USA > Tennessee > History of the Twentieth Tennessee regiment volunteer infantry, C.S.A > Part 27
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The Twentieth Tennessee Regiment was in Bate's Division of Hardee's Corps, and in front of the Yankee works that we at- tacked was a mill pond, the water about waist deep, which we waded, and while in the pond the Yankees threw a shell into the
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regiment and killed three men. We moved on across the pond, and ascended the ridge where the Yankees were intrenched, and struck their works at an angle, and were only partially success- ful on this part of the line; but the general assault was : we captured one mile of the enemy's works and held them. Cheat- ham's Corps captured five pieces of artillery and five stands of colors, and Hardee's Corps captured eight pieces of artillery and thirteen stands of colors. But the heaviest loss the Yankees sustained was in the death of Maj .- Gen. John B. McPherson, whom the Confederates regarded as the "brains of Sherman's Army." General Hood complimented the troops by saying that they fought with great vigor, and carried several lines of en- trenchment, but the sacrifice was great. Maj .- Gen. W. H. T. Walker of Georgia, was killed. He commanded one of Hardee's divisions ; and Col. Frank M. Walker, of the Ninteenth Tennes- see, who commanded Maney's Brigade of Cheatham's old divi- sion, was also killed. He was a " knight of the first water, and a soldier without a fault."
There has been a great deal said in the Confederate Army about who killed General McPherson. The proof seems to be that he was killed by the skirmish line under Capt. Richard Beard of the Fifth Confederate Regiment, L. E. Polk's Brigade, Cleburne's Division, Hardee's Corps. Captain Beard said : "I was ordered by General Cleburne to advance and never halt until the enemy's breastworks were taken. We ran through a line of skirmishers and took them without firing a gun, and sud- denly came to the edge of a narrow wagon road running parallel with our line of march, down which General McPherson came thundering at the head of his staff. He came upon us suddenly. My own company had reached the verge of the road when he discovered us. I was so near him as to see the very features of his face. I threw up my sword as a signal for him to surrender. He checked his horse, raised his hat in salute, wheeled to the right, and dashed off to the rear in a gallop. Corporal Coleman, who was near me, was ordered to fire, and it was his shot that killed General McPherson. At the time that Coleman fired, the General was bending forward passing under the branches of a tree ; the ball ranged upward, and passed near his heart. A vol-
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ley was fired at his fleeing staff. I ran up to the General, who had fallen upon his knees and face, but he had no sign of life in him. Right by the General's side lay a signal officer of his staff, whose horse had been shot from under him, who, if hurt at all, was slightly wounded. He told me that the dead man was General McPherson."
I am personally acquainted with Captain Richard Beard and believe that his statement is true.
General Sherman, in his history of this campaign, states that General McPherson's pocket-book and papers were found in the haversack of a prisoner.
Captain Beard said that his command did not disturb the Gen- eral in any way. On the 26th of July, Gen. Stephen D. Lee assumed command of Hood's old corps, and Cheatham returned to his division. On the 28th, Lieut .- Gen. A. P. Stewart was wounded, and General Cheatham was placed in command of his corps on the 29th, and General Maney took charge of Cheat- ham's Division.
On the morning of July 28, the Yankees moved out on Hood's left on the Lickskillet Road in force, and at II A. M., Gen. Ste- phen D. Lee with his corps was ordered to check the movement. Brig .- Gen. Jno. C. Brown, who was in command of Hindman's old division, with Clayton's Division on his right, advanced and drove the enemy across the road and some distance beyond until he encountered their rifle pits, when he was checked.
Walthall's Division of Stewart's Corps, under instructions from General Lee, assaulted the position. General Walthall in his report said that "Brigadier-General Quarles with his brigade of Tennesseeans made a bold and bloody assault, but his com- mand was checked by the large force of the enemy in his front, and the unopposed troops, which over-lapped his left, and poured into his flank a damaging fire, and if it had been possi- ble for the daring of officers, and the desperate fighting of the men to have overcome such odds, we would have succeeded ; but twice our number could not have accomplished what my divi- sion was ordered to do." Quarles' Brigade lost heavily. Rev. J. H. McNeilly, who was chaplain of the Forty-ninth Tennessee Regiment, followed his regiment into the assault, and could be
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seen everywhere administering to the physical and spiritual com- forts of the wounded and dying.
