The Atlanta Campaign threw thousands of men at each other in combat. Guest columnist Charlie Crawford tells us about 8 of them

One of the Rebel forts seized in Atlanta (George Barnard/Library of Congress)

This week marks the 157^th anniversary of the beginning of the Atlanta Campaign, a prolonged Federal offensive that would have a profound impact on the outcome of the Civil War.

The Picket asked Charlie Crawford (left), president emeritus of the Georgia Battlefields Association, to write about individuals involved in the fighting. Crawford, who has led or taken part in countless tours of battlefields in the region, focuses, with one exception, on soldiers who were non-military before the war and – if they survived -- returned to civilian life. The following biographies have been edited.

You can make a good argument that the Atlanta Campaign, as it later came to be known, began when Generals Grant and Sherman discussed strategy during a train trip from Nashville to Cincinnati on 18 and 19 March 1864. Grant indicated he would take command of U.S. forces in Virginia with the objective of destroying Confederate forces in that state, principally the army commanded by General R.E. Lee, while Sherman should advance with his forces south from the Chattanooga area with the objective of destroying Confederate forces in Georgia, principally the army commanded by General J.E. Johnston.

For the remaining days of March and the month of April, Sherman would order a concentration around Chattanooga of U.S. forces from Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia. Gathering supplies and planning for their subsequent movement was also critical. 

Around Dalton, Ga., Gen. Johnston had done much to restore the capabilities and morale of Confederate forces over the first four months of 1864. He, too, had to concentrate his forces and plan a strategy for the U.S. advance he knew would be coming once the spring rains abated and the roads dried enough to allow for movement of the combined 180,000 men and up to 100,000 horses and mules that the opposing forces would concentrate in northwest Georgia. 

On 7 May 1864, Sherman and a group of his subordinate generals stood on the slightly elevated ground in front of a doctor’s house and watched as the U.S. 4^th Army Corps turned southward toward Tunnel Hill and the U.S. 23^rd Army Corps marched east before turning south toward Dalton.

The movement of these troops is often cited as the beginning of the campaign, and a historical marker at the intersection of GA 2 and GA 209 is titled “Campaign for Atlanta Began Here.”

Many men would find their fates conjoined over the next four months.

Leonidas Polk and Peter Simonson, Pine Mountain

Leonidas Polk (left) was from North Carolina and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1827, but within six months, he resigned from the Army to study for the ministry. When the Civil War began, he was Episcopal bishop of Louisiana but approached his West Point friend Jefferson Davis and offered to serve the Confederate States army.

Davis made Polk a brigadier general. Polk proved to have an inclination to misunderstand orders or refuse to follow them and he had an uneven record on the battlefield.

By early May 1864, he was a lieutenant general leading Confederate forces in Mississippi and was ordered to bring three divisions to Georgia to reinforce Gen. Johnston. By 14 June 1864, he was commanding a corps in Johnston’s army, and his headquarters was at the Hardage house on the north side of Burnt Hickory Road a few miles from Kennesaw Mountain. A Georgia Historical Commission marker marks the site.

Gen. Johnston passed the house along with Lt. Gen. William Hardee on the way to inspect the position of one of Hardee’s divisions on Pine Mountain. Johnston invited Polk to come along. Once atop the mountain, the generals and some of their staffs stood near the position of a four-gun artillery battery and observed the U.S. Army lines to the north and west. 

Position of 5th Indiana where it fired at Confederates (Courtesy of GBA)

Riding along the U.S. Army position were Gen. Sherman and some of his subordinate generals.  Through field glasses, Sherman noticed the conspicuous group atop Pine Mountain and surmised that it included general officers trying to get a better perspective on the situation.

Sherman directed Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, commanding the 4^th Corps, to have cannon fire directed at the group. Howard turned to the commander of the artillery of his first division, Capt. Peter Simonson, to execute Sherman’s order. Nearby, Simonson found a familiar artillery unit, the 5^th Indiana Artillery Battery, which Simonson had formerly commanded. The firing commenced, and the third shell passed through Polk’s chest, killing him instantly. His successor, Alexander P. Stewart, proved to be a more successful corps commander.

Simonson himself would be killed two days later by a rifle shot while he was directing the placement of an artillery battery.

It was unusual for a captain to be acting chief of division artillery, and the comments made when he was killed reflected not only sorrow that his personality would be missed but also concern about replacing his military skills.  

A monument marking Polk’s death site (left) is on Pine Mountain, and a Cobb County historical marker relating to Simonson’s death is on the east side of Frank Kirk Road.  Despite the extensive development of Cobb County, which now has nearly 800,000 residents, three of the gun positions at the Polk death site are still discernible, as is the position of the 5^th Indiana Battery that fired the shots. 

Both sites are on private land, so they are in danger of being bulldozed away.

