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Snake Creek Gap and The Atlanta Campaign
I. Plans for the Campaign
After the victory at Chattanooga, Grant sent Sherman and the Army of the Tennessee,
along with Howard’s division and Davis’ XIV and Grainger’s IV corps to aide Burnside in Knoxville. After
Longstreet retreated east, Sherman left Thomas’ IV corps, Gordon Grainger commanding, with Burnside at Knoxville and
"returned to Nashville on the 21st of December to confer with General Grant and conclude arrangements for the winter." 1.
Grant, at this time, felt that the next great campaign would be up the valley
of east Tennessee to Virginia. This, in his mind, would be the final battle of the war. To free up troops stationed along
the Mississippi for this campaign, Sherman urged Grant to allow him to make the "Meridian Campaign." Grant gave his consent
and Sherman began planning.
Major General James Birdseye McPherson has been blamed for the failure to break
the railroad at Resaca May 9th, 1864.
The first finger to be pointed was that of the duplicitous Major General William
Tecumseh Sherman. Who accused him in his "Memoirs," long after McPherson died in Georgia, of first being timid, then changed
it to cautious. Of course, McPherson was not around to defend himself. But, Sherman failed to mention that McPherson followed
the orders he was given by Sherman. He was told to break the railroad and pull back to the mouth of Snake Creek Gap. But,
Mac couldn't break the railroad because he had no cavalry. Sherman, and to an extent Grant, both were responsible for this
failure. They created an assignment for McPherson and failed to provide enough tools, too little Infantry and almost no Cavalry,
to do the job.
Following is an explanation of that failure.
On January 17, 1864, Sherman notifies McPherson at Vicksburg, of his ‘Meridian’
campaign obligations. He expects Mac’s. preparations to be complete by January 25, and to anticipate Sherman’s
arrival on that date. 2.
Next, Sherman orders B/General William "Sooy" Smith his requirements. He tells
Smith that:
"DEAR GENERAL: By an order issued this day I have placed all the cavalry of this
department subject to your command. I estimate you can make a force of full 7,000 men, which I believe to be superior and
better in all respects than the combined cavalry which the enemy has in all the State of Mississippi." Then he orders Smith
to: I want you with your cavalry to move (starting on Jan. 24 or 25th) from Collierville on Pontotoc and Okolona; thence sweeping
down near the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, disable that road as much as possible, consume or
destroy the resources of the enemy along that road, break up the connection with
Columbus, Miss., and finally reach me at or near Meridian as near the date I have mentioned as possible (Feb. 10th). This
will call for great energy of action on your part, but I believe you are equal to it, and you have the best and most experienced
troops in the service, and they will do anything that is possible. General Grierson is with you, and is familiar with the
whole country. I will send up from Haynes' Bluff an expedition of gun-boats and transports combined to feel up the Yazoo as
far as the present stage of water will permit. This will disconcert the enemy. My movement on Jackson will also divide the
enemy, so that by no combination can he reach you with but a part of his force. I wish you to attack any force of cavalry
you meet and follow them southward, but in no event be drawn into the forks of the streams that make up the Yazoo nor over
into Alabama. Do not let the enemy draw you into minor affairs, but look solely to the greater object, to destroy his communication
from Okolona to Meridian and thence eastward to Selma. . . " 3.
With this order, Sherman makes another of his perpetually inaccurate assumptions,
which continues throughout the Atlanta Campaign and to the end of the war. He dismisses the abilities, activities and accomplishments
of N. B. Forrest and his merry band of Rebels active in that area. He entrusts the assignment to a man, who later discovers
that commanding a desk, rather than leading an undermanned, ill equipped cavalry force is more suitable to his abilities.
While no disparagement attaches to his failure, he never commands a combat unit again. Hurlbut later comments that:
"The expedition filled every man connected with it with burning shame." General
Hurlbut wrote with some bitterness in April that "the cavalry of Grierson, now at Memphis, is of little value.... All the
dash and energy they ever had was taken out by Sooy Smith's misfortune - Not to be lost sight of is the fact that Smith's
failure "strengthened Sherman's belief that as an instrument for achieving major results in war cavalry had been much overrated";
thereafter, he was to voice ever more bluntly, and unfortunately also act on, his distrust of the cavalry. 4.
Hurlbut, adroitly ignores the fact that Sherman has little or no knowledge of
how to handle cavalry or knew their uses beyond close support covering for the infantry, his flanks or scouting. He begins
splitting them up for use as raiders. Of course even Grant falls into these errors. He continues these practises until late
in 1864 when Sheridan shows him cavalry's proper use. Paddy Griffith has some cogent comments on this practice.
