On the road to Atlanta

As I wrap up the text for Volume II of The Atlanta Campaign, I am doing a bit of editing, and rediscovered Francis Kiene’s diary entry for May 27th, describing the Battle of Pickett’s Mill. Kiene was in the 49th Ohio, of William Gibson’s Brigade; which followed William B. Hazen’s command into the fight.

The 49th Ohio was on the left of Gibson’s second line, separated from the 15th by the small 35th Illinois. Lt. Col. Samuel Gray, commanding the 49th since Gibson was now leading the brigade, reported that as he came up, one of Hazen’s officers “told me the enemy had a strong position . . . and said it could only be taken by storm. . . . I then gave the order to charge, and the line advanced on double-quick, maintaining a perfect line.” Passing over the prone Federals before him, Gray insisted that the 49th “advanced to within ten paces of the works . . . and at one or two points got within bayonet reach . . . [but] it was found impossible for us to take [the] position.” The survivors soon joined their comrades on the slope, seeking cover.[1]

Private Charlie Capron of the 89th Illinois preceded Kiene into the fight. “We was then reinforced by the 15th Ohio,” wrote Capron, “who came up and tried to storm their works but was compelled to fall back.” Eight months later, Capron still vividly recalled the moment: “[W]e was obliged to lie down for if we had attempted to gone back the balance of us would have been shot down. However we laid there and on rushed our support . . . consisting of the 15 and 49 Ohio. [T]hey came up to where we was . . . I was laying behind a log when they came up the officers urged them to go on. [T]he line stepped up on to the log to git over when six of them was shot down falling onto me and litteraly covering me with blood.”[2]

Capron’s mention of the 49th Ohio reveals how badly disorganized each successive wave of Federals became during this clamber down the ravine and through the thickets. Pvt. Francis Kiene, in Company I of the 49th, noted that “after about half an hours fighting we got orders to advance, we had not gone fare before a rebel battery got enfilading fire along our whole line though they shot a little high . . . Canister rattled through the woods like has I head never bore seen . . . but we steadily advanced. [A]fter gitting down in a deep gully wwee had to charge up a steap hill . . . the boys hollowed and cheered as we went up. [H]ere the musket balls of the rebels began to play marching music for us.” Kiene charged nearly up to the “light works of sticks and logs and what every they could find,” but as he did so, “when I looked around not a man was on his feet near me.” Kiene went scrambling back down the slope: “Not till now had I noticed the fear full carnage, the dead lay in heaps and those who were not hurt clung so close to the ground that a person could hardly distinguish the living from the dead.” Shortly thereafter Kiene was struck by a musket ball which “passed through my left elbow joint. . . . I immediately started for the rear.”[3]

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[1] OR 38, pt. 1, 415.

[2] Letters of May 30th, 1864, and July 12th, 1865, Charles Capron Letters, Old Courthouse Museum.

[3] Kiene, Journal of Francis A. Kiene, 229.