v1.1.2 / chapter 69 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* While Grant and Meade were moving out against Lee in the Wilderness, Sherman kicked off his campaign against Joe Johnston in northern Georgia. The result was a monthlong war of maneuver, with the Yankees performing one flanking move after another, while the Confederates pulled back neatly and blocked Sherman's moves.
* All through the winter months at the beginning of 1864, Joe Johnston plagued Richmond for more troops, more supplies, more everything. Johnston was not a gambler like Robert E. Lee, and when he looked northward to the huge Federal force gathering in Chattanooga, he was intimidated. Johnston had about 45,000 men, organized into two corps of 20,000 men each under Hardee and Hood, who had returned from convalescence in Richmond, and 5,000 cavalry under Joe Wheeler. Sherman was building up an army over twice that big.
This sort of caution infuriated Richmond, where the belief or at least the desperate hope was that Johnston was to take the offensive, but it endeared Johnston to his men. He loved his troops and they adored him in return, calling him "Old Joe". Unfortunately, that didn't apply to his generals, who had learned bickering ways under Braxton Bragg, if they hadn't known them before, and kept up their squabbling after Bragg's departure. Johnston told a friend: "If I were president, I'd distribute the generals of the army over the Confederacy."
There were a exceptions. Johnston assigned command of his two corps to officers he regarded highly. General William J. Hardee was plain, solid and reliable, and General John Bell Hood, back from Richmond, was still a champion fighter even though he was half-crippled from the injuries of war. Johnston did not know that Hood was spying on him: before returning from Richmond, Hood had been ordered to send back reports in secret. Johnston's defensive-mindedness did not sit well with a fighter like Hood. Hood's messages repeated again and again: "The enemy is weak and we are strong." This was exactly what Richmond wanted to hear, and nobody asked exactly what intelligence Hood had that led him to that conclusion.
Richmond also knew that Grant was preparing to move against Lee in northern Virginia. Confederate leadership didn't think that the Yankees would conduct two major war campaigns at once. Given the immense logistics required for such efforts, there was some reasonable basis for this belief, but in hindsight it seems to have been just wishful thinking: The Union had never coordinated their efforts before, and it would be inconvenient of them to learn from past mistakes and change their ways.
* Johnston had his own streak of wishful thinking, though it was not so far removed from reality as Richmond's. He knew that the enlistment terms of many of Sherman's veterans would be up in the spring, and believed many were so sick of the war that they wouldn't re-enlist. He was wrong. The Federals, down to the average infantryman, felt they now had the upper hand, and the prospect of final victory was a strong motive to stay in the fight.
The Union troops were confident in their leader, who they called "Uncle Billy", and he was confident in himself. He was lean and wiry and gawky and scruffy, dressed plain and unpretentious, and lived like they did in the field. He was a bundle of nervous energy, always talking rapidly, "boiling over with ideas", as another officer put it, "crammed full of feeling, discussing every subject and pronouncing on it all." He was particularly hyperactive at the moment, sleeping only a few hours a night, running back and forth to make sure everything was in place, fidgeting endlessly, occasionally making absent-minded blunders -- lighting a cigar, then tossing away the cigar and walking off with the match, oblivious to his error and to people laughing at him.
The distance between Chattanooga and Atlanta, Sherman's target, was only about a hundred miles (160 kilometers) as the crow flies. Unfortunately, only a crow would find it a particularly straightforward trip, since the country was lined with ridges that presented substantial barriers to an invader. Joe Johnston was a skilled defensive fighter, and so Sherman had to assume that the rebels would make the best use of the terrain to slow down the offensive.
On the plus side, Sherman had an excellent supply line between those two points, in the form of Western & Atlantic Railroad. To be sure, the Confederates would tear up the line as they withdrew and rebel cavalry would continuously try to cut it behind the rear of the Yankee advance, but Sherman had factored such matters into his plans. The Civil War has been called "the first railroad war", and Sherman understood the importance of the railroad to the extent that he made its operation another part of military drill. Repair crews were heavily trained to work fast and well, and stockpiles of rails, ties, and whatever else might be needed to keep the trains rolling were set up. Blockhouses were also set up at tunnels and bridges to deter raiders, while sidings were built at regular intervals to make sure that traffic kept flowing. There was a telegraph station at each siding to provide alerts in case of attacks or accidents.
