Jefferson Davis and Atlanta.


You could do it, but I think it would need more men. Stewart was actually given command of his own division and Bate's briefly at Rocky Face Ridge when Johnston needed three maneuver elements.

Hardee's corps began the campaign with 21,947 present for duty and Hood's corps was 21,310 present for duty.
You would have to take a division from Hardee and Hood each to avoid cannibalizing one of the corps (or otherwise completely reorganize the army, which Bragg had done to the army's detriment at Chattanooga).

So you would end up with a corps of two divisions - and as the campaign goes on, that two divisions is going to dwindle. Additionally, that corps will need more transportation, its own artillery, etc. A corps of 12,000 men does not have a lot of sustained power in combat. Additionally, the divisions of Stevenson, Walker, and Bate had pretty poor combat records. A corps made up of those divisions might not perform so well and might actually be detrimental to the army.

One of the reason's Lee was able to detach a light force with Early was, with combat had destroyed Johnson's division, bringing the Second Corps from 21,000 to 12,000 (a much smaller force) and forcing the creation of a new division (Gordon's) from Johnson's remnants and from elements of the other divisions in the corps (reducing them in size). Additionally, Early was able to get Breckinridge's division which was originally from the Valley.


My point, really, is that this should be done well before the campaign starts. I think these corps were too big for what was needed and should be smaller. Hardee might be capable of handling/organizing/maintaining a force that size; I doubt Hood was ( this is the criticism, really, that R.E. Lee had about Hood, that he was good on the battlefield and careless off).

When the AoT was reorganized that Winter, it should have been split into 3 corps, not 2, IMHO. The troops arriving when the campaign was to start could be fed into that structure (Polk's Army of Mississippi as the 4th Corps instead of the 3rd).

The point is that such an organization is more flexible. The number of troops remains the same, just organized differently. Sherman had more men organized into more corps, generally smaller than the Confederate corps, which he used to maneuver around Johnston almost at will. I am saying the Confederates needed speed and flexibility, which was restricted by the large corps they had.

The extra corps can be smaller than the others because it is designed to act independently and move fast under an audacious commander. It is not supposed to stand in the main army and slug it out toe=to-toe with Sherman. There really is no one in the AoT with the background required to say: "He's the one to command that!" Strangely, Hood might be considered above the others because of his eye for terrain, ability to make troops move fast, and sharp tactical eye; his other qualities make me doubt it. Forrest is another maybe, as is Taylor, but really the Confederacy is short on people with records of success in independent command.

So you might picture 3 infantry corps at around 17-18,000 and 1 at around 10,000. Put most of the cavalry with the main army under Wheeler and a division (Jackson?) with the independent force. That force will probably be operating to the west of the main army because it needs to threaten Sherman's LOC and draw off forces (IOW, doing in May what Hood tried to do in October).
 
First, I didn't go through all replies before my reply so, forgive me if I'm repeating any similar to same reply.
Second, I'm a diehard Southerner raised by my grandparents right in the path of Sherman's March to the Sea so, my younger days education were extremely lop sided regarding any and every thing ACW, The South, Sherman etc. just like any other truly southern born and bred person but, the rare good thing about the internet is it has provided me every avenue of research that I have fully exploited to acquire knowledge, factual and correct knowledge not available to me or us 40 years ago.
I have read all CSA OR'S and every CSA correspondence from beginning to end with a major focus on 1864 to the end of the OR'S of the conflict. I have to say I became very disappointed with the lack of coherence, slightly delusional and utter disregard of GA and SC displayed by JD there are numerous times throughout his correspondence to Bragg and Beauregard that show his Only concern was that of Richmond. His own words reflect that he truly knew everything was for naught but, so did most in the know at that time. My own interpretation of Davis' correspondence during the mid to end of '64 is that of a man looking out for number 1and nothing else. There was no attempts by him to go down with the ship nor to really listen to any of his western theater commanders. He rarely responded to legitimate requests to resupply or provide relief to the shambles of an army in the theatre. His only concern was that of Richmond. I am by no means a military strategist but, I have recently pondered if Davis had kept the CSA government in AL, GA OR MS instead of making Richmond home base how things would've fared?
P.s. I know the limitations of supplies, soldiers, ammo etc. Was wafer thin to non existent during this time. I think Davis wasn't operating at full capacity in the logic department and his own words are evidence he was by no means Presidential late war

Davis sent him Polk's corps which significantly increased the forces available to Johnston. Beyond that there was not much to funnel his way.
 
I am no military tactician by no means, I can only speculate what I would have done if I was in Johnston's position. I was raised up and currently reside close to Resaca and being familiar with the topography in this area.

