The Gales of November - Part 2

War of the Iron Horse

Drawing of The General, a train engine in service on the Western & Atlantic Railroad made famous in the 1862 Great Locomotive Chase.

For the men of the Army of Tennessee, several of whom hailed from the Columbia and Mount Pleasant area of Maury County in Middle Tennessee, 1864 had been a time of extraordinary endurance and sacrifice.  No less exposed to the rigors of war were their Northern opponents, although with the exception of the recent siege in Chattanooga, privation for the Union soldier was a fear rarely realized whereas it was a near constant specter that haunted the Southern armies defending the South.  This reality drove many of the military decisions that materialized as the defensive strategy employed by the Confederacy as the struggle entered a new phase carrying the war into the Deep South. 

In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, the agrarian landscape provided much of the food supply for the Army of Northern Virginia.  So too did the rural countryside of Georgia, supplemented by countless farming communities across the Cotton South as well as the fertile lands of Middle Tennessee.  The key difference was, in Virginia, the defensive landscape was on a much narrower front with a natural barrier that aided in defense of the valley, namely the Blue Ridge Mountains.  In Virginia, a relatively small army, as demonstrated by Stonewall Jackson’s Valley campaign in 1862, could turn back a much larger invasion force by skillful use of the narrow confines of the landscape and knowledgeable exploitation of the passes and roadways that crisscrossed the countryside of the Shenandoah Valley.  In Georgia, the situation was different.  While there were narrow passes and valleys, especially in Northern Georgia, once passage was gained heading south, the terrain opened up to flatter lands and fewer natural obstacles that would benefit a numerically inferior defense.  Also, the bounty of the land wasn’t as concentrated as in Virginia. 

Columbus, Georgia was second only to Richmond, Virginia as a manufacturing hub for the Confederacy.

Much provision for the Confederate Army in Northern Georgia came from neighboring states and far-flung communities further down in the state.  Columbus, Georgia, roughly 200 railroad miles southwest of Atlanta, was one of the largest supply depots and manufacturing hubs for the Confederacy.  All of these supplies had to be transported either by wagon trains or railroad cars to where the army could receive them close to the front.  In the case of supplies coming from the depot at Columbus, the Muscogee Railroad lumbered east to Macon for a distance of roughly 100 miles.  Then from Macon, along the Atlanta Western Railroad, the provisions would roll along the last 100 miles of track eventually arriving at Atlanta.  From there they would take their journey either by rail or by wagon to the final destination to be distributed to the army.

Halleck insisted, “the possession of Corinth is necessary to secure the great railroad communications of the South.”

Early on, the Union’s Major General Henry W. Halleck, and the Confederacy’s General P. G. T. Beauregard, understood that much of the Southern strategy would revolve around keeping their interior lines of transport and communication intact, while the strategy for the North would focus on capturing those lines, using what was needed, and destroying the rest in an effort to partition the Confederate States depriving them of the ability to mutually support each other.  Initially, it was primarily these two men that realized the prosecution of the war in the Deep South would turn on logistics.  That realization resulted in the first great battle in the Western theater, the Battle of Shiloh, fought on April 6-7, 1862, as both armies were converging on Corinth, Mississippi to either defend or capture the crossing of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad and the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. 

Beauregard believed, "[Corinth is] the most important strategic point in the West, being the junction of the great railroads.”

The vast area that had to be defended in the Western theater, plus the scattered locations of provisions, meant that railroads were vital to the defense of the Confederacy. It was equally true that railroads were vital to the Union for maintaining supply lines to their armies deep in hostile territory. 

By 1860, Georgia had 20 railroad companies transporting passengers and goods over 1,400 miles of track, the most of any southern state with the city of Atlanta being a major rail hub with two roundhouse facilities, a necessary feature of an efficient rail network.  Into Atlanta streamed five major railroads, the Western & Atlantic Railroad, the Georgia Railroad, the Macon & Western Railroad, the Atlanta & West Point Railroad, and the Central of Georgia Railroad.  Both Beauregard and Halleck understood the strategic importance of the railroad at the outset of the war. Now, in 1864, the war had moved to Georgia. Halleck was replaced by Grant in March as General-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States. However, Halleck transitioned to Chief of Staff in Washington where he oversaw logistics maintaining his high opinion of the critical nature of the railroads as Sherman drove towards Atlanta. Beauregard, in April, was placed in charge of the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia and initially had no official involvement with the efforts in Georgia. As the campaign intensified, his authority was broadened as he was given responsibility over the Military Division of the West which included Georgia. In this role he made the security and effectiveness of Georgia's railroads a top priority with the intent to move reinforcements to strategic areas in the hope of creating a numerical advantage opposite a Union weak point as had been done at Chickamauga in September of the previous year.

For the Confederacy, Georgia had to be defended at all costs because, over her railroads rolled not only supplies and all the munition of war, but the fading hope of victory in this new War of Independence that had now entered its fourth bloody year. - JLB