Sherman issued strict rules ensuring that the trains were reserved to carry supplies, banning their use by troops returning from furloughs, and by civilians. The ban on civilian traffic included reporters. Sherman regarded that as a bonus, since it conveniently got rid of the "dirty newspaper scribblers" that he so despised. The bans even eliminated food shipments to loyalists in east Tennessee. When President Lincoln tried to intervene, Sherman explained the necessity and concluded bluntly: "I will not change my order."
However, Sherman had not figured on Mary Ann Bickerdyke, a hardnosed widow from Illinois who had taken it on herself to organize nursing activities for the western armies and who was affectionately known as "Mother" by the troops. When Mother Bickerdyke found her medical supplies blocked, she refused to accept it, went to Sherman's headquarters, pushed her way past all obstacles, confronted him, and single-mindedly refused to take NO for an answer. Sherman finally signed an order authorizing the shipment of her supplies. When some of Sherman's officers later complained about the pushy Mother Bickerdyke, he threw up his hands and replied: "She outranks me. I can't do a thing in the world."
* Sherman took other drastic measures to ensure that the rail lines from Chattanooga to Louisville, his main supply base on the Ohio River, and Nashville, which had been set up as an alternate supply base, remained open and efficient. He had built up such extensive stockpiles of everything in Nashville that one of the brigadiers on his staff described the city simply as "one vast storehouse". Such was the economic and industrial power of the Union. Sherman had been deadly accurate when he warned one of his professors in days when the war was sputtering into life: "The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth of pair of shoes can you make."
Sherman, however, was no Rosecrans, sitting idly until he felt all things were in place. His troops would travel lightly on limited supplies and move fast. Sherman himself would maintain a minimal headquarters, with only a single wagon to carry supplies, and the only place he had to stash his official papers was in his pockets; he would eventually compromise and find a box for them. If the quartermasters couldn't keep up, so be it, Sherman telling one of them: "And if you don't have my army supplied, and keep it supplied, we'll eat your mules up, sir; eat your mules up!" Eating mules seemed hardly necessary, though. Sherman wrote Grant: "Georgia has millions of inhabitants. If they can live, we should not starve."
Despite his confidence, Sherman didn't think the campaign would be a walk-through. The Confederates were not softening in the least: "No amount of poverty or adversity seems to shake their faith. Niggers gone, wealth and luxury gone, money worthless, starvation in view ... yet I see no sign of let up -- some few deserters, plenty tired of war, but the masses determined to fight it out." He wrote his wife: "All that has gone before is mere skirmishing."
* Sherman began his offensive on 4 May 1864, moving south into the mountains of Georgia with his grand army, the "Military Division of the Mississippi", consisting of three full armies with a total of over 100,000 men:
Johnston had set up his defenses in front of Dalton, Georgia, 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Chattanooga. Dalton was shielded to the west by Rocky Face Ridge, a particularly jagged and intimidating piece of north Georgia ridgework.
The main avenue of advance through Rocky Face Ridge was at Buzzard Roost, a few miles north of Dalton, where the Confederates were heavily dug in. The position was strong to begin with, and the defenses had been skillfully laid out. The rebels had even built dams to create an artificial lake as an obstruction. Sherman, with his inclination for the dramatic, called the position the "terrible door of death". There was another opening in the ridge at Dug Gap, a few miles south of Dalton, that was every bit as formidable.
Sherman didn't like the odds of forcing either of those passes. However, Sherman believed he saw an opportunity at Resaca, a small town on the rail line to Atlanta, about 13 miles (21 kilometers) south of Dalton. There was a long, shallow valley named Snake Creek Gap that ran through the mountains straight towards Resaca.
Johnston was too good a general to ignore such a vulnerability, but due to some mixup in communications Snake Creek Gap was all but unguarded. Sherman decided to have Thomas demonstrate against Rocky Face Ridge from the west, have Schofield to threaten from the north beyond the eastern slope of the ridge, while McPherson moved quickly through Snake Creek Gap to Resaca. This would give the Federals a grip around Joe Johnston's lifeline. At the very least, Johnston would have to retreat out of his strong position, while at best, the entire Confederate Army of the Tennessee would be swallowed up and forced to surrender.
