gained a substantial vic
tory, and Atlanta have again been in
possession of the Confederates, and
“ fairly won,” as Sherman wrote when
he captured it from Hood.
The Western & Atlantic Railroad
runs more trains per day over the
same rails than any other railroad south
of the Ohio River.
The W. & A. is the quickest.
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