When I saw that military historian Dave Powell was coming out with a new series on the Atlanta Campaign I was very interested. Powell has announced that this will be a five volume series from the start of the campaign to the capture of Atlanta. I had read his trilogy on the Chickamauga Campaign (as well as his Failure in the Saddle about the Confederate cavalry at the same battle), and I was impressed by Powell’s research and his prose style. I hoped this would be an in-depth contribution to understanding this crucial campaign that helped win Lincoln’s reelection.
Back in 2005 I had my last vacation with my wife Cecilia and we visited Chickamauga battlefield and stopped by some battlefields along the Atlanta Campaign trail. A year later she died from brain cancer and, to escape my grief, I went back to Georgia from my home on Long Island to retrace the Atlanta Campaign from Tunnel Hill to Jonesboro and beyond. I read most of the modern secondary sources available on each battle and found that several were very good accounts of the the battles they focused on. But the campaign was not just a series of one-day battles. It lasted from May 1 to September 2 in 1864 and spanned scores of miles. What happened in between the battles covered in the standard one-volume battle accounts are just as important as what happened in the battles at Kennesaw Mountain and Pickett’s Mill. The comprehensive approach Powell is undertaking now is particularly appropriate for the Atlanta Campaign.
Dave Powell’s first volume of his five volume set came out a few weeks ago and I was really anticipating his take on start of the four-month campaign. I was not disappointed. Volume 1 is 624 pages and covers both armies’ movements from May 1 to May 19, 1864. At this pace, Powell may need to write seven more installments in the series, instead of four!
Before getting into the actual campaign, Powell does a much-needed overview of why Sherman commanded the Union troops, and why Johnson, who did not have presidential support, commanded the Confederates. The author also gives a full account of the different subordinate commanders on both sides of the campaign and the men they commanded. On the Union side, there are elements of three armies here: Army of the Potomac, Army of the Tennessee, and the Army of the Cumberland. It would seem that the Confederate Army, the Army of Tennessee, would have a more firm organizational structure, but anyone familiar with that army’s sad history knows it was much more divided at the start of the campaign than the Union opponent.
Powell starts off his discussion of the Confederate commanders with the apt heading “A Triumvirate of Mistrust,” an accurate description of the relationship of Jeff Davis, Joe Johnston, and Davis’s military adviser Braxton Bragg, the former commander of the Army of Tennessee. Add to that, Joe Johnston relied on one of his corps commanders as his principal confident, John Bell Hood, and Hood was secretly sending letters to Richmond undermining his commander.
Powell relies on extensive research in primary source materials, his own years-long study of the principals on both sides of the campaign, and Powell’s extensive travels to the battlefields where the campaign was fought out. The long-standing classic on the campaign is
Powell is an expert at the military aspect of the Atlanta Campaign, but he does a fine job of retelling the politics that nearly sank the Confederacy in the summer of 1864. Bragg and Jefferson Davis wanted a Robert E. Lee defending Atlanta. Not only was Johnston not a Lee, but Atlanta was not Richmond. Johnson had a more realistic view of the campaign, but could not figure out how to make the Confederate commander-in-chief happy.
The author also does a good job of looking at the logistics on the Confederate side and how its limits contained Johnston’s tactical plans. Sherman had a 50% manpower advantage over Johnston at the beginning of the campaign, not an insurmountable disadvantage, but one that would not support Jeff Davis’s expectancy of an aggressive campaign by Johnston. The fact that his men ran short of arms and supplies did not help.
This first volume is not just a recounting of the initial stages of the campaign. Powell recounts the Battle of Resaca, which involved more than 150,000 fighting men, and left more than 5,000 men killed, wounded or missing in action. Had it occurred in Virginia, the battle would have ranked up there with the Second Bull Run. But many of today’s students of the Civil War might think the battle was fought in Mexico instead of Georgia. Powell does a good job of analyzing the fighting and the consequences for both sides.
Another benefit of Powell’s treatment of the campaign is that he does not just tell us who won each skirmish or battle. Advance or retreat is not the whole story. When Johnston has to retreat, he does so masterfully. And this is why a general who’s forces were always pushed back was able to keep his army together through adversity.
I hope that the four successive volumes will live up to the example set by
Volume Two will cover the period after May 18th until the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. When it comes out, I will be sure to review it.
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