Pap Thomas had originally come up with the plan in February, suggesting that he and his corps be entrusted with the flanking movement. Although Thomas' force was the most powerful of the three Sherman had at his disposal, Sherman believed McPherson would move faster. McPherson was in fact an excellent and bold officer, but Sherman's orders to McPherson were somewhat vague and did not stress the need for a determined attack.
Thomas and his army made solid contact with the Confederates on 6 May at Tunnel Hill, to the northwest of Buzzard Roost, where the rebels had set up a fortified position around a railroad tunnel. Thomas hit them hard the next day, 7 May, and drove the Confederates back to their main line. The rebels pulled out in such a hurry that they failed to destroy the tunnel.
Thomas began his "demonstrations" against Buzzard Roost on 8 May and continued them on 9 May. As expected, he made little progress, though some Federals did manage to make it to the top of the ridge before being pushed back by counterattacks. Apparently inspired by Johnston's leadership, the rebels were not the cowed creatures they had been at Missionary Ridge. This was emphasized that same day, 9 May, when Schofield's cavalry got too far ahead of the main body and fell into a trap set by Wheeler. The Federal troopers took 150 casualties and were driven from the field.
Sherman was unconcerned, since the only real goal of both Thomas and Schofield was to keep the Confederates occupied, and indeed Thomas' men were doing better than Sherman expected. The important thing was what McPherson did. On the evening of 9 May, Sherman received a message from McPherson stating that the Union Army of the Tennessee was through Snake Creek Gap, having encountered little resistance, and only a few miles outside of Resaca. Sherman was ecstatic, banging on his dinner table and crying out: "I've got Joe Johnston dead!"
Sherman's joy was premature. Federal intelligence was faulty; the Confederates were holding Resaca in strength.
* Grant's original grand strategy for the West envisioned a move against Mobile to pin down Confederate forces in the region, but Nathaniel Banks was now occupied elsewhere, freeing those forces to come to Johnston's aid. On 1 May, as the Federals were preparing to begin their offensive, Joe Johnston had wired Richmond asking for help from Polk's forces in Demopolis, Alabama, requesting a division if it could be obtained. Bragg promptly wired Polk to send a division. Jefferson Davis followed up with a telegram asking Polk to send along more forces if possible, and to supervise the move in person.
Polk was agreeable, he and Johnston being on good terms, having been cadets together at West Point many years before. Polk had three infantry divisions and a cavalry division, a total of 19,000 men, and decided to take them all except for 2,000 men, left behind under the command of Major General Stephen Lee, Polk's chief of cavalry.
In the advance of Polk's reinforcements was a brigade of 2,000 men from Mobile, Alabama, under Brigadier General James Chantey. They arrived in Rome, Georgia, at the southern end of the battle theater, on 5 May and moved into Resaca on 7 May, their force increased by 2,000 men of Johnston's command.
McPherson moved on Resaca on the afternoon of 9 May, only to find the approaches to the town solidly defended. His force of 25,000 could have probably overwhelmed the 4,000 defenders but he hadn't expected any resistance. Although not normally timid, McPherson knew that being in the rear of the enemy meant the Confederates could easily cut him off, and besides there was only an hour of daylight left anyway. Sherman's orders gave him a generally free hand to do what he thought right. McPherson pulled back to Snake Creek Gap that evening, to dig in, ask for instructions from Sherman, and wait for a reply.
That same evening, Johnston was informed of McPherson's probe on Resaca. The result was an exercise in confusion. Johnston told Hood to take one of his divisions and two of Hardee's down to Resaca to brace the defense. Hood did so, but the next day, 10 May, he reported McPherson's lack of aggressiveness to Johnston. Johnston decided the Federal presence before Resaca was just a feint, and ordered Hood to move back north.
In the meantime, Hardee was puzzled because Thomas had generally given up his attacks, and decided the Yankees were up to something. Johnston came to the same conclusion. He began to wonder if the Federal move through Snake Creek Gap might not actually be a feint.
Polk had arrived in Rome on 10 May with his lead division, so forces were now becoming available to resist a Union push from that direction. To dispel his confusion, on 11 May Johnston ordered Polk to move his divisions to Resaca, then ordered Joe Wheeler to take his cavalry and find out what the Yankees were up to at Snake Creek Gap.
Johnston also wired Richmond to suggest that Bedford Forrest make a raid in middle Tennessee to cut Sherman's supply lines. With all the Federals on the move in North Georgia, Forrest would not have to worry about tangling with any major Union force.
