1979 October Civil War Times Magazine Sherman Siege Of Atlanta Cover

Description: Excellent condition or better. IN THIS ISSUE Shoot Out At Picacho Pass, by Dean Smith "Arizona's only . . . combat to the death." 5 Holocaust Holiday, by William Wrenshall Smith Vacationing at Chattanooga, 1863. THE REGULARS 14 The War In Words, by James I. Robertson, Jr. The Gates Report, by Arnold Gates 22 Book Reviews 24 Behind the Lines, by William C. Davis 26 Mail Call 49 The Life Of A Rising Son, Part III: The Conqueror, by Albert Castel Sherman vowed that Rebel citizenry would "feel the hard hand of war." 28 THE COVER: Sherman at the Siege of Atlanta, by Thure de Thulstrup (1848-1930). Lithograph published by Prang & Co., Boston, 1886. The final installment of Sherman's life begins on page 10 of this issue. The "Calico House" conquest of Atlanta. -Sherman's headquarters after his The Confederacy's dream of Southwest empire in the fall of 1861 was grandiose indeed. Henry H. Sibley, re- cently resigned as a major in the United States Army, presented a glittering plan to Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. It called for capture of the vast New Mexico Terri- tory-including today's Arizona-occupation of south- ern California and its Pacific ports, and possible annex- ation of five northern Mexican states. Such a coup would open a freighting and future railroad route to the West Coast, bring rich mines and ranches under Con- federate control, nearly double the Confederacy's land area, and perhaps gain European recognition of the new nation. President Davis ap- proved the plan, made Sibley a Confederate brigadier gen- eral, and sent him hurrying westward to recruit an army. By March 1862 Sibley had taken some giant steps toward realization of his dream. His 3,300 troops held control of every major New Mexico town. They cap- tured Tucson and ranged to within 80 miles of the Cali- fornia border. His emissary, Colonel James Reily, nego- tiated with Mexican state governors. Southern Cali- fornia, where Confederate sympathy was strong, seemed ripe for plucking. But then the great enter- prise faltered. Sibley lost his entire supply train at the Battle of Glorieta Pass in New Mexico in late March and limped back to Mesilla and El Paso with a greatly But diminished force. alarmed Federal authorities in San Francisco had already Mass.-MOLLUS Collection Brigadier General Hen Confederate empire in ----------- 2 ----------- View of Tucson from the south (1862). Tucson. He paused two days to resupply his men and map out his plan of attack: a two-pronged cavalry movement on Southern pickets who had been observed at Picacho Pass, 40 miles northwest of Tucson. Lieu- tenant James Barrett was to lead one contingent in from the east, and Lieutenant Ephraim Baldwin was to take another in from the west. They would capture the out- post before the alarm could be spread, and then Callo- way's entire force would charge in to overwhelm Tucson and Hunter's men without warning. In the hot early afternoon of April 15, 1862, Hunter's nine pickets were posted in the scant shade of a mesquite thicket just east of Picacho Peak-a spectacu- lar rocky promontory which rose like a giant finger, 1,500 feet above the desert floor. In command was a tall sergeant named Henry Holmes, upon whose vigilance now depended the safety of the Tucson garrison and the Confederacy's bold western thrust. Within minutes he and his comrades were to become actors in Arizona's only drama of Civil War combat to the death. Calloway's 's plan to surround and capture the outpost might have worked, had it not been for the rashness of young Lieutenant Barrett, who had raced his twelve- Continued on page 44 Arizona Historical Foundation, Charles Trumbull Ha ----------- 3 ----------- On March 20, 1864, Lieutenant General U.S. Grant and Major General William T. Sherman met in a room at the Burnet House Hotel in Cincinnati to formulate the strategy by which they hoped to win the war. The plan that emerged was quite obvious and quite sound: While Grant hammered at General Robert E. Lee in Virginia, Sherman was to move into Georgia against the Confed- eracy's other main army, that of General Joseph E. Johnston. He was "to break it up, and to get into the in- terior of the enemy's country" as far as he could go, "inflicting all the damage" possible on the South's war resources. Both Grant and Sherman were to attack simultaneously and not cease attacking in order to pre- vent the Confederates from shifting troops from one front to the other. To accomplish this task Sherman collected 100,000 men in the Chattanooga region of Tennessee, divided into Major General George H. Thomas' 60,000-man Army of the Cumberland, the 25,000 men of Major General James B. McPherson's Army of the Tennes- see (soon increased to 34,000 by the addition of an- other corps), and Major General John M. Schofield's 15,000 troops called the Army of the Ohio. Nearly all of these troops and their officers were tough veterans thoroughly experienced in the latest techniques of com- bat. However, their discipline off the battlefield was poor and in the months ahead it would grow worse. The artillery numbered 254 pieces and was well-served. On the other hand, the cavalry, made up of 6,000 troopers organized into three divisions, was by Sherman's own admission inferior in "quantity and quality" to the enemy's. All in all, despite the deficiency in discipline and the weakness of the cavalry (for which he had little use in any case) Sherman rightly believed that he had F'one of the best armies in the world." 