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* Note: The following article comes from Sam Elliott, who is the author of a new book titled: "Soldier of Tennessee: General Alexander P. Stewart and the Civil War in the West," published 1999 by LSU Press
The Confederate Army of Tennessee entered the campaign
of May, 1864, greatly confident of its prospects for
success. In the six months since the disaster of Missionary
Ridge, the army's morale had been restored, and, to the
degree possible, its losses made good, by its new commander,
General Joseph E. Johnston. Moreover, as the Confederates
anticipated the advance of the Federal armies under Major
General William Tecumsah Sherman, their confidence was
raised by the great natural strength of their positions to
the north and west of their base at Dalton, Georgia.( 1 )
As was often the case with the Army of Tennessee,
however, anticipated success translated into actual failure.
Sherman had no intention of facing the strong rebel defenses
at Dalton, the worst of which he termed a "terrible door of
death." While his flanking column to Resaca, ten miles to
the south of Dalton, failed to cut the Army of Tennessee's
railroad life-line to Atlanta, it forced Johnston to abandon
his positions at Dalton and fall back. At Resaca, a
promising Confederate flank attack came to naught, and a
subsequent effort to attack the same flank met with
disaster. Caught between two rivers, Johnston had no choice
but to retreat across Oostanaula.( 2 )
Johnston planned to take the offensive against Sherman
at Cassville, about 25 miles south of Resaca. Perceiving
that Sherman's troops would take two roads in their advance,
Johnston determined to fall upon one of the two columns with
the bulk of the Army of Tennessee. Sherman escaped,
however, when a stray column of Federal cavalry led one of
Johnston's corps commanders, Lt. General John B. Hood, to
believe that Federal troops were on his flank, causing
Johnston to cancel the attack. Johnston's hope to make a
defensive stand at Cassville was thwarted by the perception
of Hood and another corps commander, Lt. General Leonidas
Polk, that Federal artillery interdicted their defenses.( 3 )
Johnston subsequently fell back across the second of
the river barriers between Dalton and Atlanta, the Etowah,
and fortified the narrow pass at Allatoona. Familiar with
the territory from prewar duty in Georgia, Sherman knew that
following the railroad to Allatoona would be disastrous.
Therefore, on May 23, for the first time in the campaign,
the Federals left the line of the Western & Atlantic
Railroad and advanced across the Etowah to the southwest.
Sherman's goal was Dallas, from which he expected to advance
on Marietta, less than 20 miles north of Atlanta.( 4 )
Johnston reacted by setting the Army of Tennessee in
motion, determining on May 24 that Dallas was Sherman's
goal. Early on May 25, Johnston directed Hood to move to
New Hope Church, a simple meetinghouse on the
Dallas-Allatoona Road northeast of Dallas. When Major
General Alexander P. Stewart's division arrived in the
vicinity of New Hope Church, Johnston himself rode up and
advised Stewart that the Federals were "out there" to the
west and that a breakthrough would imperil the division of
Major General Carter Stevenson.( 5 )
Stewart was no stranger to crisis situations. A
veteran of the Army of Tennessee from its earliest battles,
Stewart was known as one of the army's most competent
officers. Stewart had been relied upon by Hood and Johnston
from the start of the campaign, commanding a corps sized
force at Dalton, being given the responsibility for the
flank attack at Resaca on May 15, and covering the army's
hazardous retreat from Resaca on the night of May 15-16.
Nicknamed "Old Straight" for his upright military bearing,
Stewart commanded a division of four veteran brigades from
Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia, with a total strength of
just over 4,000 men.( 6 )
The Federals were indeed "out there," in the form of
Major General Joseph Hooker's 16,000 strong XX Corps.
Throughout the afternoon of May 25, Hooker's skirmishers
slowly pushed forward against Stewart's, encountering enough
resistance to cause "Fighting Joe" to deploy all three of
his divisions. By 5:00 p.m., Hooker had his divisions in
column, flanked on either side by a brigade. They moved
forward through the dense undergrowth against the rebels
deployed near the church and its cemetery.( 7 )
Stewart's four brigades were supported by some of
Stevenson's troops on their left. More importantly, the
sixteen guns of Major J. W. Eldridge's artillery battalion
were positioned to sweep the area in front of Stewart's line
with "shot, shell and canister in murderous volleys." The
scene of battle was soon enveloped in smoke and the
combatants were drenched by a sudden cloudburst from a
thunderstorm.
Having judiciously deployed his division, Stewart led
by example, riding along his line on horseback, in a fight
where the oncoming Federals were aiming high. His men
called on him to get back, but "Old Straight" told them he
was there to die with them. When Stewart's son and aide,
Lt. Caruthers Stewart, admonished him that he had promised
the boy's mother that he would not expose himself, his
troops good-naturedly mimicked him up and down the line.
Stewart later wrote with pride that he had heard that his
example had been an inspiration to his men.
Concerned over the dire consequences of a breakthrough,
Johnston sent Stewart a message inquiring as to whether
reinforcements were needed. Stewart replied that his own
troops would hold the position. Johnston was so impressed
that he promised to recommend Stewart for promotion to
lieutenant general, a promise he kept less than a month
later.
The battle lasted until after dark, when the exhausted
men on both sides finally gave out. Stewart wrote that
"[n]o more persistent attack or determined resistance has
anywhere been made." Advantage of position and the defense
kept Stewart's casualties between 300 and 400 men, while
Hooker admitted suffering 1,665, a number the Confederates
thought low.( 8 )
The Confederacy's hero of the battle, Alexander P.
Stewart, would continue to fight with the ill-fated Army of
Tennessee to the end of the war. As Johnston promised,
Stewart was promoted to lieutenant general to command
Leonidas Polk's corps after the bishop was killed on June
14, 1864. In the army's last battle at Bentonville in
March, 1865, "Old Straight" commanded its remnants in its
final effort to stop Sherman.( 9 )
After almost sixty miles of defeat and retreat, the
Army of Tennessee had finally stopped Sherman in the woods
at New Hope Church. The victory would be the first of a
series of Confederate defensive victories that included
Pickett's Mill and Kennesaw Mountain that would prove to
Sherman that the prospect of taking Atlanta was more
difficult than anticipated in the first three weeks of the
campaign.
Footnotes:
1. For the general situation of the Army of Tennessee at this
time, see Stanley F. Horn, The Army of Tennessee, 1941,
reprint (Wilmington: Broadfoot Publishing, 1987), 311-313.
2. Philip L. Secrist, The Battle of Resaca, (Macon: Mercer
University Press, 1998), 9-65.
3. Horn, Army of Tennessee, 327-39; Joseph E. Johnston,
Opposing Sherman’s Advance to Atlanta, Robert Underwood
Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, Battles and Leaders of the
Civil War, Vol. 4, 1887, reprint (New York: Thomas
Youseloff, 1956) 267-69.
4. Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of
1864, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 217-19.
5. Sam Davis Elliott, Soldier of Tennessee: General Alexander
P. Stewart and the Civil War in the West, (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 184.
6. Elliott, Soldier of Tennessee, 80, 175-83, 191-94.
7. War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records
of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington,
D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1880-1901), Series
I, Vol. 38(1): 115; 38(2): 30, 123, 342-43, 382, 438.
8. Elliott, Soldier of Tennessee, 185-189.
9. Ibid, 194, 261.
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