Civil War News
16
March 2019
The Atlanta Papers (cont.)
The Atlanta Papers cover and spine. Continuing the dig into Sydney C. Kerksis’s The Atlanta Papers, this month’s column contains additional Federal accounts from the Atlanta Campaign. Colonel Samuel W. Price of the 21st Kentucky Infantry (Federal) penned Paper No. 10, entitled ‘The Skirmish Line in the Atlanta Campaign,’ which focuses primarily on the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Borrowing the same title from Colonel Price, Major William Henry Chamberlin of the 81st Ohio Infantry recalled his involvement in the campaign through Paper No. 11. During the Battle of Resaca, Chamberlain’s regiment numbered among those units charged with moving around the Confederate left flank and effecting a crossing of the Oostenaula [occasional wartime spelling] River. Navigating across the swift current of the river, Chamberlin recalled he felt “…it was the open way to Andersonville.” Rowland Cox, who served as an assistant adjutant general on Major General Frank Blair’s staff during the campaign, remembered the fighting at ‘Snake Creek Gap, and Atlanta’ in Paper No. 12. Accompanying Major General James McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee during their maneuver through Snake Creek Gap, Cox witnessed the Confederate demonstrations, which prompted McPherson to withdraw his force. A few days later, Cox, while standing next to McPherson, heard the general state, in response to a query of why he did
not keep his army in the gap, “… Johnston would have cut [me] off as you cut off the end of a piece of tape with a pair of shears.” Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lang Kilpatrick composed Paper No. 13, ‘The Fifth Ohio Infantry at Resaca.’ He closed his account with a recollection of finding boxes of tobacco left in his regiment’s camp with a note affixed: “To the Regiment that Captured the Rebel Guns at Resaca.” ‘McCook’s Brigade at the Assault Upon Kenesaw [wartime spelling] Mountain, Georgia, June 27, 1864,’ Paper No. 14 from Lieutenant Frank Bakewell James of the 52nd Ohio Infantry offers an exciting account of the attack on Cheatham Hill. James remembered how, during the truce to bury the dead after the battle, a Federal soldier, actually a Confederate spy, sprang up and raced to the Southern line. James believed this spy notified Major General Ben Frank Cheatham of the tunneling work underway. ‘The Battle of Peach Tree Creek,’ Paper No. 15 from Private George A. Newton with the 129th Illinois Infantry, offers an excellent description of the terrain in the area, as well as accounts from the battle. Of General John Bell Hood’s attack at Peachtree Creek, Newton suggested, “It was a brilliant affair well planned….” Captain Gilbert D. Munson of the 78th Ohio Infantry, authored Paper No. 16, ‘The Battle of Atlanta.’ Serving as assistant adjutant general on Brigadier General Mortimer Leggett’s staff, Munson detailed the action involved in taking, and holding, an important piece of high ground, which earned the name Leggett’s Hill after the July 22 fight. In ‘An Artilleryman’s Recollections of the Battle of Atlanta,’ Lieutenant Richard S. Tuthill provides a glimpse into the life of a gunner with the 1st Michigan Light Artillery. One of Tuthill’s opening sentences on the battle offers researchers a glimpse into his gift with words. “July 22, 1864, dawned in calmness and
beauty, presaging a perfect summer day; but as the sun rose upon the horizon, an angry red flushed his broad disk, which seemed to presage one of the very fiercest battles ever fought, and to reflect what should ere nightfall be…blood-drenched ground....” Tuthill, servicing his gun near where McPherson fell mortally wounded, recalled the valiant effort of each artillery crew in his sector of the field. Taking a jab at the credit given Leggett and his gunners, Tuthill strongly asserted, “That artillery had no more to do with breaking the enemy’s line than if it had been fired in an opposite direction.” Remember to check WorldCat http://www.worldcat.org/ for help in finding this book in a local library; search The Atlanta Papers + Kerksis. Researchers may also have luck in securing a copy of this 1980 Morningside Press publication from an online bookseller. Next month, we will explore additional sections of The Atlanta Papers. Until then, continued good luck in researching the Civil War! Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, instructor, and a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, the Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, the Georgia Association of Historians, and the Georgia Writers Association. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@ gmail.com, or to request speaking engagements, via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @michaelkshaffer.
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Gilbert D. Munson, as pictured in The Atlanta Papers.