THE BATTLE FOR ATLANTA

Key to Victory

In the summer of 1864, the railroad hub of Atlanta was the final key to ending the bloodiest conflict in the history of United States of America, which had yet to reach the end of her first century.    With devastating losses by the Confederate army at Gettysburg and Vicksburg during the previous July, the vital rail center in Georgia was keeping the armies of the Tennessee and Northern Virginia partially equipped with arms, munitions and food.  

Union commander, General William T. Sherman, set his sights on splitting the South, and in particular Georgia,  from the mountains to the sea.  In the North, tensions were mounting.  Democratic candidates urged peace with the South, while antiwar and anti-draft proponents rioted in the streets of New York City.  Nothing short of a decisive victory in Georgia would guarantee a second term for the Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.  The beginning of the Battle of Atlanta began 150 years ago today.  

Late in April of 1864, General Sherman (left)  and his 120,000 plus man army began its "March to the Sea."  Confederate Army commander Joseph Johnston adopted a strategy of meeting the attack, striking hard and then falling back.  By the end of June, the Union army had captured the strategic Kennesaw Mountain, which could be seen along the western horizon of Atlanta.  Within  23 days, the Federals were knocking on the door of the inner outskirts of Atlanta.  

Four companies of Laurens countians, Companies A,B and H of the 57th Georgia infantry, along with Co. H of the 63rd Georgia, were stationed in Atlanta.  The units had originally been summoned from Savannah to Virginia, until  it became readily apparent that Sherman was going to mount a massive offensive against Atlanta.    Along with the 1st and 54th Georgia regiments, the local men were under the command of Brigadier General Hugh Mercer and division commander Lt. Gen. William H.T. Walker.  Mercer's brigade had seen action at Champion's Hill and Vicksburg, but primarily spent most of their time guarding Savannah and serving a brief time as guards at Andersonville prison.

Johnston's policy of fight and retreat led to his demise as commander of the Army of the Tennessee on

July 18.  General John B. Hood  (left) took over command of the army defending Atlanta.  Two days later, Hooker's XX Corps and Howard's IV Corps struck headlong into Stewart's and Hardee's Corps, who were strongly entrenched along the banks of Peachtree Creek just north of Atlanta.  Just after noon on the 20th, General Hood issued an order to attack the oncoming Union corps.  Walker's Division was established in the center of the Confederate line, about where the present day Brookwood station is now located.

At about 4:00 in the afternoon, Bate's division moved out.  Walker's men were the first to feel the brunt of the overwhelming Union force. Their attack was repulsed in short order.  Augustus G. Fountain (left)  of Laurens County was one of  the three members of Mercer's brigade to be killed in the fighting as the brigade moved up the eastern margin of Peachtree Road. Fifteen men were counted among the wounded. Five more were missing.   Hardee's corps retreated, dug in and waited on the counterattack, which they believed would happen forthwith.

When the attack failed to materialize on the following day, General Hood devised a daring and precarious plan to defeat Sherman's powerful army.  Hood ordered Gen. Hardee (left)  to march his entire corps on a 15-mile night march southward through Atlanta.  South of town, the long column turned left with the intent to launch a dawn strike against the  left flank and rear of General McPherson's Army of the Tennessee, which was pressing westward toward Atlanta from Decatur.

Once Hardee's men cleared Atlanta, they turned northeast along Fayetteville Road.  Cleburne and Maney's divisions turned northwest along Bouldercrest Road, while Walker and Bates took their divisions further along Fayetteville Road.  Despite warnings of treacherous ground ahead, Walker (left) took his division around the western swamps of Terry's Mill Pond.   General Walker moved to the front along Glenwood Avenue north of the pond.  He raised his spy glasses and was instantly and mortally wounded by a Union sniper.  Gen. Mercer succeeded to the command of the division.  The command of his brigade was assumed by Col. William Barkuloo of the 57th Georgia.  Lt. Col. Cinncinatus Guyton of Laurens County was elevated to the command of the 57th regiment.

Suddenly, the situation erupted  into a full scale battle.  Maj. General McPherson (above) rode out to reconnoiter the battle field.  Confederate sharpshooters retaliated for the killing of General Walker by slaying the popular young Army of the Tennessee commander as he moved through the woods.  Mercer's (Barkuloo's) brigade was assigned to reserve duty behind the brigades of Gist and Stevens.  When Barkuloo was informed of Gen. Walker's death and his appointment as brigade commander, he moved forward to front, where he found the Federals in strong numbers.  Gen. Mercer informed Gen. Barkuloo that the Yankees were retreating and ordered an attack.     It was here, near the intersection of the future routes of Memorial Drive and Clay Street where the Battle of Atlanta began just after noon.  Barkuloo's brigade moved northward through a valley south of Legget's Hill.  Finding his brigade in an open field and surrounded on three sides by the enemy, Col. Barkuloo first ordered a halt and then a withdrawal after sustaining only fifteen casualties, including Col. Olmstead of the 1st Georgia. 

