On the road to Atlanta: Caught by the Owls.

On June 27th, the Confederate Army of Tennessee soundly defeated eight Federal brigades chosen to assault the Rebel lines in hopes of breaking through Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s lines and driving into Marietta. The heavy Union losses – nearly 3,000 men – elated the Confederacy and solidified Southerners’ image of Kennesaw Mountain as impregnable. Yet five days later, On the night of July 2nd/3rd, Johnston gave up the Kennesaw line, falling back to a new position at Smryna Campground – a position he held for only one day before falling back to the specially prepared River line. By July July 9, he had given up that line as well, retreating across the Chattahoochee River to within just a few miles of Atlanta.

These retreats had significant consequences. Now the Federals were elated, while Confederate morale wavered. Desertions, a perennial problem for the Army of Tennessee, spiked.

Most of the desertions came from units whose resolve was already questionable. Colonel Robert Trigg’s Brigade offered a case in point. The 63rd Virginia was hit hard at Kolb’s Farm, suffering five killed, 60 wounded, but only seven missing/captured on June 22. For the first ten days of July, however—during which Johnston abandoned the Kennesaw, Smyrna, and Shoupade Lines—they reported three men wounded but no less than 60 men taken prisoner. Their sister regiment, the 54th Virginia (Trigg’s own) lost 33 men on the 3rd, many of whom had “straggled into the hands of the enemy.” In the 58th North Carolina, historian Micheal Hardy documented how Lt. Emanual Hedrick “deserted and carried four men with him belonging to Company [H] on July 1. During the retreat on July 2, five men from Company L “were either left behind or remained behind for the purpose of deserting,” and on July 4, when Johnston fell back to the Shoupade line, “at least four members of the regiment were captured, either in the works or along the retreat route.” And Pvt. John Reese of the 60th North Carolina heard that “one nite whil on picket the liutenant in Command of the Companey [of the 54th] he went over an mad an airraingmet with the yankeys pickets and cum back and tuck the Companey over with him. . . . the Boys Calls this when on Runs A way or is missing that the owls has cout him.” If the 60th North Carolina suffered in like proportion, the brigade lost between 125 and 150 men during this period.[1]

Other commands also experienced this drain. Postwar records showed that the 42nd Georgia in Stovall’s Brigade lost 20 men here—eight while passing through Marietta and another 12 before they crossed the Chattahoochee. Martin Van Buren Oldham of the 9th Tennessee in Cheatham’s Division, who rejoined his regiment on July 3rd after a bout of illness, discovered that Privates Daniel J. Young and Robert W. Walker had deserted during the night, after pretending to be ill. Young had been one of the men rounded up from Forrest’s Cavalry that spring and returned to his regiment. “This is the second offense for each of them,” noted Oldham, “and if Johnston catches them they will be shot.” [2]

Writing home on July 6th, after two days of non-stop retreating and entrenching, Pvt. Celathiel Helms of the 63rd Georgia dispiritedly opined: “We have no time to rest day or night. We are now but little ways from the river and I learn that the Yankees is crossing the river below this in large bodies. . . I do not know it to be so, but there is one thing that I believe and that is the Yankees will go through Georgia and I think they will make the trip in a short time. . . . I see nothing to hinder them driving us back a 100 miles further in the next 60 days. . . . The men is all out of heart . . . they are going to meet the Yankees by the tens and twenties and hundreds a most every night. Johnson’s army is very much demoralized,” he concluded. “The newspapers say that Johnson’s army is in fine spirits but the papers has told nothing but lies. . . . The Officers . . . say that they are fearful that all their men will go to the Yankees.”[3]

[1]Jeffrey C. Weaver, 63rd Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: 1991), 98; Jeffrey C. Weaver, 54th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: 1993), 97; Michael C. Hardy, The Fifty—Eighth North Carolina Troops Tar Heels in the Army of Tennessee (Jefferson, NC: 2010), 124; “Dear Wife,” July 9, 1864, John W. Reese Letters, Private Voices website, https://altchive.org/node/9520, accessed 5/4/2022.

[2]Lillian Henderson, