BATTLE OE ATLANTA, JULY 22, 1864 —THE CONTEST ON BALD HILL : FOURTH DIVISION, FIFTEENTH CORPS IN THE FOREGROUND.
From tlie Panorama of “Atlanta.”
there would have "been absolutely nothing but the hospital tents and the wagon trains to stop Hardee’s command from falling unheralded directly upon the rear of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth corps in line. Upon what a slight chance, then, hung the fate of Sherman’s army that day. . . .
Just here is a point upon which most of the accounts of the battle are wrong. They represent Dodge’s corps to have been in motion. Fuller had bivouacked there the previous night. Sweeny’s command, while technically in motion, had been halted, awaiting orders.
Just as General Dodge was about to dismount to accept General Fuller’s hospitality, he heard firing in a southeasterly direction, to the rear of General Sweeny’s division. He took no lunch. He was an intensely active, almost nervously restless, officer. He saw in an instant that something serious was at hand. He gave General Fuller orders to form his division immediately, facing southeastwardly, and galloped off toward Sweeny’s division. He had hardly reached that command when Hardee’s lines came tearing wildly through the woods with the yells of demons. As if by magic, Sweeny’s division sprang into line. The two batteries of artillery (Loomis’s and Laird’s) had stopped on commanding ground, and they were promptly in service. General Dodge’s quick eye saw the proper disposition to be made of a portion of Colonel Mersy’s brigade, and, cutting red tape, he delivered his orders direct to the colonels of the regiments. The orders were executed instantly, and the enemy’s advance was checked. This act afterward caused trouble. General Dodge was not a West Point graduate, and did not revere so highly the army regulations as did General Sweeny, who had learned them as a cadet. Sweeny was much hurt by General Dodge’s action in giving orders direct to regimental commanders, and pursued the matter so far as to bring on a personal encounter a few days after the battle, in which he came near losing his life at the hands of a hot-tempered officer. He was placed in arrest. The court-martial, however, did not consider his case until nearly the end of the war, when he was acquitted.
The battle of General Dodge’s corps on this open ground, with no works to protect the troops of either side, was one of the fiercest of the war. General Dodge’s troops were inspired by his courageous personal presence, for he rode directly along the lines, and must have been a conspicuous target for many
It was to place the remainder of General Dodge’s corps — General Sweeny’s division—upon the left of the Seventeenth Corps. General Sweeny’s division moved south of the railroad and halted, some time before noon, in open ground, sloping down toward a little stream, in the rear of General Fuller’s division, which was in bivouac near the edge of a wood. Here, then, in the rear of the Seventeenth Corps, lay the two divisions of General Dodge’s corps, as if in waiting for the approach of General Hardee’s troops who had been marching nearly all night around Blair’s left flank, and were even then making painfully slow progress, moving in line of battle through the thickets and obstructions that opposed their march. Our troops were really in waiting for the order to go to their new positions. General Dodge had been out on the left of General Blair’s corps to select a place for his troops, and had succeeded in drawing a shell or two from the enemy’s nearest earthwork. He had returned to General Fuller’s headquarters, and had accepted that officer’s invitation to a noonday lunch with him. In a few minutes his command would have been in motion for the front. If that had happened, and his corps had vacated the space it then held, 266
HOOD’S SECOND SORTIE AT ATLANTA — BATTLE OF BALD HILL.
BY W. H. CHAMBERLIN, MAJOR, 81ST OHIO VOLUNTEERS.
Aide-de-camp to General Dodge at tlie battle of Bald Hill.
GENERAL Sherman’s line lay east and northeast of Atlanta, with McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee forming the extreme left, and extending some distance south of the Augusta railroad. General Logan’s Fifteenth Corps, which joined the left of the Army of the Ohio, extended across the Augusta railroad, and General Blair’s Seventeenth Corps extended the line southward, touching the McDonough road beyond what is now McPherson Avenue. The Sixteenth Corps, commanded by General Grenville M. Dodge, had been in reserve in rear of the Fifteenth Corps, north of the railroad, until July 21.st, when General Fuller’s division was placed in the rear of the center of the Seventeenth Corps. On the morning of July 22d a movement was begun, which afterward proved to have been the most fortunate for the Union army that could have been ordered, even if the intention of the enemy had been known to us.
press no confidence that you can defeat or repel him, you are hereby relieved from the command of the Army and Department of Tennessee, which you will immediately turn over to General Hood.
“S. Cooper, Adjutant and
Inspector-General.”
Orders transferring the command of the army to General Hood were written and published immediately, and next morning I replied to the telegram of the Secretary of War:
“Your despatch of yesterday received and obeyed — command of the Army and Department of Tennessee has been transferred to General Hood. As to the alleged cause of my removal, I assert that Sherman’s army is much stronger, compared with that of Tennessee, than Grant’s compared with that of Northern Virginia. Yet the enemy has been compelled to advance much more slowly to the vicinity of Atlanta than to that of Richmond and Petersburg, and penetrated much deeper into Virginia than into Georgia. Confident language by a military commander is not usually regarded as evidence of competence.”
General Hood came to my quarters early in the morning of the 18th, and remained there until nightfall. Intelligence was soon received that the Federal army was marching toward Atlanta, and at his urgent request I gave all necessary orders during the day.
The most important one placed the troops in the position already chosen, which covered the roads by which the enemy was approaching. After transferring the command to General Hood, I described to him the course of action I had arranged in my mind. If the enemy should give us a good opportunity in the passage of Peach Tree Creek, I expected to attack him. If successful, we should obtain important results, for the enemy’s retreat would be on two sides of a triangle and our march on one. If we should not succeed, our intrenchments would give us a safe refuge, where we could hold back the enemy until the promised State troops should join us; then, placing them on the nearest defenses of the place (where there were, or ought to be, seven sea-coast rifles, sent us from Mobile by General Maury), 1 would attack the Federáis in flank with the three Confederate corps. If we were successful, they would be driven against the Chattahoochee below the railroad, where there are no fords, or away from their supplies, as we might fall on their left or right flank. If unsuccessful, we could take refuge in Atlanta, which we could hold indefinitely; for it was too strong to be taken by assault, and too extensive to be invested. This would win the campaign, the object of which the country supposed Atlanta to be. . . .