BookChat: The Cassville Affairs by Robert Jenkins

The events at Cassville, Georgia, remain some of the least understood aspects of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with historian Robert Jenkins about his new book, The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign (Mercer University Press, Macon, GA: 2024).

What attracted you to write about Cassville in the first place?

I have always been interested in the strange set of events at Cassville because it was a puzzle that had never been solved. The pieces that we previously knew did not fit together, and the story told was incomplete, inaccurate, and inconclusive.

After I mentioned that I was beginning to investigate Cassville to mentor, historian, and editor Steve Davis, he asked me to write an article for an upcoming series of essays on the Atlanta Campaign. The more I began to dig, the more I uncovered. He needed a 10–12-page article for his project. By the time that I finished my research on the Morning Cassville Affair, I had written about 55 pages—too much for his needs, and not enough for a book. After considering adding chapters on Adairsville and Rome, fleshing out the morning events in more detail, and covering the Evening Cassville Affair, as well, I pitched the concept to Mercer University Press. They were gracious enough to accept it.

The book overturns conventional wisdom about Cassville. What was it about the conventional wisdom that you found so flawed? (without giving away the book!)

All of it! Historians and students of the Atlanta Campaign have always known that the “traditional story” of the Cassville Affair(s) was problematic. People assumed that the mysteries of Cassville— much like the “Spring Hill Affair” in the Fall 1864 Tennessee Campaign—might never be solved, perhaps due to a lack of primary evidence or a combination of misunderstandings and misrepresentations in the record. How the Confederate leadership got the intelligence, cavalry screening, maps, and reconnaissance so wrong, coupled with the identity of the Federal forces who disrupted Hood’s plan of attack, and then layered by the self-serving post-event and subsequent post-war writings of its principal participants, all made for a mess—perhaps an unsolvable mess. But it was a challenge worth pursuing.

What method(s) did you employ in tackling this project?

I went into the project using the Socratic method, meaning to question everything. Question what we thought was previously true. Question each commander and each story. Socrates described himself not as a teacher, but as an “ignorant inquirer.” By asking “stupid questions,” or by questioning everything about the subject matter before him, or the person conveying their position, Socrates—through a series of follow-up questions—could then either confirm the student’s theory or story (and satisfy it to his own understanding), or disprove the story and thereby prove its fallacies in the debate.

So, in other words, I applied the principal that lawyers are taught in school and that I have employed in 34 years of trial practice. I needed to know, for example, if what Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston was saying was true or false, and the same for Lieutenant General John Bell Hood, and Major General William T. Sherman, and all the other participants in the day’s events. Making assumptions about the veracity of one player’s story without supporting proof was not good enough.

Second, I also applied traditional evidentiary rules in examining each piece of primary evidence. In our American Jurisprudence, a person is deemed in court to be telling the truth unless and until his or her testimony can be disproven or impeached by other evidence. At Cassville, the more primary material that was uncovered, the more one chief participant’s story began to ring true, while another chief participant’s version began to unravel.

How did you solve Cassville?

First, I had a lot of help and I am grateful to God to have made a number of friends over the years who share a passion for history. In today’s climate, there is a tremendous opportunity for sharing both primary sources and opinions among historians and students of the Civil War. As I embarked on this project, every time I came up with a new piece of evidence or theory, I vetted it to as many different historians and enthusiasts as I could via emails and social media, to “test” my discoveries. I have been blessed with a wonderful community of colleagues and friends who share a common interest in trying to get a better understanding of this chapter in our nation’s history, and to “get it right.”

The “old school” historians used to “rat hole” their findings from libraries and museums and private collections, keeping the rest of the history community in the dark, perhaps for years or even decades, until they unveiled their findings in a new book or lecture series. While this method arguably protects that historian from having someone steal their idea or source, it creates, in my opinion, a terrible disservice to our understanding of the record, and it can lead to incorrect positions by that lone historian. Thankfully, most researchers and writers in today’s climate are in the “sharing” camp, trusting the others to properly cite and credit them for their “find.”

To me, getting the Cassville story correct was like trying to solve three Rubik’s cubes: time, place, and manner. Chickamauga-Chattanooga NMP Chief Historian Jim Ogden told me that if I could figure out where Wheeler’s cavalry was and was not located, then I might have a chance at solving Cassville. So, I tackled the “place” cube mystery first. Along the way, friends like Tony Patton and Norman Dasinger helped me by finding old maps in the dark corners of the internet libraries of the National Archives, Library of Congress, and Alabama Department of Archives and History, among other places. Also, I have been blessed by the map-making talents of my long-time friend, graphics arts specialist, and cartographer Dave Helton to lay out these maps for the book, and to design new maps based on our findings of troop locations.