At night-fall the Confederate troops were withdrawn to their original line. This was one of the bloodiest engagements of the campaign. From July 28 to August 6, there was comparative quiet. On August 5, Tyler's Brigade of Bate's Division, under the command of Col. T. B. Smith of the Twentieth Regiment, was sent out on the Sandtown Road near Utoy Creek, and at once deployed as skirmishers, and began to throw up rails, cord- wood, and dirt for protection. In a short while the enemy's skirmishers were upon us, and several encounters took place that evening, the Yankees being repulsed each time. It was here on the evening of August 5, about 3 P. M., that I lost my left arm. On the next day, August 6, while Tyler's Brigade, under the command of the gallant Col. T. B. Smith, was hold- ing this entrenched line, it was assaulted three times by a supe- rior force, and repulsed each time, and after the third assault the Twentieth and Thirtieth Tennessee Regiments charged out of their works, and followed the fleeing Yankees.
It was here where Dave Montgomery, of Company C, killed two Yankees in two minutes. After the Yankees were finally driven away, we found about 1,000 of their killed and wounded left in front of Tyler's Brigade, besides two stands of colors and about 400 stands of small arms. The Twentieth Tennessee Regiment, C. S. A., captured the colors of the Eighth Ten- nessee, U. S. A., and all of the entrenching tools that they had. The brigade was composed of the Second, Tenth, Fif- teenth, Twentieth, Thirtieth, and Thirty-seventh Tennessee, Thirty-seventh Georgia Regiments, and Fourth Georgia Batta- lion of Sharpshooters, all under the command of Col. Tom Ben- ton Smith, of the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment. The brigade numbered about 1,200 men, and had twenty killed and wounded. Gen. Stephen D. Lee, to whom General Bate was reporting, said of Tyler's Brigade, in a special order, "that soldiers who fight with the coolness and determination that these men did will always be victorious over any reasonable number." Just before the engagement the Yankees had drawn new clothes and new hats, and our brigade supplied themselves.
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On August 30 the Yankees, by their flank movement, had reached the vicinity of Jonesboro, on the Macon & Atlanta Rail- road, some thirty miles south of Atlanta.
General Hood was deluded into the belief that this flank move- ment was made by two corps of Sherman's Army, and that the other five corps were still in his front at Atlanta, when he (Hood) sent two of his three corps, viz., Stephen D. Lee's Corps and Hardee's old corps, under Cleburne, to meet them, while Hood remained back in Atlanta with Stewart's Corps. After an all-night march Cleburne and Lee were in position at II A. M., August 31, and Hood's orders were to attack the enemy at once, and drive him across Flint River ; but instead of Lee and Cle- burne, with their two corps that were worn out from an all- night's march, finding only two corps of Yankees, as Hood had thought, they found the whole Yankee Army there in line, ex- cept the Twentieth Corps, which was left at Chattahoochee Bridge. General Lee attacked the enemy in his entrenchments, and was repulsed, leaving 946, killed and wounded, in front of the enemy's works. This showed the desperate fighting of the Confederates, who were contending against three to one in their breastworks. Cleburne, who was in command of Hardee's old corps, carried the works in his front. It was in Bate's division of Cleburne's corps that the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment fought, and it was while assaulting the enemy's works that the regiment lost one of the coolest, bravest, and best officers it ever had, Maj. John F. Guthrie. He was the embodiment of courage, honor, and fidelity to duty. He was a school-mate of mine at home, and a mess-mate in the army.
It was here that the gallant Bob Allison had carried the colors of the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment over the second line of the enemy's works when he and Major Guthrie both fell, covered with blood, glory, and the colors of that immortal band. The enemy was now threatening to attack Lee's corps, when Gen. M. P. Lowrie, who was in command of Cleburne's old division, was sent to Lee's support, while Maney, who was commanding Cheatham's old division, took Lowrie's place.
On the night of the 31st, Lee was ordered with his corps to re- turn to Atlanta, as Hood expected the Yankees would attack
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him there the next day. This left Hardee's corps on the defen- sive at Jonesboro, when, on September 1, these troops received repeated assaults from Sherman's Army, but held their position, which enabled Hood to withdraw from Atlanta on the night of September 1, and met Hardee's Corps at Lovejoy Station, where the Confederate Army, what was left of it, was concentrated. In the battle of Jonesboro the Confederates lost, in killed and wounded, 1,485. After the battle of Jonesboro, the Confederate Army lost confidence in Hood's ability as a commander. Tyler's brigade, in the battle of Jonesboro, was hurled against three lines of earthworks, well served with artillery, and lost one- third of their number.