Wheeler reported back that afternoon that the Federals were in fact shifting their forces south, confirming Johnston's fears. That evening, Polk showed up at headquarters, and Johnston greeted him warmly: "How can I thank you? I asked for a division, but you have come yourself and brought your army."
Polk then went to Hood's tent, where the bishop baptized Hood. Lacking a leg, Hood could not kneel and had to stand on crutches for the ceremony. Polk returned to Resaca late that night. The next morning, 12 May, Johnston decided to pull out of Dalton. He had already been shifting his forces towards Resaca so they would be in a position to move against a Federal push on the southern end of his line, and shifting the rest was straightforward.
The Confederates pulled out of Dalton and the northern line on Rocky Face Ridge that night, and when the sun came up on Friday the 13th, the Yankees facing that line suddenly realized there was nobody there. As a Federal put it, Johnston had pulled off another of his "clean retreats".
Sherman was appalled, "much vexed" as one of his staff put it. However, he had to admit that McPherson was justified in his conduct by the fuzzy orders he had received, though when they met later he cut McPherson with the remark: "Well, Mac, you missed the opportunity of your life."
* There was nothing for Sherman to do but advance on Resaca now. Shifting his forces through the rugged terrain was difficult. The fighting didn't start until the evening of 13 May, kicking off with a cavalry duel between rebel cavalry under Joe Wheeler and Union cavalry under Judson "Kill Cavalry" Kilpatrick, who now reported to Sherman. The clash was insignificant, though Kilpatrick was wounded and put out of action for a few weeks.
On 14 May, Sherman threw his men at Resaca, to no useful result. Johnston was there in force, the defenses were skillfully laid out, and there was no moving the rebels. Indeed, late in the day Hood threw his troops back at the Federals in a devastating counterthrust, though Federal guns firing canister and the fall of night blunted the attack.
Johnston was very pleased the results of the day's battle and wanted Hood to try again in the morning, but that night Johnston received several bits of intelligence that made him very nervous. McPherson had scored one of the only Yankee successes that day, seizing without a fight high ground that overlooked the southern end of the Confederate defense. Now Johnston learned that McPherson had set up artillery on that high ground, allowing the Yankees to drop shells on the bridges over the Oostanaula River, to the south of the rebel position. This threatened Johnston's line of retreat, and he ordered that a pontoon bridge be set up out of range of the Federal guns.
Worse, Johnston then received reports that a substantial force of Yankees were crossing the Oostanaula to the south, within reach of his lifeline, the Western & Atlantic railroad. Johnston ordered Hardee to send a division under Major General W.H.T. Walker on a night march to block the incursion, and rearranged his dispositions around Resaca so that his army could pull out quickly if need be.
Sherman's troops attacked again on the morning of 15 May and made no more progress than the day before. Around noon, Johnston received word from Walker that the reports of Yankees downstream were untrue, and so Johnston decided to have Hood perform a second counterthrust that afternoon. A rebel battery went forward to support the assault. As it turned out, they went too far forward, since some of Hooker's men hit them so hard that the Confederates had to abandon all four of their guns. Most of the gunners were killed. One had the bad judgement to have marked FORT PILLOW on his uniform: the Yankees didn't even try to take him prisoner, instead shooting him and bayoneting him repeatedly.
Hood was ready to go ahead with the attack anyway, but then got orders from Johnston telling him to stand down. Walker had sent a second report to Johnston stating that the first was in error, the Yankees actually were present in strength.
The conflicting reports sent to Johnston about Yankee activities in the area were actually true and accurate. Sherman had sent Kilpatrick's cavalry division, without its wounded commander, south to a place named "Lay's Ferry" on 14 May to set up a pontoon bridge, and had followed it up on the 15th by sending one of McPherson's infantry divisions, under Brigadier General Thomas Sweeny, a profane one-armed Irishman, to back up the cavalry. Sweeny's division had probed across the river and come back the day before, which had led to the conflicting reports to Johnston that the Yankees were making trouble there.
In parallel with the move of Sweeny and his men, Sherman also sent one of Pap Thomas' cavalry divisions, under Brigadier General Kenner Garrard, on a much longer probe over 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the south, to attack the town of Rome. If Garrard was able to seize Rome, he was then to proceed due east and capture Kingston, on the Western & Atlantic, cutting Johnston's line of retreat.