Dalton, Rocky Face, Dug Gap on down to Resaca ,being mountainous as it is, would have been Johnstons only leverage in the northern part of the state in trying to stop or slow down Sherman. In just the shear number of troops that Sherman had, it would be tough to even up the odds. If memory serves me, Sherman had roughly 110,000 troops and Johnston had roughly 54,000.

It just seems once Sherman passed through the mountains he could out flank Johnston at any given time and had the luxury of keeping Johnston guessing and on the defensive. I know Johnston kept wanting help to interrupt Shermans supply lines. Help that ever came. I think the CSA at this time was hurting badly for troops and maybe leadership? I can only speculate.

The W&A railroad was worth more than gold to Sherman at that time. With just the enormous amount of supplies that it took to supply an army of that size. As someone said in an earlier post, the Confedrates just didn't have the troops to be on the offensive. I can't imagine being faced with the odds that Johnston was facing.

Hood possibly would have been more aggressive out of the gate? But that may have just eaten up an already outnumbered Army?

I am currently reading a book by Stephen Davis," A Long and Bloody Task", that is a very enjoyable read about the Atlanta Campaign. I guess one part of the allure of the ACW to me is to think and talk about all the "what if's and could haves".
 
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I am no military tactician by no means, I can only speculate what I would have done if I was in Johnston's position. I was raised up and currently reside close to Resaca and being familiar with the topography in this area.

Dalton, Rocky Face, Dug Gap on down to Resaca ,being mountainous as it is, would have been Johnstons only leverage in the northern part of the state in trying to stop or slow down Sherman. In just the shear number of troops that Sherman had, it would be tough to even up the odds. If memory serves me, Sherman had roughly 110,000 troops and Johnston had roughly 54,000.

It just seems once Sherman passed through the mountains he could out flank Johnston at any given time and had the luxury of keeping Johnston guessing and on the defensive. I know Johnston kept wanting help to interrupt Shermans supply lines. Help that ever came. I think the CSA at this time was hurting badly for troops and maybe leadership? I can only speculate.

The W&A railroad was worth more than gold to Sherman at that time. With just the enormous amount of supplies that it took to supply an army of that size. As someone said in an earlier post, the Confedrates just didn't have the troops to be on the offensive. I can't imagine being faced with the odds that Johnston was facing.

Hood possibly would have been more aggressive out of the gate? But that may have just eaten up an already outnumbered Army?

I am currently reading a book by Stephen Davis," A Long and Bloody Task", that is a very enjoyable read about the Atlanta Campaign. I guess one part of the allure of the ACW to me is to think and talk about all the "what if's and could haves".

One thing to bear in mind in Sherman's maneuvers is that the RR is essential. The campaign could not have been managed without it (example: there are parts of the campaign where Sherman's troops are expending 200,000 rounds of small arms ammo per day -- how can they do that in northern GA and keep supplied without the RR?)

But the RR limited what could be done in other ways. Any movement away from the RR had to be supplied by wagon. The feed for the horses and mules was also coming down the RR. The further from the RR the wagons have to go, the more they have to displace supplies for the troops with feed for the animals. It turned out the practical limit was three days haul from the rail-head (and back). Further than that and either you could not carry enough supplies for the troops to be worthwhile or the animals were starving.

We can think of that as about 35 miles as long as we remember it is 35 miles as the wagon travels, not 35 miles as the crow flies. Ten miles in a straight line might easily mean 20 miles of wagon-haul over bad roads. This factor limited the range of Sherman's turning maneuvers and narrowed the front Johnston had to protect.
 
Ya'll are pretty hard on old "Fightin' Joe" Johnston. His retreat through North Georgia was very well done considering the Army of Tennessee was out numbered and short on cavalry and artillery. Johnston knew his men and what they were capable of. Tsun Tsu says "If you cannot defeat your enemy, it is next best to remain undefeated." That's is what Johnston was doing.
 
Ya'll are pretty hard on old "Fightin' Joe" Johnston. His retreat through North Georgia was very well done considering the Army of Tennessee was out numbered and short on cavalry and artillery. Johnston knew his men and what they were capable of. Tsun Tsu says "If you cannot defeat your enemy, it is next best to remain undefeated." That's is what Johnston was doing.

One of the single most important things an army commander has to keep in his mind is what his object is. Simply preserving the Army of Tennessee was not Johnston's object, keeping Sherman out of Atlanta was. As far as Davis could tell, Johnston was going to fall back out into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

Did Johnston have an easy task in front of him? Certainly not. But, Atlanta was the most important city in the Confederacy in 1864, and the Confederate theater commander had to attempt more to hold it than Johnston seemed willing to.
 
Sherman would not be denied Atlanta. By keeping the army of Tennessee a large viable force, then hoping Sherman made a mistake that could be exploited, was a much better strategy than Hood had.
 
Sherman would not be denied Atlanta. By keeping the army of Tennessee a large viable force, then hoping Sherman made a mistake that could be exploited, was a much better strategy than Hood had.