Edward Walthall and John Geary, Peachtree Creek

The 20 July 1864 Battle of Peachtree Creek in Atlanta brought Walthall and Geary together to oppose each other.

Edward Walthall (left) was a lawyer, not a professional soldier. When the Civil War began, he left his position as a district attorney and joined a Mississippi regiment as a first lieutenant. By July 1864, he was a major general commanding a Confederate division. He led that division at Peachtree Creek. His attack had initial success, collapsing the right flank of the U.S. division led by Maj. Gen. John Geary. 

He is most positively remembered for being better than his predecessor as division commander and for his later rearguard action, along with Forrest, that prevented the destruction of the Army of Tennessee during Hood's retreat from Nashville in December 1864.

Geary was also not a professional soldier but a surveyor and railroad builder. He was wounded five times while serving as a volunteer officer in the Mexican War but returned to civilian life until he was appointed postmaster of San Francisco in 1849. He was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1850 and then appointed territorial governor of Kansas in 1856. He returned to his home state of Pennsylvania and remarried after his first wife died.

He joined the volunteer army when the Civil War began and fought in several battles in the Eastern Theater, including Gettysburg, before his division was transferred west in September 1863.

Peachtree Creek map locates Walthall and Geary on the left (Courtesy of GBA)

On 20 July 1864, Geary rallied his men and ultimately repulsed Walthall’s attack at Peachtree Creek. When U.S. forces captured Atlanta on 2 September 1864, Sherman logically appointed the former mayor and territorial governor as military administrator of the city. He would serve the same role in Savannah when that city was occupied by U.S. forces in December 1864. 

His height (6 feet, 6 inches) and his proficiency at administration -- rather than his tactical or leadership skills -- were the features most used to describe his Civil War performance.

After the war, Walthall returned to the practice of law in Mississippi until appointed in 1885 to the U.S. Senate, where he served until his death in 1898. Most people living in the Collier Hills section of Atlanta would not be able to explain why a road in their neighborhood is named Walthall Drive. 

Geary returned to Pennsylvania and served as governor from 1867 to 1873. In February 1873, less than a month after leaving office, he died of a heart attack while preparing breakfast for his infant son. 

Sul Ross and John Croxton, Brown’s Mill 

Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross (left) was born in 1838 in Iowa but raised in Texas, a territory when his family moved there in 1839, and a state by 1845. He attended Baylor University and then Wesleyan University in Alabama but fought Comanches during the summer breaks, being badly wounded in 1858. In the summer of 1860, he again fought Comanches while serving with the Texas Rangers.

When the Civil War came, Ross enlisted in the Confederate army as a private but was soon made an officer. He distinguished himself as a cavalry officer in several battles in the Western Theater. By July 1863, a brigade was created specifically for Ross to lead as a brigadier general, though he suffered recurring attacks of fever and chills every three days from September 1863 to March 1864 due to malaria.

He was a combative sort, which is a desirable trait for a cavalry commander, but sometimes it got in the way of mission success.

He was still leading the brigade when it was transferred along with Polk’s infantry to northwest Georgia in May 1864, and it endured 86 engagements with U.S. forces over the next four months. At the cavalry Battle of Brown’s Mill on 30 July 1864, Ross was briefly captured but was recovered by Confederate forces within minutes. His brigade led Hood’s forces into Tennessee in November 1864. By the time Ross was granted a furlough in March 1865, he had participated in 135 combat actions. 

After the war, Ross prospered as a farmer and rancher and fathered eight children over the next 17 years. In 1873, Ross became a county sheriff.  In 1875, he served for over two months at a state constitutional convention and then served as a state senator 1880-1882. He was governor of Texas 1887-1891, declining to run for a third two-year term. He was a very successful president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) from 1891 until his death in 1898. Sul Ross State University is named in his honor.

Bench at Brown's Mill battlefield park (Picket photo)

John Croxton was born in 1837 and raised in Kentucky by a slave-holding family, from which he became estranged because of his ardent abolitionism. He graduated from Yale University and practiced law until being commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the 4^th Kentucky U.S. Infantry in October 1861. He commanded infantry units at the battles of Perryville and Chickamauga. 

His regiment was reorganized in February 1864 as mounted infantry, and it served in a cavalry brigade during the Atlanta Campaign, skirmishing frequently from May through July when the Battle of Brown’s Mill in Coweta County brought it face to face with Sul Ross’s Confederate brigade.

Croxton’s regiment lost heavily at Brown’s Mill (a Confederate victory). Croxton, along with every other officer serving under McCook at Brown's Mill, lost a large part of his command.  He had already performed well enough before then to be promoted to brigadier general once he finished his two-week trek on foot back to Federal lines. 