The concentration of Hood's Army at Lovejoy was the end of the campaign from Dalton to Jonesboro. Now let us make some comparison of the forces of the two armies and their losses. On the 6th day of May, when Sherman opened his Georgia cam- paign in front of Dalton, he had six corps of infantry, four divi- sions of cavalry, and 254 pieces of artillery ; total, 98,797 men. These six corps were the Fourth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Six- teenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-third ; and on May 21 he or- dered the Seventeenth Corps, 10,500 strong, to join him.
This gave Sherman, up to June 1, 109,297 men, of which he lost, in the entire campaign, killed, 4,423 ; wounded, 22,822; missing, 9,836 ; total, 37,081.
Gen. Joe Johnston had at Dalton, May 6, when the campaign opened, 42,756 men and 187 guns, divided into three corps of in- fantry, and his cavalry in two divisions, under Joe Wheeler and W. H. Jackson. From May 6 to July 18, Johnston received in reinforcements the three divisions of French, Loring, and Canty, and 1,500 Georgia militia, about 18,000 men, which gave John- ston a force of 60,564 to oppose Sherman's Army of 109,297. Johnston lost of this army, from May 6 to July 18, the day that he turned over his army to Hood, 1,221 killed, 8,229 wounded ; total killed and wounded, 9,450 ; captured, 2,364 ; total, 11, 814, lost in a campaign of 72 days against twice his numbers.
General Hood took command July 18, 1864, and reported the strength of his army at 48,750, of all branches. He lost from July 18 to September 1, making forty-three days, killed, 1,750 ;
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wounded, 10,267 ; missing, 1,800 ; total for Hood, 13,817 ; total for Johnston, 11,814 ; grand total for Confederates, 25,631 in the Georgia campaign, which makes the Confederate loss 11,450 less than the Federal loss.
After the Battle of Jonesboro, Sherman's Army camped in and about Atlanta, and Hood gathered his forces about Jonesboro, and afterwards at Lovejoy Station on the Atlanta and Macon R. R., some twenty-five miles south of Atlanta. His three corps under Hardee, Stewart, and Stephen D. Lee, numbered respect- ively : Hardee's 8,417, Lee's 7,401, Stewart's 8,849, total infan- try and artillery 24,667, with 3,794 cavalry under Gen. W. H. Jackson, grand total 28,461. Wheeler with his cavalry, 11,237 strong, had been sent into North Alabama. Hood, on Sept. 18, moved west to Palmetto on the West Point R. R., and formed a line of battle. And it was here that Lieutenant-General Hardee, one of the best officers in the Confederate Army, of his own accord, asked to be relieved of the command of his corps, and Major-General Cheatham succeeded him.
On Sept. 29, Hood crossed the Chattahoochee at Pumpkintown and Phillip's Ferry and started northward, and told his army that this move was not a retreat, but was to draw Sherman out of Atlanta, and have him attack the Confederate forces in position. On Sept. 25, 26, President Davis visited Hood's Army and was received with a great deal of enthusiasm.
Hood, after he had crossed the Chattahoochee, verged to the right and struck the Western and Atlantic R. R. at Big Shanty, where Stewart's corps captured the garrisons at that place and at Acworth. General French with three thousand men attacked Altoona Pass, which was well fortified, and defended by two thousand Yankees ; at this place Sherman had about one million rations stored, and a desperate little battle was fought.
General French's command was detached from the main Con- federate forces, and when Sherman heard the roar of the battle he signaled his commander there to hold out, and sent J. D. Cox's corps to intercept French from Hood's Army, so French was compelled to withdraw before he finished his task, or be cut off.
In this assault of 3,000, General French reported that he lost : killed 122, wounded 443, missing 233, total 798. The Yankees
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reported their loss at killed 142, wounded 352, missing 212, total 706.
