Things I learned on the way to Atlanta—What happened at Cassville?

Cassville – May 19, 1864.

The opening stages of the Atlanta campaign are defined by two “lost opportunities.” The first of those is Snake Creek Gap, the mountain pass supposedly unnoticed by the Confederate Army of Tennessee while entrenched at Dalton, which Federal General William T. Sherman used to surprise and nearly trap Rebel commander Joseph E. Johnston, thereby ending the campaign at a stroke. Only the timidity of the officer commanding that flanking column, Grant and Sherman protégé James B. McPherson, prevented the Federals from capturing Resaca—or, at least, so goes the tale.

As might be expected, the reality is considerably more complicated. But that story has been examined and re-examined, and is now a tale oft told.

The second “lost opportunity” is Cassville. It is sort of a mirror image of Snake Creek Gap. Here, on the night of May 17, the wily Joe Johnston at last turns his formidable defensive skills, heretofore employed only in retreat, to the business of setting a trap for Sherman. By dividing his forces at Adairsville Georgia, Johnston sent columns to both Kingston and Cassville on the 18th, which are connected by a lateral road—thus forming a triangle. Then, the column at Kingston (William J. Hardee’s Corps) will hurry to join Johnston at Cassville. The marches were well executed, and Johnston’s entire army was assembled at Cassville by the afternoon of the 18th.

If Sherman took the bait and also divided his army in a similar fashion, then, Johnston reasoned, the Army of Tennessee could attack that portion of the Federal army that marched to Cassville.

The plan was good, and it almost worked. Sherman was advancing on a broad front: at least two corps—the XX and XXIII, under Generals Joseph Hooker and John M. Schofield—did indeed seem to be headed for Cassville. All was ready for a grand offensive. On the morning of the 19th, Johnston even issued a belligerent General Order, informing his army that the fight they had all been expecting was at hand, and that the Army of Tennessee was done retreating.

Accordingly, Johnston ordered John B. Hood to take his corps back north along a “country road” parallel to the Adairsville-Cassville Road to attack this column’s left flank while Leonidas’s Polk’s corps-sized Army of Mississippi, deployed astride the road, attacked its nose. Unfortunately for Johnston, Rebel cavalry commander Joseph Wheeler left a road unguarded, allowing a Union cavalry division to slip in behind Hood’s column while Hood was deploying, completely surprising Hood and forcing him to call off the attack. The Rebels fell back, first to one defensive position, then another, all while Sherman’s forces continued to arrive. That night, Johnston retreated across the Etowah River. The first stage of the Atlanta Campaign—the First Epoch, as Union mapmakers labelled it—was over.

Much ink has been spilled about this failure, almost all of it from the Rebel perspective. Johnston never believed that Hood was actually attacked by any Federals; in turn, Hood later accused Johnston of lying about what happened. The controversy carried on for decades, as both men waged literary warfare over the “missed opportunity” at Cassville. Historians have sifted the evidence ever since, to differing conclusions.

There’s only one problem with this version of events: Sherman never took the bait.

Excepting one Union cavalry division, Sherman sent no Federal troops to Cassville on May 18. Instead, he ordered his whole army to concentrate at Kingston—where he expected Johnston, instead of retreating laterally to Cassville, to simply slip across the Etowah at Kingston and then move back to the railroad at Allatoona in relative safety.

On the night of May 18, only Daniel Butterfield’s division of the XX Corps was even close to Cassville, roughly three miles short of that town on the Adairsville-Cassville Road. And on May 19, neither the rest of the XX Corps nor the XXIII Corps marched to Cassville until mid-afternoon, arriving many hours after Hood’s column had marched out and marched back. They were waiting for the rest of Sherman’s army to come up from Kingston, having discovered Johnston’s real movements, before committing to a fight.

On the morning of the 19th, only a brigade and a half of Butterfield’s division—perhaps 3,000 men—lay within the jaws of Johnston’s trap, while Hood and Polk together numbered about 36,000. Had Hood attacked as ordered, he would be punching mainly into air.

Cassville was never a “lost opportunity” for Johnston, because the Federals weren’t there.