After solving the “place” cube by locating the correct names, usages, and locations of the period roads, I then took on the “manner” puzzle, meaning the “who,” or which troops were located on what road at a given time. In this endeavor, fellow historians and friends like Richard McMurry, Steve Davis, Jim Ogden, Dave Powell, Keith Bohannon, Betsy McArthur, Robert Carter, Gary Ecelbarger, Scott Patchan, Ed Lowe, Steve Bennett, Larry Daniel, Sam Hood, Greg Biggs, Charlie Crawford, Tony Patton, Jerry Holmes, Jeff Wright, Brad Butkovich, Brad Shumpert, Brad Quinlin, Michael Hitt, Marvin Sowder, Norman Dasinger, Wayne Willingham, and others provided assistance and advice as I “vetted” each new source or theory to multiple people. Once the “manner” cube was fixed, then the “time” cube fell into place easily as the various units from both sides were traced. I am also grateful to Betsy McArthur for all her editing critique and support.

Dave Powell called Cassville a “pivotal moment” in the campaign. What’s at stake at that moment?

First, a word about Dave Powell. I have been very blessed to have Dave as a friend and a colleague. From freely sharing new-found sources, to hours’ long debates and discussions of mutual interests, Dave’s knowledge of so many components of the war, and of how to uncover it through the various libraries, museums, and collections, is unmatched. Of course, not only is he an exceptional researcher, Dave has a rare gift of translating his findings into a beautiful and flowing narrative that takes you to the scene of the action where you can almost see and feel it. In addition to his generous giving of his time, sources, and talent, I also admire his humility.

What is at stake in this part of the Campaign is whether the two army groups who faced each other between the Oostanaula River south of Dalton and Resaca, and the Etowah River north of the Allatoona Mountains, would engage in a winner-take-all struggle like the opposing forces under Grant and Lee in Virginia were doing at the same time. Or, whether Sherman and Johnston would continue to maneuver and pick and poke at one another in a sort of “red clay minuet” dance, as Richard McMurry has termed the Georgia Campaign. Sherman claimed that he wanted to force Johnston into a general battle here, and Johnston would also claim that he planned a surprise counterstrike on a portion of the pursuing Federal army. Instead, the Southern forces retreated southward, trading space for time, and the deadly dance continued.

What is also at stake at Cassville is the truth of what actually happened there and, for that matter, throughout the Georgia Campaign. Our traditional understandings of both Cassville and the portion of time that the Confederate army was under the leadership of Johnston has been challenged by my findings in this project. In fairness, historian Richard McMurry already made the important history-altering discovery in the 1970s. We are just now getting around to understanding, appreciating, and applying it.

The subtitle alone makes me absolutely want to read this book: “the failed Confederate strategy of the Atlanta Campaign.” That’s a big statement! Was the strategy already a failure by Cassville? Was there a different choice someone could have made at some point to salvage that strategy?

Before getting into this response, let me preface it with a quote from Shelby Foote in the PBS documentary, The Civil War by Ken Burns. In the show, Foote famously said something like, “We Southerners love to debate and discuss how we could’ve won the war, if we had only done thus and so, or this thing, or that thing, and so forth. But really, the Yankees had something to do with it. Why, had Lee won at Gettysburg, the North would’ve just pulled out more money, and men, and materials from its vast supply of all of them, and eventually subdued the Southern Confederacy. The North was not going to let the South win the war.”

But, of course, nothing in history is a sure thing, and there are countless examples in it where the smaller army or country won.

As for the Confederate Strategy, throughout the war the South faced the great dilemma: whether to fight Goliath through offensive means while you still had a cadre of men and limited resources to wage war, or whether to fight defensively and play the “long game” of sacrificing space (and cities) for time while keeping your army intact if you can. Johnston favored the defensive, or “Fabian Policy,” but his President, Jefferson Davis, and most of the other leading generals in the South, including Generals Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, and Hood (and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson before he died), believed in the offensive strategy.

Johnston’s strategy of falling back all the way to the very gates of Atlanta would prove fatal to the Southern cause. Not only did he lose north Georgia without risking a general battle, but he also lost a substantial part of his army through partial battles and a significant amount of desertion which would subsequently limit its offensive ability by the time Davis placed the aggressive Hood in command to attempt to reverse the state of things in Georgia.

Hood believed that the campaign, and thus the war, was lost by failing to plug the gaps around Dalton, and then striking Sherman north of the town in Crow Valley and toward Tunnel Hill. He reasoned that such a move would either force Sherman back to Chattanooga or beat him in detail. Johnston, however, thought that Dalton was a trap and believed that it was indefensible due the Rocky Face Ridge mountain range that protected it from the west. Johnston said that Sherman could slip around him to the west and threaten his line of supply and communication, which of course happened due to Johnston’s failure to guard all of the gaps, although Johnston believed Sherman would move toward Rome, not Resaca.

The book’s title specifically mentions “affairs.” Why do people tend to forget there were two?

That is a good question. I suspect over time, all the finger-pointing between Johnston and Hood folded the Cassville issue into one debate about who was right and wrong, or who was truthful and who was not. Also, it is likely because the details were so blurred and lost to history as to what really happened there.