Sherman was now convinced that his army could not remain in Atlanta with Hood tearing up his line of supplies in this man- ner, so he sent two divisions up to Chattanooga, and one in the direction of Rome, and Thomas started for Middle Tennessee. Sherman left Slocum's corps as a garrison for Atlanta, and he started with four corps after Hood and followed him as far as Gaylesville, in North Alabama. Hood, on his way north, attacked the Federal garrisons at Resaca, Tunnel Hill, and Dalton. It was here at Dalton that Cannon Peay, a member of Company B, of the Twentieth Tennessee regiment, was killed by a shot from the Yankee blockhouse. The Yankee garrison here was 1,200 strong and surrendered to Strahl's Brigade without an effort at defence.
General Bate sent Captain Hamp J. Cheney to demand the sur- render of another blockhouse some two miles away, but the Yankees did not recognize Cheney or his flag, and fired upon him, killing his horse. Then General Bate ordered up a piece of artillery, and the first shell entered a port-hole and killed fifteen or twenty men, and then a white flag was run up without being asked.
At Ship's Gap, near Dalton, Colonel Ellison Capers, with his South Carolina Regiment, held back Sherman's advance until a portion of his regiment was captured. Hood now moved south from Lafayette, Ga., down the Chattooga Valley, and Sherman's forces followed on to Gaylesville, where they remained about two weeks watching the movements of the Confederate Army at Gadsden.
On the 17th, General Beauregard took command of the new military division of the West, which included Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and East Louisiana. Hood had moved his army across Sand Mountain over to Tuscumbia on the Ten- nessee River ; when Hood left Gadsden and Sherman went back from Gaylesville, the two old enemies separated. Sherman sent the two corps of Stanley and Schofield, and all of his cavalry except Kilpatrick's division, to report to Thomas at Chattanooga,
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who was given full command in Tennessee. Sherman then took his four other corps and went back to Kingston.
If Hood had carried out his original plan of invading Middle Tennessee by crossing the Tennessee River at Guntersville in North Alabama, and gone on at once instead of stopping on the banks of the Tennessee at Tuscumbia and Florence, thus losing three weeks of precious time, which gave Sherman time to repair the N. & C. and W. & A. railroads, and accumulate supplies for his army at Atlanta, that enabled him to make his march to the sea, there would have been a far more successful outcome of this campaign. Not only did he give the enemy these advan- tages, but his stop at Tuscumbia gave Thomas time enough to collect an army in Middle Tennessee that would have crushed him even if he had not made his mistakes at Franklin and Springhill.
After Sherman had collected his supplies at Atlanta, on Nov. 11, 1864, he ordered General Corse with his command to destroy the railroads north to Rome and the Etowah River, thus cutting his army loose from everything north of Atlanta. On Nov. 14, with five corps of infantry 60,000 strong and 5,500 cavalry under Kilpatrick, making a total of 65,500 men, the right wing under Howard and the left under Slocum, Sherman started through the heart of Georgia with a band of thieves and robbers, applying the torch indiscriminately to the homes of helpless women and chil- dren, making a charred avenue forty miles wide from Atlanta to Savannah, destroying $100,000,000 of property; besides, he ordered Capt. O. M. Poe to destroy Atlanta with fire, which turned into the commons and woods thousands of helpless starv- ing women and children, without roof and without bread, when there were not 5,000 Confederate soldiers' within hundreds of miles of his army.
This outrage of Sherman's against humane and civilized war- fare, entitles him to an abode forever in the bottomless pit of Satan's kingdom, that ought to be made ten times as hot as the hottest fire that Captain Poe kindled in Atlanta in 1864.
Sherman's march to the sea with an army of 65,500, with less than 3,500 cavalry and Georgia militia to oppose him, while he, all the while encouraging robbery, pilfering, and arson, on his
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MAJOR PATRICK DUFFY. See page 400.
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return to Washington was hailed by his Government as a hero, was a disgrace upon Christian civilization.
Sherman himself said of the $100,000,000 of property that his army destroyed, that $20,000,000 of it his army made use of, and the other $80,000,000 was destruction and waste.
On Nov. 21, 1864, Hood began crossing his army over the Tennessee at Tuscumbia and Florence, heading it towards Columbia, Tenn., on the Waynesboro Road. On the 29th he crossed Duck River three miles above Columbia with Cheatham's and Stewart's corps and one division of Lee's corps, crossing Rutherford Creek some five miles north of Duck River, and marched to Spring Hill.