(Civil War Picket photo)

He led a brigade opposing Hood’s invasion of Tennessee in late 1864, where he again faced Ross’s cavalry at the 15 December 1864 Battle of Nashville and clashed with Confederate cavalry almost daily during Hood’s retreat.

In late March 1865, Croxton led a brigade during Wilson’s raid across Alabama into Georgia.  Maj. Gen. James Wilson detached Croxton’s brigade to operate independently against the Confederate supply depot and military academy at Tuscaloosa, and Croxton burned not only military stores but also several buildings of the University of Alabama before defeating a Confederate cavalry force near Talladega on 23 April 1865. He finally rejoined Wilson in Macon, Ga., after operating independently for almost a month.

After the Confederate surrenders, Croxton served as military governor of southwest Georgia until December 1865, when he returned to Kentucky to practice law. In 1872, President Grant appointed Croxton as U.S. minister to Bolivia. Croxton died there from tuberculosis in 1874.

The Atlanta Campaign brought together Ross and Croxton, two men who had rich lives outside their time as soldiers.

Walter Gresham and Randall Gibson
Bald (Leggett’s) Hill, Battle of Atlanta 

Walter Q. Gresham (left) was from Indiana and a conservative Democrat who opposed slavery. He practiced law starting in 1854. When the war came, he sought a commission in the volunteer army but was rebuffed by the governor because of a political disagreement. Instead, he enlisted in the army and by March 1862 was a colonel commanding an infantry regiment that he then led at Corinth and through the Vicksburg Campaign.

By the time the 17^th Corps in which he served arrived in Georgia in June 1864, he was leading a division as a 32-year-old brigadier general. He didn't have that long to demonstrate his capabilities and his command didn’t see heavy action until July. On 20 July 1864, as his division approached Atlanta after passing through Decatur, he was shot in the knee near the Bald Hill, now the site of the Moreland Avenue interchange with I-20, a disabling wound that left him with a permanent limp.

Like Gibson, Ross, Walthall and Croxton, his performance during the Atlanta Campaign was competent.

Gresham returned to the practice of law until 1869, when President Grant appointed him to the U.S. District Court, where he served until April 1883, when President Arthur appointed him postmaster general.  He next served as secretary of the treasury for two months until President Arthur appointed him to the U.S. Circuit Court in October 1884. President Cleveland selected Gresham to be Secretary of State in March 1893, and he died in that office in 1895.

Randall L. Gibson was raised in Louisiana. His great-great-grandfather was a free man of color who married a white woman, though this fact was hidden from public view. Gibson went north for education and graduated from Yale University in 1853. He became a lawyer, served as U.S. attaché in Madrid, and raised sugar cane in Louisiana. When the war began, he became captain of a Louisiana artillery battery until being appointed colonel of an infantry regiment. He led the regiment at Shiloh, Perryville and Stones River, serving several times as acting brigade commander, as he did again at Chickamauga and Chattanooga.

Gibson's brigade was not sent forward to exploit the 22 July 1864
Confederate assault, a central focus of the Atlanta Cyclorama. (Library of Congress)

When the Atlanta Campaign began, he had his own brigade as a 31-year-old brigadier general. On 22 July 1864, despite being in support of the Confederate attack a mile north of the Bald Hill, an action that is the central focus of the Atlanta Cyclorama, Gibson’s brigade was not ordered to exploit the breach.

Gibson and his brigade participated in Hood’s invasion of Tennessee in late 1864, and Gibson ended the war defending Mobile, Alabama.  He returned to Louisiana, practicing law and trying to raise sugar cane in the absence of slave labor. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives 1875-1883 and the U.S. Senate 1883-1892, also serving as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution and president of the board of administrators of Tulane University. Like Gresham, he died in office.

Though their units never fought each other directly, Gresham and Gibson exemplify the many men in their early 30s who became generals by the third year of the war, then went back to their civilian occupations and lives of public service.           

Epilogue

Except for Capt. Simonson, the above biographies focus on generals; but what of the 180,000 or so other soldiers who participated in the Atlanta Campaign? In round numbers, about 8,000 were killed in action, 42,000 were wounded, and 18,000 were captured or reported missing. 

Many of the wounded survived, though some with permanent disabilities, and others survived prison camps. Many of those not killed in action would die of disease, the war’s greatest killer, and others would live with the after effects of malaria, typhoid, dysentery, measles, and other diseases they caught while serving.

Most would go home and try to reconstruct their lives, but they would all be able to say that they had been in the great Civil War that tested whether this nation would long endure. They could also say that they participated in the campaign that likely determined the outcome of that war, because the fall of Atlanta in September 1864 significantly bolstered Lincoln’s chances for reelection, and it was clear that a Lincoln administration would accept nothing less than victory in the fight for a reunited nation that was free of slavery.