The last, slim hope for the Confederacy was holding Atlanta until at least the November election. The Army of Tennessee was meaningless if Johnston simply yielded Atlanta to Sherman in order to preserve it. Atlanta was Johnston's object, and he did not keep it.
 
Sacrificing the Army of Tennessee to save Atlanta would have been folly. I think Johnston would have made a stand around Atlanta and given Sherman a good fight, better than what Hood did. That is only an opinion and subject to change.
 
Sacrificing the Army of Tennessee to save Atlanta would have been folly. I think Johnston would have made a stand around Atlanta and given Sherman a good fight, better than what Hood did. That is only an opinion and subject to change.

If Atlanta fell before the election, the war was essentially over. If Atlanta falls and the Army of Tennessee slips away, the war is still essentially over. The single most important thing Johnston had to do was keep Sherman away from Atlanta for as long as possible. Given both the strategic and tactical situations, that was a tall order, certainly. But, facing long odds sometimes requires us to assume even greater risks. Lee understood that, Johnston did not.
 
I really do not think Johnston had a sure fire plan to keep Atlanta for any length of time. Johnston made it a habit or really just to be a crawl in Davis’s side to not inform him of his plans to keep Atlanta. Davis wrote Johnston, he had Bragg to hear of Johnston’s plan but nothing came forth to support any action that Davis was sure enough in to keep Johnston in command.

Johnston’s history since the beginning of the war was to fall back and wait until an opportunity came sitting on his doorstep, which was not going to happen here. Sherman made his mistakes of not acting on certain movements and not being aggressive enough early on in this campaign but really Sherman could not do much but keep his men marching hard to keep up with Johnston’s army falling back.

From everything I have read, studied and heard in the last 40 some odd years of my interest in the Civil War, I have yet! To hear one solid, concreate evidence that Johnston had a plan to stop Sherman from taking Atlanta. Not in the official records, not in the memoirs of those in the know, mainly because Johnston didn’t have a plan. Johnston was a general that acted on what the other army did, he did nothing to make the other army leaders have to defend an attack which could make a difference in an outcome of a campaign.
 
Sacrificing the Army of Tennessee to save Atlanta would have been folly. I think Johnston would have made a stand around Atlanta and given Sherman a good fight, better than what Hood did. That is only an opinion and subject to change.

We don't know this for sure. In fact, Davis and Bragg thought the signs were pointing to Johnston abandoning Atlanta without a fight (particular Johnston's request to evacuate the prisoners at Andersonsville well to the south of Atlanta was particular concerning to both).

Sherman thought that Johnston would abandon Atlanta once McPherson cut the Decatur Railroad, which he did on July 18. The year before, Johnston had yielded Jackson, Mississippi, to Sherman merely when the Federals brought their artillery to bear on the Confederate works. Could Johnston have seized the tactical opportunities Hood tried and failed to take advantage of? That is purely speculative, but given the miscarriages of Johnston's other offensives, not likely. And if Johnston had sat in and defended Atlanta, he could only hold it until Sherman cut the rail lines into the city, which would have occurred by the end of July (Howard's movements, which triggered the Battle of Ezra Church, had the last railroad into Atlanta in mind and this movement was checked by the position the battered remnants of Lee's corps took up when they were repulsed at Ezra Church).
 
If he had replaced Johnston before Rocky Face Ridge things mat have been different but it still would have been a matter of time.
A rapid moving mass strikes a immoveable obect ,what would be the result? Jefferson could have place Lee in charge at Atlanta and the results would have been the same ,just as he had to face Grant at Petersburg.Jefferson was in a twilight period where the South could still win ,just as Washington had against the British.Remember that he thought if they could just make it to the West then they could continue the war though the West for the most part was already lost.
 
Davis was keeping his hopes high up until the end. The hope was to hold on long enough to force Lincoln into not winning his re-election and the new regime bringing a peace accord to the table that would keep the Confederacy as a new nation.

Militarily wise, there was no big hope in keeping Sherman from taking Atlanta, time would have permitted it to happen with the overwhelming odds of manpower, artillery, supplies and such.

I do agree with the earlier poster that after Rocky Face, the continued falling back of Johnston wasn’t in the best interest of checking Sherman’s advance. The north Georgia mountain ranges were the hopeful equalizer in the troop size difference Johnston faced. I may not really point to Rocky Face as the end all but it sure was the beginning of it.