Col. Barkuloo succumbed to heat and exhaustion and relinquished command to Lt. Col. Rawls of the 54th Ga.  At 5 p.m., Rawls's brigade  moved by the left flank to a point near and southwest of Fair Ground Road, about 2.5 miles east of Atlanta.  Col. Rawls was wounded in the first assault, which carried the first two Federal lines.   Col. Guyton took over command of the brigade and prepared his men for another assault on the Federals, who had only been pushed back 30 or so paces.  Confused, dazed, disorganized and just plain exhausted, the disheveled and amalgamated remnants of the brigade ground to halt. Despite his repeated commands, Col. Guyton could not encourage his men to advance any further.  Guyton attributed the failure to the lack of command structure in close combat under heavy fire.  

At 9 o'clock that night, Col. Guyton (left)  sent a request for instructions.  At three o'clock the next morning, Guyton was ordered to withdraw his brigade.  For the next two days, the brigade entrenched and waited for another battle  in the roasting heat of the July sun.  On the 24th, Col. Barkaloo resumed command of the brigade. Col. Guyton, the only colonel in the brigade to survive the battle unscathed,  returned to the command of his regiment.  In his memoirs, Lt. Edwin Davis of Company A commended Col. Guyton for his  "consummate ease and skill" in directing the brigade.

During the battle, 32 members of the brigade were killed, including William Thompson of Wilkinson County.  Samuel Fleetwood and Joseph Yarborough of Wilkinson county were among the 122 wounded men, a total which included my great-great grandfather Seaborn J. Thompson, a 36-year-old cook of Co. H, 63rd Ga., who was shot in his right hand.  Two days later, his hand was amputated in a Macon hospital.  He was sent home and died a short time later.

Atlanta fell in six weeks on September 2nd.  Just before Christmas, General Sherman accomplished his mission and delivered Savannah to President Lincoln as a much desired Christmas gift.  The Confederate Army never had a chance.  Hood's army was composed of only three corps, while  the Army of the Cumberland, the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio counted among its ranks eight corps,  approximately the necessary ratio for success by an attacking army.  

For all intents and purposes the war was nearly over.   It was just a matter of time.  Hood's army fought on in Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas.   Many members of the Confederate army went home sick during the following winter.  Many never returned.  On April 26th, 19 days after Gen. Lee's surrender at Appomattox and 12 days after Lincoln's assassination in Washington, the Army of the Tennessee surrendered at Greensboro, North Carolina, ending four years of fighting and four years of dying.

THE BATTLE OF THE CRATER

A Brilliant Bloody Blunder

In a war often filled with blunders, it may have been the biggest blunder of all.  It began as an ingenious plan to dissolve the stalemate along the outer defensive lines east of Petersburg, Virginia in the summer of 1864, 150 years ago this week.   The scheme was inordinately brilliant.  The result, nonetheless, was a totally unforeseen, immeasurably regrettable brilliant bloody blunder. 

For most of six weeks, Gen. U.S. Grant's vastly superior forces laid siege upon the Confederate fortresses of Richmond and Petersburg.   Someone had to give.  Local units of the 48th Georgia Infantry Regiment from Emanuel, Twiggs and Johnson counties, the latter composed of some Laurens Countians, were under the command of Gen. A.R. Wright.  Wright's brigade had suffered dreadfully at Gettysburg and fared scarcely better during  Grant's advance toward Richmond in the spring of 1864.  In late June, while guarding Gen. R.E. Lee's supply lines along the Weldon Railroad, the 48th was engaged in a horrific fight with moderate, but acceptable,  losses.  

Col. Henry Pleasants of the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry proposed a bold plan to break the Confederate lines in early July.  His regiment consisted of numerous talented coal miners.  Pleasants convinced his superiors to allow his men to dig a tunnel more than 500 feet long under a Confederate battery.   Gen. Grant, in an attempt to disguise his true intentions,  took the better part of his army in a feint against Richmond, leaving Gen. Burnside in command of a 165,000 men superfluous force in front of Petersburg, a score of miles to the south.  