The Yankee Army in this section was about 23,000 infantry and 5,500 cavalry, total 28,500, under General Schofield (who commanded Sherman's left wing in the Georgia campaign). On the 29th, Hood, after traversing the fields and by-roads with his army, late in the afternoon was in position with his front corps (Cheatham's) within two or three hundred yards east of the Columbia pike at Spring Hill, which was twelve miles in rear of Schofield's position at Columbia. This flank movement of Hood's caused Schofield to retreat in haste back to Spring Hill, and that night on to Franklin.
The main Yankee column did not reach Spring Hill until late in the evening or night, when Cheatham's corps lay within two hundred yards of this retreating column and heard them passing almost the entire night without firing scarcely a gun, when the object of the flank movement was to throw the Confederate forces across the pike at Spring Hill and force Schofield to attack or . surrender. Now whose fault was it, on the part of the Confed- erates, that the attack was not made? This mistake and failure caused a great deal of talk and criticism from the Southern soldiers and historians. From the evidence the fault seems to lie between Generals Hood and Cheatham, and the reports of these two gallant and patriotic soldiers, as well as that of some division commanders of Cheatham's corps, will be submitted in full, and see if we can help to clear the public mind on this unfortunate affair.
General Hood, in his report of this affair, made December 11,
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1864, said : " Major-General Cheatham was ordered at once to attack the enemy vigorously and get possession of the pike at Spring Hill (the road to Franklin), and although these orders were frequently and earnestly repeated, he made but a feeble and partial attack, failing to reach the point indicated."
Again, in his history of the campaign, "Advance and Re- treat," pp. 285, 286, it is related : "General Stewart was then ordered to proceed to the right of Cheatham and place his corps across the pike north of Spring Hill. By this hour, however, twilight was upon us, when General Cheatham rode up in per- son. I at once directed Stewart to halt, and turning to Cheatham I exclaimed with deep emotion, as I felt the golden opportunity fast slipping from me, 'General, why in the name of God have you not attacked the enemy and taken possession of the pike?'" Lieutenant-General Stewart, referring to this statement in a pub- lished letter, says, "No such exclamation by Hood to Cheatham could have been made in my presence."
Major-General Cheatham gave the following account of the affair at Spring Hill :-
"In pursuance of orders from army headquarters, my com- mand crossed Duck River on the morning of Nov. 29, 1864, the division of Major-General Cleburne in advance, followed by that of Major-General Bate, the division of Major-General Brown in the rear. The march was made as rapidly as the condition of the road would allow and without occurrence of note, until about 3 P. M., when I arrived at Rutherford's Creek, two and one-half miles from Spring Hill. At this point General Hood gave me verbal orders as follows : That I should get Cleburne across the creek and send him forward toward Spring Hill, with instruc- tions to communicate with General Forrest, who was near the village, ascertain from him the position of the enemy, and attack immediately ; that I should remain at the creek, and assist General Bate in crossing his division, and then go forward and put Bate's command in to support Cleburne, and that he should push Brown forward to join me.
"As soon as the division of General Bate had crossed the creek I rode forward, and at a point on the road, about one and a half miles from Spring Hill, I saw the left of Cleburne's command
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just disappearing over the hill to the left of the road. Halting there, I waited a few minutes for the arrival of Bate, and formed his command with his right upon Cleburne's left, and ordered him forward to the support of Cleburne. Shortly after Bate's division had disappeared over the same range of hills, I heard firing towards Cleburne's right, and just then General Brown's division came up. I thereupon ordered Brown to proceed to the right, turn the range of hills over which Cleburne and Bate had crossed, and form line of battle and attack to the right of Cle- burne. The division of General Brown was in motion to execute this order when I received a message from Cleburne that his right brigade had been struck in flank by the enemy and had suffered severely, and that he had been compelled to fall back and reform his division with a change of front.
"It so happened that the direction of Cleburne's advance was such as had exposed his right flank to the enemy's line. When his command was formed on the road by which he had marched from Rutherford's Creek, neither the village of Spring Hill nor the turnpike could be seen. Instead of advancing directly upon Spring Hill, his forward movement was a little south of west and almost parallel with the turnpike toward Columbia, instead of northwest upon the enemy's lines, south and east of the village. A reference to the map will show Cleburne's line of advance. General Cleburne was killed in the assault upon Franklin the next day, and I had no opportunity to learn from him how it was that the error of direction occurred.
" Meanwhile General Bate, whom I had placed in position on the left of Cleburne's line of march, continued to move forward in the same direction until he had reached the farm of N. F. Cheairs, one and a half miles south of Spring Hill.
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