The Bowdoin Orient

December 8, 2000
Volume CXXXII, Number 12

O.O. Howard, Part 11: With Sherman in Georgia

by KID WONGSRICHANALAI, STAFF WRITER

   The fourth year of the Civil War saw the Confederacy slowly dying. In the West, Vicksburg had fallen, opening the Mississippi to Union ships. At Chattanooga, Ulysses S. Grant had all but destroyed the major Confederate army in the west, and at sea, the Union blockade was choking the rebellion's supplies from across the Atlantic.
   Only in the east was there a problem. After four bloody years of advance and retreat, the Union Army of the Potomac had still been unable to end the career of Robert E. Lee and his legendary Army of Northern Virginia.
    As Sam Grant went east to deal with Lee in early 1864, plans for an offensive in the west were underway.
   Since the first major battle at Bull Run in 1861, Oliver Howard had been a part of the Civil War. But his rise in the east had been halted by the disaster at Chancellorsville and at Gettysburg.
    Sent west to help relieve Chattanooga, Howard finally escaped the command of the luckless eastern generals: Bad Luck McDowell, Gutless McClellan, Brainless Burnside, All-Talk Hooker, and most recently Bad-Tempered Meade.
    Now he was under the command of a man who loved to talk, fight and smoke cigars. Having shared the battlefield at Bull Run with Howard, William Tecumseh Sherman certainly had heard of the general from Maine.
    Winter 1863 saw rest and refit for the Union armies. Howard himself received thanks from Sherman for helping out with the relief of Knoxville. Sherman called Howard a "polished Christian gentleman" and a "prompt, zealous,…gallant soldier."
    High praise indeed from a man who knew good fighters when he saw them. After placing his men in winter quarters, Howard had a chance to return to Maine for a quick visit with his family.
    When he returned at the beginning of the year he found that his friends in high places had been at work on his behalf again. Congress had just voted to give thanks to Howard for his role in the Battle of Gettysburg.
    Included in the congressional thanks were also the names of Joe Hooker and George Meade. Thus the document was strange in that Hooker's name was attached-he wasn't even at Gettysburg-and that General Winfield Scott Hancock-arguably the savior of Gettysburg-was not mentioned. (The author wishes to include that he is partially biased since he is a big fan of General Hancock.)
    The Congressional thanks sparked controversy down the years between Howard and Hancock supporters. Certainly Howard himself was concerned about the document. He was troubled on a spiritual level since the controversy would affect his image as a Christian soldier. Whatever his inner turmoil, all around him things were moving fast.
    The Spring 1864 Union Offensive was simple; Grant would attack Lee, and Sherman would attack Joseph Johnston's Confederate army on his way to Atlanta, the heart of the Confederacy.
    Sherman worked fast in getting his men in order. At the start of the campaign, he would have close to 1,100,000 men in three armies: The Army of the Cumberland under General George H. Thomas, The Army of the Tennessee under General James McPherson, and The Army of the Ohio under General John Schofield.
    In reorganizing his commands, Sherman combined Howard's Eleventh and Henry Slocum's Twelfth Corps to form the Twentieth Corps under General Joe Hooker.
   Howard was given a new corps to command. The Mainer went from commanding German immigrants to hard-fighting Western veterans from the Fourth Army Corps.
   Sherman's men trained not just in military drill but also in repairing the vital railroad, which would be the supply line for the armies once the campaign began.
   But certainly the energetic Sherman did not spend all his days working. Taking time off from his daily tasks, Sherman and a division commander, General Jefferson C. Davis, once made fun of Howard's religious dispositions by having a swearing marathon in front of him. Howard left, opening Sherman to comment on his lack of humor!
   The Atlanta Campaign opened on May 4, coinciding with Grant's attack on Lee's lines in Virginia. The Confederates under Joe Johnston awaited the Federals at a steep, twenty-mile long ridge called Rocky Face Ridge.
   Studying the position and finding it not practical to attack, Sherman adopted a plan by George Thomas; he would feint with two armies and send one circling around to get at the rebel rear near the town of Resaca.
   The movement went fine, but the arrival of rebel reinforcements forced the plan to fail in the end. Sherman, knowing that the game was up, moved his entire force, minus Howard and some cavalry, to Resaca via a gap in Rock Face.
   Once the rebels withdrew from his front, Howard pursued and approached Resaca from the north while attempting to link up with the rest of the Union troops, now on his right. His force being small, the rebels attacked Howard on May 14 but retreated once Howard called up reinforcements.
   Sherman attacked Johnston, and finding that the rebel position was too strong, swung wide around the Confederate flank to threaten their supply line. Johnston retreated slowly and sat waiting for Sherman at a place called Cassville. There he planned to attack and cripple a third of the Federal forces before they could concentrate.
   The attack was not sprung due to the arrival of some lost Federal troops in the rebel rear. Johnston gave ground again, backing away to Allatoona Pass. Sherman's movements had been swift, and his advance had been remarkable compared to the situation in the east at the same time.
   Within eleven days, Sherman was almost halfway to his objective in Atlanta. His soldiers were happy since their supplies were also moving as fast. "The rapidity with which the badly broken railroad was repaired seemed miraculous," Howard wrote.
   With his supplies at maximum, Sherman could afford to leave the railroad for a couple of days, which is what he did when he cut loose and marched beyond Johnston's left flank to land his force around a town called Dallas.
   On May 27, Howard was ordered to attack the rebel right near Pickett's Mill. Due to some poor scouting, Howard did not strike the end of the rebel line as he had intended, but rather ran headlong into Confederate General Patrick Cleburne's division-the very best men the rebels had. Howard was bloodily and swiftly repulsed, leaving him with 1500 casualties.
   Then the rains began, and for seventeen days, the downpour did not end. The Union men became demoralized in the mud that soon swamped them. The June rains were "the hardest times the army experienced," Howard later commented.
   Sherman shifted his armies and brought them again astride the Western & Atlantic Railroad, where supplies were collected. By now Sherman was beginning to feel agitated. He had long been from the school of "come on out and lets fight to the death" warfare.
   Joe Johnston, unfortunately, did not want to play Sherman's game. Thinking that his men were getting weak from the constant marching, Sherman declared that an all attack was probably necessary.
   In the meantime, he scouted the rebel positions at Pine Mountain. There, on June 14, Joe Johnston and two of his commanders-General William Hardee and General Leonidas Polk, a West Pointer and a bishop turned general-met to observe the Federals.
   Sherman also observed them and turned to Howard, who was in command of the line at that point. He told Howard to send some artillery shells over to scare them off. Howard sent word to his gunners who were already in action. With just two shots from Battery I of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery, the high command of the rebel army was changed forever.
   Polk lay dead on the field; drawing tears from both Johnston and Hardee while Sherman, upon hearing of the death, jubilantly reported it to Washington and became more determined than ever to attack the rebel line.
   Johnston withdrew his troops from Pine Mountain and waited for Sherman at Kennesaw Mountain.
   To Be Continued.
   Next Time: Kennesaw Mountain & Atlanta.

   Sources Used:
   1. Carpenter, John A. Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard. Fordham University Press, New York. 1999.
   2. Johnson, Clint. Civil War Blunders. Published by John F. Blair, 1998.
   3. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. Volume Three, Red River to Appomattox. Vintage Books, Random House Inc. 1986