Johnston was not aware of Garrard's force, but Kilpatrick and Sweeny's troops were a clear threat in themselves. Johnston decided to withdraw, and set up a meeting that night to give his corps commanders orders for the withdrawal. The Confederates pulled out of Resaca during the night, using a pavement of cornstalks to muffle the sounds of horses and wagons, while pickets kept up a racket with aimless rifle fire. The next morning, 16 May, the entrenchments around the town were empty. The rebels had taken everything with them, except for the four pieces captured the previous afternoon, much to the embarrassment of Hood.
Sherman pursued and also dispatched a second cavalry division under Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis from Thomas' force to follow up Garrard's probe at Rome. Sherman was frustrated at not being able to come to grips with Johnston's army, but he was at least satisfied that the Confederates were falling back before him.
Sherman organized his force into three columns. Thomas's hard-hitting army advanced directly down the Western & Atlantic towards Kingston, while McPherson took his troops on a parallel route to the west and Schofield marched his men on a parallel route to the east. This allowed Sherman to threaten the Confederates with flanking moves from the west or east if they decided to make a stand, and also prevented a single road from being clogged with his entire army. To balance his forces, he transferred Hooker's three divisions from Thomas's command to Schofield's, leaving Thomas with about 40,000 men and giving Schofield about 30,000.
Everyone in Sherman's army was excited. They had pushed Johnston out of formidable defenses at a cost of about only 4,000 men to themselves, and the rebels seemed to be on the run. The Federals were kept well-fed and well-supplied by streams of trains, running down tracks that were rebuilt by Sherman's repair gangs with amazing speed. The telegraph lines were restored with equal efficiency.
On 18 May, Garrard and Davis occupied Rome. The city had important factories and an iron works, but even more significantly taking the town cut the main line of communication between Johnston and Confederate forces to the west. If Johnston was to get any more reinforcements from that direction -- not that many were left after Polk had joined his ranks -- they would have to come by roundabout routes.
While Thomas's army moved south along the Western & Atlantic, his soldiers had running skirmishes with troops of Hardee's corps in the rearguard of Johnston's army. However, the rebels did little to slow down the march, and by the morning of 19 May, all three of Sherman's columns were converging on Kingston, where Sherman thought Johnston intended to make a stand.
* Sherman was wrong. Johnston was too canny to sit idly and wait to be trapped by a superior army; he had shifted his other two corps under Polk and Hood to Cassville, five miles (eight kilometers) to the east in hopes of springing an ambush. Hardee's "rearguard" action was actually nothing of the sort. He was on his own and stringing the Yankees along towards Kingston, encouraging them to believe that they were really hot on the trail of the entire Confederate Army of the Tennessee.
Johnston had been looking for the opportunity for a counterthrust for the last several days, encouraged by news from the west that Forrest would begin his hoped-for raid into middle Tennessee within a few days. The landscape that Johnston had been marching through after his withdrawal from Resaca was open and not well suited to defense, but he correctly decided that Sherman would split up his forces.
Cassville looked like it had possibilities. From there, Johnston could fall on Schofield's army and chew it up badly before help could arrive. Then, if Johnston moved quickly, he could attack the other two columns in turn and maul them as well. If Forrest also managed to cut the Yankee supply lines, Sherman would be forced to withdraw, and Johnston would have handed the Union a stinging, even decisive, defeat. Everything was in preparation for springing the trap on the morning of 19 May, and the rebels were confident and excited. One soldier wrote later: "We were going to whip and rout the Yankees."
In his secret messages to Richmond, Hood had been incessantly sniping at Johnston's lack of aggressiveness, but now that he had been let off the leash, Hood suddenly turned timid, advancing only about a mile and then digging in, saying that the Yankees were in a position to fall on his flanks and cut him off. In reality, the only Federals in the area were members of a small cavalry detachment that had become separated from the main line of march. Johnston was forced to pull back to a ridge south of Cassville, where Hardee and his corps linked up with the rest of the army.