The Cassville Affairs –-there were two of them—because there were two critical decisions that the Confederate leadership faced at Cassville: first, whether to attack a portion of the Federal army in the morning; and second, once the morning attack was no longer feasible, whether to stay and fight the next day. Both decisions were the responsibility of Johnston, and both decisions involved the advice and assistance by Hood. Johnston issued a General Order to all soldiers that morning proclaiming that the army had fallen back enough and would now turn and face the enemy. After a series of unforeseen circumstances, however, the Southern commander withdrew without a fight.

The first controversy, known as The Morning Affair: The Failed Confederate Offensive (Part I in the book), centers on the Confederates’ efforts at a surprise attack during the morning of May 19, 1864. Hood, who led the Southern parry, was compelled to abandon his attack, and take a defensive position north of the village by an unclear set of events that thwarted their plans when an unknown Federal force appeared on his right flank and rear.

The second controversy, called The Evening Affair: The Failed Confederate Defensive (Part II in the book), concerns whether to remain and fight, or to withdraw south of the Etowah River and the safety of the Allatoona Mountains. Lieutenant Generals Hood and Leonidas Polk lobbied to not stay at the defensive line, while Johnston desired to remain and fight the next morning. In the end, Johnston would, according to him, reluctantly withdraw during the night.

Before the war even concluded, Johnston and Hood began finger-pointing as they wrote their own versions of what happened that day.

I suspect you had to spend as much time in the historiography of Cassville as in the history, as you tried to deconstruct the competing stories. How much of a challenge was it to keep track of all of those threads?

It has been quite a ride trying to untangle all the past historiography. I think that I found some 32 previous articles or writings on Cassville. All of them focused on the Hood vs. Johnston debate and many neglected to examine Sherman or the Federal side of the story, or for that matter, the multiple other reports from officers on both sides. Only two previous writings, Bill Scaife’s important map book of the campaign and Albert Castel’s wonderful narrative Decision in the West, attempted to cover the combat action in any significant manner.

Unfortunately, Scaife relied on some false documents and incomplete maps, which led to some mistakes in his maps. Considering the sources that were available to him at the time, Castel did a remarkable job of getting the “big picture” right, I think. We as students owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Scaife for being the first person to attempt to place the engagements of the Georgia Campaign on the map. He should be forgiven when he got some of his interpretations and placements wrong based on the limited records that he had to work with; he was a pioneer for us and put the campaign on the map. We also owe a huge debt to legendary Atlanta City Manager, historian, artist, and preservationist Wilbur Kurtz, whose career spanned five decades from the 1920s to the 1960s. His papers at the Kenan Research Center and Library at the Atlanta History Center remain perhaps the most important sole collection of records on the campaign.

Readers of the book will find a blend of both historiography where I tried to explain how past understandings were faulty, and a narrative form in places, where the correct story of what happened at Cassville is told through the new materials discovered. Hopefully, people will now be able to see things both at Cassville and during the entire Campaign more clearly and accurately.

Is there anyone you better appreciate or understand differently after having written the book?

I have grown a better understanding of Sherman during this project. While he may not have been a brilliant tactician on the battlefield, he had at least two talents that served him well during the campaign. First, he understood logistics and he kept his army supplied. Second, he understood momentum and he kept his army on the move. Whether he won or lost a battle or partial engagement here or there became almost moot for the overall Federal cause (except for the human sacrifice of the soldiers involved), because by keeping the initiative, or pressure on the Confederate Army of Tennessee, he prevented the Southerners from mounting any kind of effective counter-offensive or from seizing the initiative from him.

I also unfortunately grew a profound disappointment in another key participant at Cassville, not because of the strategy that he employed necessarily, but because he lied to cover up his record, and because he doctored various records and submitted them as factual which have been relied upon by historians and students for over 150 years. Due to his deceitfulness, he altered our understanding of the events at Cassville, and thus, for a century and a half, he has successfully altered history. His deception has also colored our understanding of other places along the Georgia trail, but that examination will have to wait for another book or two, or three. It’s probably obvious who I am referring to, but I’ll save rest for the reader to examine and decide for themselves.

Additionally, I gained a new appreciation for Richard McMurry. Fifty years ago in the 1970s, in his discovery of an altered journal, he provided the magnifying glass by which we should have been examining this campaign, but it was neglected for the most part all this time. Consequently, a tremendous amount of bad history continues to be written because of our reliance on one leader’s Narrative of its events. Richard cautioned us to be careful to rely on the altered journal or on the Narrative, but we continue to quote from both without question. Hopefully, if this book does anything good in the historiography of the subject, it will force future writers and historians to question everything, and not take a journal or Narrative at face value.

What is your favorite part about the writing process? Any tips for writers that you’d want to share?

My favorite part of doing this is when I experience those “ah-ha” moments, usually at about 3:00 in morning on weekends in my basement library in our home that I call “Buzzard’s Roost,” which sits on top of Rocky Face Ridge. I have to bite my tongue to keep from waking my wife, Shari Ann, upstairs. I also enjoy when I get to tell my findings to a new audience or to colleagues and discuss and debate related subjects with them.

Hopefully this book will inspire new revelations in our collective understanding of not only Cassville but of other events and people in the war.