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| One of the Rebel forts seized in Atlanta (George Barnard/Library of Congress) |
This week marks the 157th
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. 4th
Army Corps turned southward toward Tunnel Hill and the U.S. 23rd
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.
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| 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 4th 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 5th 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 5th 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 4th 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.
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| (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 17th 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.
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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.
