Training, Tactics and Leadership in the Confederate Army of Tennessee by Andrew R.B. Haughton

Author:Andrew R.B. Haughton [Haughton, Andrew R.B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, Political Science, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781135782511
Google: UuR-Nt4vlLYC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-12-06T01:17:23+00:00

10

Training for the Atlanta Campaign

‘This army is worse demoralized now than it has ever bin’, one soldier observed shortly after arriving at Dalton, Georgia. Indeed, his own company was suffering badly, ‘several of our boys [have] gone home in the last week or so – [and] there is several others that threatens to go’.1 The army had washed up in Dalton, more a wreck than an armed force, lacking supplies, co-ordination and, within days, a commander. Following the debacle at Missionary Ridge, Bragg felt honour-bound to submit his resignation. He could not have been surprised that Jefferson Davis promptly accepted it, though he was disappointed by the speed and enthusiasm with which Davis consented to the end of his tenure. Bragg and Davis were old friends, both heroes of the Battle of Buena Vista when they were much younger men, enjoying happier days. But Missionary Ridge had been too great an embarrassment, and Davis had finally given way to political pressure in Richmond. The President would now face the problem of finding a replacement from among the Confederacy’s quarrelsome and unreliable senior officers.

Many were glad to hear of Bragg’s resignation. Noting widespread depression in the ranks at Dalton, Benjamin F. Carter suggested that it arose ‘from want of confidence in our Commanding General; but, happily for us, this objection has at last been removed’.2 Bragg had never been especially popular among the troops and, while some offered support and justification for his part in the Missionary Ridge debacle, others contemplated the prospect of a new commander with hope and enthusiasm.3 Whatever their feelings for or against Bragg, many in the ranks were worried by the abject performance of their comrades. ‘I think if we cant hold as good a plase as the Mishonary ridge we had as well quit’, concluded one soldier, ‘we had all the advantages of the enemy that one army neds [needs] to want I thought’.4 Another admitted that the Southerners were ‘heartily asshamed [sic] of their conduct’.5 For men who had volunteered in 1861, confident in the belief that the Southern way of life would make them superior in the field to any number of ‘Yankee hirelings’, the defeat at Missionary Ridge was a tremendous blow to their self-confidence. In December 1863, more than at any time hitherto, the Army of Tennessee was in a parlous mental state. This was not aided by the poor physical condition of the troops. ‘We air her abot [sic] half starved to death’, Andrew Edge, of the Fifty-second Georgia, remarked, ‘we have to live on quarter rashen we draw nothing but corn bread and knot half a nuff of that – we cant draw eny close nor eny blanket nor eny Money’.6 With Bragg’s resignation, command of the army had devolved, at least temporarily, upon William J. Hardee, the senior corps commander. With command came the many problems of supplying the army in the barren north Georgia terrain. ‘The question of supplies, both for men and animals, presents a source

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