The ax to me fell after the Kennesaw/New Hope line was vacated. This would put us around the first few days of July 1864. The open area and now Sherman back on the W&A rail line to supply his army, it was over!
IF is the not the answer. Its like when a team or individual losses in the last minute of an event.IF they had did this or that,or if the other tean had not done this we would have scored ,even in the end we would have still loss,
 
If he had replaced Johnston before Rocky Face Ridge things mat have been different but it still would have been a matter of time.
Even if he could have brought Lee from Virginia ,Atlanta was loss.Sherman's forces were to well supplied to have been haulted.Sherman was able with his force to out manuver the Confederate armys.As far as Lee ,Grant did the same thing to him at Petersburg as Sherman was doing at Atlanta.When one is attacked by a massive force and your force is not equal to conter that force ,would not the wiser move to seek a field where you can use your force to your advantage?Davis was in a twilight state of mind , the reality of what was happening had no effect on his judgement.One can only imagine if instead of the Presidency ,that he had been placed in charge of the Confederate forces.
 
I believe the Confederacy was a lost cause before Johnston was replaced by Hood in Atlanta, and that Johnston ordered those retreats to save his men from what he knew to be an overpowering foe.
 
We don't know this for sure. In fact, Davis and Bragg thought the signs were pointing to Johnston abandoning Atlanta without a fight (particular Johnston's request to evacuate the prisoners at Andersonsville well to the south of Atlanta was particular concerning to both).

Sherman thought that Johnston would abandon Atlanta once McPherson cut the Decatur Railroad, which he did on July 18. The year before, Johnston had yielded Jackson, Mississippi, to Sherman merely when the Federals brought their artillery to bear on the Confederate works. Could Johnston have seized the tactical opportunities Hood tried and failed to take advantage of? That is purely speculative, but given the miscarriages of Johnston's other offensives, not likely. And if Johnston had sat in and defended Atlanta, he could only hold it until Sherman cut the rail lines into the city, which would have occurred by the end of July (Howard's movements, which triggered the Battle of Ezra Church, had the last railroad into Atlanta in mind and this movement was checked by the position the battered remnants of Lee's corps took up when they were repulsed at Ezra Church).
At this time was there remaining a general in the Confederate army who could have prevented the fall of Atlanta?Could even LEE or Longstreet held out againt the force which Sherman was bringing.Lee was to see this same force brought on him by Grant at Petersburg.He was very smart or fouturne was with Lee.
 
At this time was there remaining a general in the Confederate army who could have prevented the fall of Atlanta?Could even LEE or Longstreet held out againt the force which Sherman was bringing.Lee was to see this same force brought on him by Grant at Petersburg.He was very smart or fouturne was with Lee.
Lack of supplies and lack of men made it impossible.
 
At this time was there remaining a general in the Confederate army who could have prevented the fall of Atlanta?Could even LEE or Longstreet held out againt the force which Sherman was bringing.Lee was to see this same force brought on him by Grant at Petersburg.He was very smart or fouturne was with Lee.

There were better generals, tactically, than either Hood or Johnston, like Richard Taylor, A.P. Stewart, and even Jubal Early. Would they have been enough to overcome the almost two to one advantage Sherman fielded? I don't know. It is purely conjecture. I will recommend Richard McMurray's essay Two Great Rebel Armies, which discusses this in depth.

I also think that the problem the Army of Tennessee ultimately had was in its' staff. While the staff in the Army of Northern Virginia did not not have a stellar record or reputation, Lee could count on skilled executive officers (Longstreet, Jackson, Gordon, etc.) to make up for it. For most of the war, the Army of Tennessee had one competent executive officer (Hardee) and a slew of mediocre and terrible ones (Polk, D.H. Hill, Hood, S.D. Lee) who could not make up for the army's institutional shortcomings. When you add the factions, political cliques, and backbiting, then the Army of Tennessee was a real vipers' nest. The only real opportunity for to reorganize and correct the problems would have been in the spring of 1863 and the spring of 1864. Johnston however, for all of his trying, did not fundamentally correct the army's staff problem as he spent most of his time trying to get a third corps approved, dealing with artillery, and undoing Bragg's previous changes. A good staff would have gone a long way at battles like Peachtree Creek, Ezra Church, and even Spring Hill even with mediocre executive officers.

When discussing Petersburg versus Atlanta, it is important to remember two things. Lee was in a much more defensible strategic setting (he could not be flanked from the west and the Peninsula gave him defensive options towards flanking from the east). Johnston could and would be turned on any flank. Another thing is that Lee was still launching primary tactical offensives - the Wilderness, counterattacks at Spotsylvania, a planned attack at North Anna, and the various battles around Petersburg. Lee was still able to retain a level of tactical initiative up until Fort Stedman. Johnston was more cautious. He ordered, and then canceled, three attacks (Resaca and Dallas, but his staff failed to reach the intended commands in time, and Adairsville, where Hood cancelled after finding McCook's brigade on his flank). Could Napoleon or Gustavus Adolphus have done better than Johnston if they had been swapped? I don't know. It is fun for alternative history buffs and what-ifers, but that's beyond my authority as a historian.
 
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