The assault didn't come off. Schofield quickly discovered there were two Confederate corps threatening him, eliminating any possibility of surprise. However, Johnston found the position his troops had fallen back to was very strong, dominated by a tall, steep, long ridge. Sherman was obviously feeling aggressive, and with luck the Federals might perform a rash attack on rebel defenses that would result in a lopsided Union defeat. By the evening of 19 May, the guns of the two sides were firing shots at each other in an obvious prelude to a major Federal assault come the dawn. Johnston was looking forward to it. The only problem was that Hood and Polk were not and went to him that night, insisting that a further retreat was necessary to save the army. Johnston didn't believe it. He consulted with Hardee, who didn't believe it either.
Johnston could not hope for success if two of his three corps commanders had such a defeatist attitude and ordered another withdrawal, undoubtedly sympathizing with Braxton Bragg's troubles. One of Johnston's staff officers wrote in his diary about Hood: "One lieutenant general talks about attack and not giving ground, publicly, and quietly urges retreat." After the war the fiasco at Cassville would figure prominently in a running feud between Johnston and Hood, with Hood insisting that he had actually pushed for an assault.
* The Confederates shifted south about another ten miles (16 kilometers), below the Etowah River, and set up on 20 May at Allatoona Pass, where the Western & Atlantic cut through a gash in yet another jagged ridge. Although Johnston normally conducted his retreats with great efficiency, this one was characterized by confusion and traffic jams, compounded by the demoralization of his troops in seeing their hopes of a great victory turn into yet another retreat.
The new rebel position was very strong, in fact too strong, so obviously formidable that nobody in their senses would try to attack it directly. Sherman was thoroughly familiar with the area. Two decades earlier, as a young Army lieutenant, he had been stationed at Marietta, Georgia, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the southeast and now Johnston's forward base of supplies on the Western & Atlantic. Sherman had spent his free time exploring the area, commenting after the war that he knew more about Georgia than the enemy did, and knew just what a trap Allatoona Pass would be.
That meant another flanking movement, a long one this time. Sherman was tired of dancing around with Johnston, and now he would take his entire grand army on an arc towards Dallas, Georgia, 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the southwest of Allatoona Pass. The movement would be difficult, since the area was heavily wooded and had few roads, but Sherman still felt that he could get the jump on Joe Johnston.
Sherman took three days off before putting his troops in motion again, allowing the men to rest and refit while work gangs got the Western & Atlantic in operation. The movement began on 23 May. Unfortunately, the next day Schofield's troops captured a Confederate dispatch rider whose messages revealed that the Federal move had been immediately detected, and the rebel defense was being correspondingly rearranged.
Wheeler had tipped off Johnston on 24 May, and Johnston had immediately shifted his troops to the southwest to counter the move. Surprising Johnston was not easy; Sherman later referred to Johnston's "lynx-eyed watchfulness". Sherman became more cautious, lest he fall into a trap like that which Schofield had narrowly evaded at Cassville.
* The line of Federal march arced across Pumpkin Vine Creek, which flowed northeast towards the Etowah River. On 25 May Joe Hooker's corps of three divisions returned to Thomas's army and, in the lead, approached the creek, where they ran into rebel cavalry who tried to burn the bridges. The Confederates were driven off and the fires put out.
The Federals crossed the creek and advanced into the woods beyond the eastern bank. Near New Hope Church, a Methodist establishment in the woods a few miles northeast of Dallas, Hooker's men ran into a substantial force of Confederate infantry. Hooker attacked them with his lead division, under Brigadier General John Geary, who had fought the night action with Longstreet during the relief of Chattanooga.
Hooker thought he was catching some element of Johnston's army on the march. What he was dealing with instead was Hood's full corps, which had just positioned itself on the northern end of Johnston's new line of defense and was digging in. Polk's corps was similarly digging in just south of Hood's, with Hardee's moving in to hold down the southern end of the line.
Geary's division collided with Hood's men and was promptly knocked back hard. Hooker was in good form that day, living up to his "Fighting Joe" nickname. Despite the fact that he was beginning to suspect that he was up against a formidable rebel force, he threw all three of his divisions at the Confederates. The Federal assault focused on the middle of Hood's line, held by a division under Major General Alexander P. Stewart. Hooker's troops hit as hard as they could, but Stewart's men held, assisted by well-sited guns that inflicted terrible casualties on the close-packed Yankees. Stewart reported later: "No more persistent attack or determined resistance was anywhere made."
