The Gales of November - Part 3
- Jeff Brewer
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
War of the pick and shovel
As Sherman’s Atlanta campaign lurched to life in May of 1864, Johnston’s task was to not only defend Atlanta, but all the countryside at his back along with all the supporting lines of transport and communication that would keep his army supplied while blocking Sherman’s advance. To do this, Joe Johnston, always conservative and cautious in the art of war, decided to impede his enemies advance by digging up a sizable portion of the North Georgia landscape in the form of trenches. Another herald of the future of warfare indelibly impressed upon the human experience in the First World War, war torn Georgia in 1864 saw literally hundreds of miles of trenches dug into the countryside by waring Union and Confederate armies. Beginning in December shortly after Johnston took command, the Army of Tennessee constructed what would eventually be eighteen separate lines of earthworks. Each defensive work, to one degree or another, having approach fortifications, redoubts, and parallel trenches dug opposite them by the invading armies as they appeared in front of their positions.
Initially it was at Dalton, Georgia where Confederate engineers laid out the first earthen works approximately 7 miles in length. In February Major General George Thomas moved against the works but the Federal advance was repulsed with several days of skirmishing resulting in both armies ending at the same place where they started. In spite of Thomas’s initiative, his adventure ended with no accomplishment and several hundred casualties to show for it. Determining Johnston’s position was too strong, Thomas finally abandoned his efforts against Dalton. Johnston maintained his position till May when Sherman finally attacked in force along the Rocky Face Ridge line and was able to flank the Confederate position. Johnston withdrew to Resaca and dug into a strong line of earthworks along the Oostanaula River defending the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Here the two sides clashed again and fought a major battle for three days, May 13-15, with a combined loss of around 7,000 casualties. The back-and-forth fighting was inconclusive, but Sherman was able to cross the river which threatened Johnston’s position causing the General to withdraw the Army of Tennessee again and fall back toward Adairsville. For his part, Sherman had captured a key strategic point and now held the Western & Atlantic Railroad from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Resaca, Georgia. Sherman’s Grand campaign for Atlanta had begun.
The trenches at Dalton were the beginning of what eventually would be hundreds of miles of defensive works dug by the Army of Tennessee in an effort to halt the invasion of Georgia. After Resaca came Calhoun where trenches were started but soon after Johnston fell back to Adairsville. Then he retreated to Cassville where he planned to fight, but once again was outmaneuvered, resulting in pulling back further to Allatoona Hills where he fortified the railroad then dropped back once more to New Hope Church. This time it was Johnston who won the war of maneuver as, after digging in at Allatoona Hills, he anticipated Sherman’s attempt to flank his position.
Knowing Sherman did not want to suffer the loss he would incur as a result of attacking an entrenched enemy, he knew his opponent would try to turn him out of his fixed position. Accordingly, Sherman believed that the bulk of Johnston’s army was still dug in behind the Allatoona line, so he sent the XX Corps, formerly of the Army of the Potomac, under General Joseph Hooker to move southwest to New Hope Church. Here, Hooker ran into Major General Alexander P. Stewart’s Division firmly placed in a strong line of trenches behind a densely wooded area that Hooker was unaware of. Repeated assaults failed and Hooker withdrew suffering close to 1,700 casualties to Stewart’s loss of 400. Afterwards both sides settled in giving the appearance that the two sides were about to enter into permanent trench warfare.
The stalemate only lasted till May 27, as Sherman, frustrated at Hooker’s failure at New Hope Church, tried to outflank Johnston again, this time by moving around the Confederate right. For this task he pushed forward Major General Oliver O. Howard’s IV Corps. Howard was another Easterner come to the Western theater. A highly experienced officer but not without his faults, his XI Corps of the Army of the Potomac had the immortally shameful distinction of causing the disastrous Federal calamity at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May of 1863. Howard’s XI Corps, overwhelmingly made up of native speaking German immigrants, broke and ran from Lieutenant General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s famous flank attack as he emerged undetected from the thick undergrowth that dominated the landscape around Chancellorsville. Routing away in full panic, they caused a collapse of the line and handed General Robert E. Lee one of the most complete victories of the war. Now Howard was in Georgia navigating the Georgia undergrowth as heavy as that in the Virginia Wilderness where he suffered his ignominious defeat just barely a year earlier. After a 5-mile march through intensely difficult terrain, Howard’s men ran headlong into the 10,000-man division of Irishman Major General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, ironically known as the “Stonewall of the West”, well dug in on high ground with an excellent field fire. Howard’s Corps was badly shot up losing another roughly 1,700 men to Cleburne’s loss of approximately 500.
Sherman, again frustrated at the lack of progress, pulled back and continued slowly extending his lines threatening the railroads that were Johnston’s iron lifeline of supply radiating up from Atlanta. Johnston, considerably outnumbered and unable to hold such an ever-widening front, pulled back digging in near at various points, the Dallas line, Lost Mountain, and Pine Mountain just to mention a few, eventually fighting at Kolb’s Farm on the 22nd of June. Here Sherman threw out two corps, Hooker’s XX Corps, and Schofield’s XXIII Corps, moving to the west in an attempt to get around Johnston’s left flank. Johnston countered by moving Lt. General John Bell Hood’s Corp, formerly of the Eastern theater’s Army of Northern Virginia, to the left to screen that flank. However, Hood on his own initiative, decided to attack. Hood had not properly scouted his front and this time the situation and outcome was reversed. Attacking well entrenched veteran Union forces, Hood lost over 1,500 men to Hooker’s and Schofield’s 250. However, although a tactical loss for Johnston, Hood’s aggressive nature and all-out assault did score a strategic victory as the aggressiveness of the attack caught Sherman and his Generals off guard resulting in Sherman halting his attempt to turn Johnston’s flank.
The year was advancing and now it was nearing the end of June of 1864. Sherman and his Generals had failed to dislodge Johnston’s Army from before them. Now the Army of Tennessee was fixed firm in their most imposing earthworks yet, those of the Kennesaw Mountain line. One of the soldiers confronted with this network of fortifications was Harvey Rodgers, a Corporal in the 54th Ohio Infantry. Rodgers had been in the army since the fall of 1861, his regiment forming at Camp Dennison, Ohio in October of that year. As part of the XV Corps of the Army of the Tennessee, the 54th had fought at places like Shiloh, Corinth, the siege of Vicksburg, and Chattanooga just to mention a few. Now they and Rodgers stood in the uplands of Northern Georgia staring at their next trial by fire. In a letter home Rodgers condensed the grand strategy of the Confederacy into one statement; “The rebels are strongly fortified on the mountain and seem determined to hold their position.” Of this observation Rogers was correct. The Army of Tennessee was determined to hold the Kennesaw line and hold it they would in the hardest fighting yet in Sherman's drive to Atlanta. - JLB
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