10 ----------- 4 ----------- Major General James Birdseye McPherson failed in his assignment at Snake Creek Gap. farther. However, reasoning that Johnston's line must also be close to the breaking point, he decided to strike it head on at Kennesaw Mountain. If he could smash through there he could wreck the entire enemy army. And even if the attack failed, it would teach the Con- federates and his own troops what he believed would be a salutary lesson: Not to expect him always to go around the flank. On June 27 two divisions, one from the Army of the Cumberland, the other from the Army of the Ten- nessee, marched up the slopes of Kennesaw Mountain. None of their officers and men believed that the assault could succeed. They were right. The Confederates, who had been hoping for just such a chance, mowed them down in heaps. Unable to advance and afraid to retreat, the survivors frantically dug in. When the fighting finally ended, 2,500 of some of the North's best soldiers lay dead or wounded. Two days later Sherman wrote his wife, "I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple of thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash. ..." Soon after the Kennesaw debacle McPherson and Schofield again began curling around the Confederate flanks; apparently such a maneuver was feasible after all. Johnston promptly withdrew to an already prepared stronghold on the north bank of the Chattahoochee 13 ----------- 5 ----------- Sherman and his generals in the Atlanta Campaign. Left to right: Howard, Logan, Hazen, Sherman, Davis, Slocum, and Mower. McPherson, not shown, was killed at Atlanta. would have ample strength to defeat a Confederate invasion of Tennessee, he gave Sherman permission to make the march. Two weeks later Sherman with 62,000 of his best troops set out from the burning city of Atlanta. He instructed his men to "forage liberally on the country." This they did-and looted and destroyed. In front of them there were only a few brigades of cavalry and the old men and young boys of the Georgia militia. Behind them they left a trail of devastation sixty miles wide. Accompanying them were hordes of Negroes rejoicing in their liberation from slavery. Their presence annoyed Sherman, who considered the Emancipation Proclamation a mistake. Most of his soldiers felt the same way. Once they deliberately left hundreds of Negroes stranded on the other side of a river. In mid-December Sherman's legions reached the outskirts of Savannah. Possibly, had he moved in the right way and with sufficient speed, he might have bagged the city's 10,000-man garrison. But he was more con- cerned with establishing contact with the Northern navy than with the garrison commander's resolve not to be trapped. So the Confederates, after a brief show of resistance, had no difficulty getting away. On December 21 the Union troops entered the city and Sherman tele- graphed Lincoln: "I beg to present to you as a Christ- mas gift the city of Savannah." 17 ----------- 6 ----------- produce results by death and slaughter," he wrote his wife after Shiloh. After taking command in the West in 1864 Sherman dominated, by the force of his intellect and personality, the generals who served under him. The sole exception was Thomas, with whom his relationship was both unique and complex. He also secured the confidence and even the admiration of the rank and file, who on seeing him ride by would say, "There goes the old man. All's right." As a result the veteran-but heterogeneous-forces that assembled around Chattanooga in the spring of 1864 became a fighting machine matched in effectiveness only by Lee's army at its peak. To a list of Sherman's merits his biographer and admirer, the British military historian Liddell Hart, has added the highest of all-genius. According to Hart, Sherman deserves this designation because he cleverly employed the "indirect approach" both in tactics and strategy; he constantly placed his opponents on the "horns of the dilemma" by marching in widely dispersed columns, preventing-as in Georgia and the Carolinas -a concentration of force against him; he ushered in the age of modern warfare by making the enemy's home- front as important an objective as his battlefront and he carried out blitzkrieg penetrations