"As the Union cavalry gradually built up its numbers and its skills it came be
used increasingly for raiding rather than for close support of the Infantry. . . . The general Civil War doctrine of raiding,
particularly of raiding with cavalry, represented not a great innovation in the art of warfare - as critics such as Liddell
Hart have claimed - but its abasement and corruption: a reversion to the methods of the Black Prince rather than a step forward
to the Blitzkrieg of the twentieth century. The use of cavalry for raiding was not only a deliberate turn away from hope of
victory on the battlefield, but it actually removed the means by which victory might have been won at the very moment when
those means were at last starting to be properly efficient. If the slow development of high-quality cavalry during the first
half of the war was a major missed opportunity, the deliberate diversion of it into raiding during the second half was a still
greater one." 5.
Stephen Z. Starr also explains that:
"As to the second of our questions, the accepted military wisdom has it that European
cavalry tradition, culminating in the Napoleonic wars, was never fully naturalized in the United States; hence the cavalry
of the Civil War, both Blue and Gray, developed spontaneously, as a substitute, a native cavalry doctrine, namely that of
the mounted infantry. Cavalry in the European tradition, when not engaged in battle, had two primary functions: reconnaissance,
to locate and shadow the enemy army, and screening, to prevent the enemy cavalry from locating and shadowing its own army.
In battle-and by devotees this was held to be the cavalry's main reason for being-its essential function was the massed charge
with the saber on bodies of enemy infantry and cavalry. There was also another cavalry tradition, of more recent vintage,
also imported from Europe. This was represented in the United States Army until August, 1861, by two regiments of dragoons,
armed with short muskets ("musketoons"), sabers, and "horse pistols," who were intended to be equally adept at skirmishing
and fighting on foot as infantry and on horseback as cavalry." 6.
During the Mexican war Sherman rode out the action in San Francisco, California
in a quartermaster post. His combat experience in the civil war started and ended as a commander of infantry. This experience
may have been of some help in steering his forces through the Atlanta Campaign although that only amounted to following Joe
Johnston through south central Georgia. Since he never won a battle his credentials as a leader of men and strategist also
appear wanting.
Smith’s failure, of course contributes directly to the dissipation of cavalry
available to McPherson and with Sherman’s failure to correct or compensate for it, causes the failure at Snake Creek
Gap. McPherson, while above average in intelligence had shown no outstanding abilities as a commander. We cannot say what
difference there might have been in the outcome if he had adequate cavalry but the result may have been more in line with
Sherman’s fantasies.
Sherman then lays out his own itinerary to Meridian. It includes as traveling
companions four divisions of infantry, about a division of cavalry and two batteries of artillery and engineering and pontoon
supports, roughly 27,000 troops. 7. He expects to reach Meridian by February 10th, 1864, with Smith
arriving soon after.
Sherman’s actions in the Meridian Expedition closely imitate what is to
happen in the March to Savannah. At Meridian he surrounds himself with 27,000 bodyguards and gives Sooy Smith the leavings
of Grierson’s raid combined with Hurlbut’s worn out brigade. As with the Savannah march, he moves thru unguarded,
ill-protected territory and has little or no opposition. Unlike the march to Savannah, on "Reaching Meridian he proceeds to
destroy the railroads in the city and surrounding areas and predicts the Rebels will never recover from the damage inflicted.
In a letter to "Ellen Ewing Sherman, on the Steamboat Westmoreland approaching
Memphis, Mch. 10, 1864" Sherman crows:
"If he (Nathaniel Banks, Cmdr. Red River campaign) had been smart he could have
walked into Mobile when I was at Meridian. I am down on Wm. Sooy Smith. He could have come to me, I know it, and had he, I
would have captured Polks Army, but the Enemy had too much Cavalry for me to attempt it with men afoot. As it was I scared
the Bishop out of his senses, he made a clean run and I could not get within a days march of him. He had Railroads to help
him, but these are now gone. MARCH 1864 "8.
Confederate railroad experts assure their authorities that the damage will be
repaired within two months. It was, and in less time than that, the railroad was running at full capacity."9.
This discusssion will be continued!
1. William T. Sherman, "Memoirs of General Sherman" Literary Classics of the U. S., New York, NY. 1990 p. 413
2. O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XXXII/1 [S# 57] p. 181
3. O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XXXII/1 [S# 57] p. 182
4. STARR, STEPHEN Z., "The Union Cavalry in the Civil War," V. III, The War in the West 1861-1865, Louisiana State
University Press Baton Rouge and London, 1985. P. 390
5. Griffith, Paddy, "Battle Tactics of the Civil War," Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989,
pp. 182 - 184.
6. STARR, STEPHEN Z., "The Union Cavalry in the Civil War," V. III, The War in the West 1861-1865, Louisiana State
University Press Baton Rouge and London, 1985. P. 590 - 591.
7. O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XXXII/1 [S# 57] p. 194
8. Sherman's Civil War, Brooks Simpson, Jean Berlin Editors, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill &
London, 1999, p. 605.
9. Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, V. XIII, "The Atlanta Campaign," Henry Stone, p. 347.
Broadfoot Publishing Co. Wilmington, N.C., 1989.
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