The fight near New Hope Church went on for three hours. A violent thunderstorm began before sundown and began to dampen the bloodshed, though one Union soldier, caught up in the excitement, said he still wanted to "swim over and tackle the Johnnies." Darkness finally put a complete halt to the shooting. Hooker reported his losses at 1,665, though since Hooker was prone to under-report his casualties that may have been an underestimate. The rebels lost about half that many men, since they had been fighting from a reasonably strong position.
* Sherman's troops continued to move up to the line during the night, which was damp, dark, muddy, and filled with swearing Union men stumbling through the undergrowth. Schofield was knocked off his horse when he wandered into a branch and was laid up for several days.
When the sun came up, Sherman found his own forces neatly stalemated by a strong line of rebel defenses. Sherman probed Johnston's defense all the next day, the 26th, and into the morning of 27 May. Finding no weaknesses, at mid-morning Sherman ordered a flanking movement around the northern end of the line at a place named Pickett's Mill, a few miles northeast of New Hope Church.
The assault was made by Oliver Howard's corps of three divisions, part of Thomas's army. Howard's men moved out in the early afternoon, with Brigadier General Thomas Wood's division in the lead. The Union troops struggled through the brush for several hours and didn't make contact with the rebels until about 4:30 PM. Unfortunately for Howard, Johnston had second-guessed that Sherman would try this stunt, and had ordered Hardee to send one of divisions to the north of Hood's line. Hardee sent Pat Cleburne's division, and there were no rebel troops better trained or more aggressively led than Cleburne's.
Wood's division stumbled up against the fresh Confederate breastworks and was promptly blown apart by the massed, accurate fire of Cleburne's men. The assault was immediately broken, and Howard was forced to call on reinforcements not merely from Thomas's army but from Schofield's simply to hold off disaster. The fighting went on for three hours, dying down at nightfall, though at 10:00 PM Cleburne sent out a brigade of Texans in a daring and highly successful night attack that swept over a group of Federal troops trying to find safety in a ravine, adding to the Union casualty list. At the end of it, Wood's division alone had suffered 1,457 casualties, while Cleburne reported the loss of 448 men.
* Johnston reasoned that if Sherman was pushing on the northern end of the Confederate line, then he had probably pulled troops from the southern end of the Union line for the attack. Johnston ordered Hardee to probe Federal defenses around Dallas to see if that was the case, and the next morning Hardee sent out a division under Major General William Bate. Johnston's reasoning was plausible, but not correct. Bate's division was thrown back by McPherson's troops, the rebels losing about 400 men, the Federals about half that many. In such terrain, the Yankees were every bit as immovable on the defense as the Confederates.
At a council of war that day, Hood proposed that he shift his corps eastward to perform a flanking attack on the northern end of the Federal line, with his assault to be followed up in sequence by drives from Polk's and Hardee's corps all along the line. Johnston liked the plan and gave orders scheduling it for the next morning, 29 May, with Polk and Hardee to jump off when they heard the thunder of Hood's artillery.
The sun came up, nothing happened, hours passed, and then orders came down from Johnston calling off the attack. Hood had reported that a division of Yankees had appeared and were blocking his line of attack in well-prepared defenses. Once again, Hood had talked tough and not followed through. However, for once he was being prudent. Previous clashes in the area had clearly proven that the defender had the advantage in the wooded terrain, and both sides had long since learned how to build almost impregnable fortifications in a matter of hours.
The Yankees liked to say: "The rebels must carry their breastworks with them!" -- while the Confederates returned the compliment, saying: "Sherman's men march with a rifle in one hand and a spade in the other!" Now both sides dug in whenever they had the chance, and they had turned the area into a mazework of trenches and redoubts. Some estimated that there were 400 to 500 miles (640 to 800 kilometers) of trenchworks in the area. A few of the Union generals thought their men were losing their edge, but General Schofield was casual about it, suggesting that a soldier's attitude toward combat was much the same as his attitude toward farming or running a sawmill: "He wants to see a fair prospect that it is going to pay."
Still, for the moment the two armies were stalemated. The fighting through May had cost Sherman about 9,300 men, with Johnston's losses numbering about 8,500. Sherman's losses were tolerable -- he was far more able to absorb them than Johnston -- and the Federals had pushed the Confederates from Dalton to Dallas. Despite these satisfactions, Sherman knew that he had accomplished little as long as Johnston's army survived.