deep into his rear. What Liddell Hart claims has the ring of truth, but maybe Sherman was not so much a military genius as he was a man who could attack a knotty problem with a practical solution. As an old quartermaster he knew the needs of a large body of troops; how else could his army have moved rapidly and still have lived off the land without fanning out? Also, giving up the chase after Hood to head for Savannah, and efforts at flanking the National Archives ----------- 7 ----------- In November 1863, William Wrenshall Smith visited Major General Ulysses S. Grant at Chattanooga, one of the more spectacular battlegrounds of the Civil War. He recorded his journey to the front, his rides with Grant to and fro in the Chatta- nooga area, and his encounters with other generals, with members of Grant's staff, and with others, in a diary; the major por- tion of which is published here for the first time. Smith visited Grant as a friend, enjoying an unrivaled opportunity to watch the North's most successful general at the moment of his greatest popular acclaim. Thrust into prominence by the uncondi- tional surrender of Fort Donelson, sur- rounded by criticism after the Battle of Shiloh. Grant had secured his military reputation by the stunning maneuvers which at last made possible the siege of Vicksburg. By late summer, 1863, Major General William S. Rosecrans had similarly outmaneuvered the second major Con- federate army in the West, under General Braxton Bragg, only to be surprised at Chickamauga and driven back to Chatta- nooga. On October 4, Grant wrote Smith a pass, expecting to see him at Vicksburg, but before Smith left for the front a month later, Grant had been given command of the new Military Division of the Mississippi (embracing most of the Union depart- ments beyond the Alleghenies) and been called to Chattanooga. Although he immediately relieved William Starke Rose- crans, placed Major General George H. Thomas in command of the Army of the Cumberland, approved plans for opening the "cracker line," by which Thomas' men (assisted by a contingent under Major General Joseph Hooker) once again sup- plied Chattanooga by the Tennessee River, the Union host was still ----------- 8 ----------- By packed, I soon dressed-with "Ed's" assistance, and after a good breakfast ride rapidly to the Nashville Depot. Buy my ticket and show my pass to the Guard, take a comfortable seat and am soon rushing towards the sunny south. WARTIME NASHVILLE As we approach Nashville elegant mansions begin to grow more numerous and plainly show we are in a country whose inhabitants are more opulent, refined and generous than we northmen have been accustomed to. We occasion- ally see the sad havec [sic] of war in the ruins of some large plantation establish- ments and, as we near the suburbs of the city, of the destroyed fences, ruins of fac- tories & bridges. We get to the Nashville Depot about 5:1/2 oclock and drive to the Seawnee [Sewanee] House [...] Tuesday Nov. 10th 1864. During the morning I ask Blunt to go with me to the office of the Headquarters. Go to office of [Lieutenant] Col. [Theodore S.] Bowers, A.A.G. to get pass to Chatta- nooga. The Col. when I was at Corinth [Miss.], a year & a half ago, was a boy in the office of then Maj. [John A.] Rawlins A.A.G.-& I did not recognize him-nor he me. He declined very politely to grant a pass-said they had orders to grant none -that the transportation of the road was entirely taken up by the military and no civilians could be permitted to go South. I showed him the General's pass. He read it. His countenance brightened-"Ah!" diato ----------- 9 ----------- MEETING GRANT In a short time the General arrives. He greets me cordially, and takes me into his room. He puts his quarters and horses at my disposal and makes me feel altogether comfortable. We have a long talk. He tells me all about his children, about his purchases since he has been in the army-his saving all the money he could for the future, not knowing when his fortunes might change, and he be thrown out of his office- Besides buying the ground and beautiful English Villa in which he lived when I was visiting him 5 years ago in Missouri, from Fred Dent, [Grant bought Wish-ton-wish, near St. Louis, from another brother-in- law, Lewis Dent.]-he has invested five thousand Dollars in U.S. 5/20's; He now wants to buy five thousand Dollars worth of Chicago city Passanger Rail Way Stock, ----------- 10 ----------- Pass. Not long after the bloody skirmish, he established a small fort at White's mill in the Pima Villages and named it "Fort Barrett" in honor of the dead lieuten- ant. And for months thereafter, the names of the three men killed at Picacho Pass were called at every muster of their company. In response to the calling of their names, one of their comrades would answer: "He died for his country." () 2901

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