The Union plan was to explode  eight thousand pounds of dynamite at the end of the tunnel and create a un-repairable rupture in the impregnable Confederate entrenchments.  Following the break in the Confederate line, Meade was authorized to send as many men as he could  through the breach and wheel around to the right to capture Petersburg and cut off Richmond from the south.  

It was a typically balmy night early in the morning of July 30, 1864. There had been talk of some sort of mine being constructed, but most of Petersburg guardians dismissed it as just that,  talk.   At 4:35 a.m., just as the nautical twilight was illuminating the combatants, some still asleep in their trenches, Elliot's Salient erupted in a massive explosion.   Pegram's Battery  and its supporting South Carolina troops were killed instantly. The remnants of their corpses, those which were not scattered into oblivion,  were buried in a coagulation of dirt, rubble and accouterments.  

The explosion resulted in a gap in the Confederate lines of up to 800 yards, wide enough to situate three or four brigades.   Along the core of the explosion, dirt and rocks were blown away leaving a crater, twenty-five feet deep, one-hundred-fifty feet long and fifty feet wide. After a brief falter,  Gen. Ledlie ushered a Federal division into the crater.  He was supported by Gen. Ferrero's Colored division.   Confederate eyewitnesses recounted that ten to fifteen thousand troops swarmed into the void of the crater in ranks of five men deep.  Most of Burnside's entire 9th Corps, supported by divisions of the 1st and 2nd Corps, was engaged in the charge.   

Gen. William Mahone, charged with holding his shattered  line at all costs, ordered his old Virginia brigade and Wright's Georgians,  jointly totaling  only eight hundred effectives,  to move from Blandford Cemetery  in a zigzag line, through a ravine hidden from Union view. Their sole mission was  to stave off the overwhelming Union offensive.  Gen. Mahone  couldn't wait on Wright's men to come up to the right.  He ordered a charge directly into the oncoming onslaught of Colored troops, who by some accounts stated that they were forced into the fray as fodder for Confederate infantrymen. 

Virginia General Weisiger led the rush to the rim of the crater.  The 6th Virginia lost ninety percent of its men.  Company F was completely obliterated.  A total slaughter ensued.  Union troops were heaped in stacks as many as eight bodies deep in the crater.  Some troops pretended to be dead, while others were trapped under the accumulation of the dead and dying.  The Union forces, temporarily paralyzed and understandably demoralized at the horror emanating before them, failed to advance as they had been directed to do.  Those trapped in the chasm could neither charge toward their objective nor could they extract themselves in retreat either.  All the while, profoundly deafening and decisively deadly artillery rounds enfiladed the melee from all points of the compass. 

Confederates, incensed at the deployment of former slaves as soldiers against them, took out their frustrations and slaughtered the succumbing Negro soldiers with bullets. Some mortally beat them with the butts of their rifles.  One soldier reported that useless Union rifles with bayonets attached were heaved into the mounds of the dead and wounded to impale any survivors in their flight path.  

At 10:30, Wright's Brigade was ready to commence the attack following on Weisiger's right.  Wright's line veered to the left colliding with Weisiger's men. Unaware that the Rebels were running out of ammunition and believing that any further attempts to penetrate the enemy line would be futile, Gen. Meade ordered a withdrawal.   Union losses amounted to between 4500 and 5000 casualties.   Confederate losses were about 1,500, but in light of the amount of men fit for fighting, the success in holding the line was no fortuitous victory.  Gen. Mahone counted eleven hundred prisoners and was given permanent command of his division for his actions during the affair.

As the morning of the Sabbath dawned, more than three thousand perished Union souls were still lying where they fell.    Both sides, recognizing the trepidation  which had transpired, consummated negotiations for a truce.    Union details arrived at the scene and began the arduous task of burying the then putrefying corpses.    A long trench was excavated, and the thousands of fatalities were buried crosswise, several layers deep.  

This minor battle, which was virtually over in thirty minutes,  was one of the costliest moments during the war.  Several of Johnson County's Battleground Guards were in the vicinity of the explosion.  Alfred Price was killed in the explosion.  Samuel Price and Francis Tapley were killed in the fighting and may have also been annihilated by the blast.  Wiley Riner was wounded during the fighting.  Private James C.H. Horton was said to have been "blown up" at Petersburg.  

"While the Earth rocked with a swaying motion like that which precedes the earthquake, a huge black mass suddenly shot up two hundred feet in the air from the left of Elliott's salient.  Seams of fire were glistening from its dark side, flashes of light rose above it on the sky, and the whole mass of earth, broken timbers, military equipment, and human bodies hung so like a huge monster over our heads."  A New York artilleryman, at "The Crater," July 30,1864.