The Bonfire by Marc Wortman

Author:Marc Wortman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs

ON THE NIGHT OF MAY 13, an ashen Johnston gathered his generals. He had learned that an entire Union division had crossed the Oostanaula at Lay’s Ferry several miles to the south of Resaca. That deeper flanking move, steadily reinforced by Sherman, threatened to cut off the Western & Atlantic Railroad again. This time the entire army would have to withdraw from its lines and fall back across the river. Working through the night, the rebels evacuated their positions and, after crossing the river, burned the railroad bridge behind them.

That began a series of running encounters south of the river through the gently rolling hills beyond. Johnston kept hoping to find a position that would give him the advantages he wanted, and Sherman marched his men around. “It was fighting, fighting, every day,” Tennessee rebel Private Watkins recalled. “When we awoke in the morning, the firing of guns was our reveille, and when the sun went down it was our ‘retreat and our lights out.’” By day the men fought, and by night they built breastworks. “I am well nigh worn out,” admitted A. J. Neal, “fighting all day and running or working all night.” He was sure, though, if the Yankees would “only give us a fair fight we could sweep them from the face of the earth.”

Sherman, though, had no intention of giving such a fight for now. For his part, General Johnston could not find a position where he felt it safe to turn around and attack his pursuers. He decided to fall back across the next great regional barrier, the southwest-running Etowah River, crossing what Sherman called “the Rubicon of Georgia.” Sherman expected to follow close behind through the heavy wilderness ahead and, at the final river-rampart, “to swarm along the Chattahoochee in a few days.” At some point, he believed “a terrific battle” near that river was inevitable.

Bone-weary, the soldiers of both armies fought and marched without let up, through summerlike dust and heat. They scratched at poison ivy rashes and cuts from brambles and sharp rocks, swatted at swarms of flies, slapped at biting mosquitoes, and wriggled and danced about incessantly like marionettes tugged on razor-wire strings held by the cruel lice crawling over their raw skin. The misery of the campaign equaled the dangers of flying lead and exploding iron. The Yankee army, though, was deep in Georgia. In two weeks of hard fighting, Sherman had covered half the distance to Atlanta. A little more than fifty miles separated his soldiers from the citadel of the Confederacy itself.

On May 22, an enthusiastic Col. Charles Morse, of the Second Massachusetts Infantry, wrote that the next day began the drive over the Etowah. “In the words of Sherman’s general order, we start on another ‘grand forward movement,’ with rations and forage for twenty days.” Sherman did not need to tell his men, but, reflected Morse, “Atlanta is evidently our destination; whether we shall reach it or not remains to be seen. One thing we are certain of—Johnston cannot stop us with his army; we can whip that wherever we can get at it.

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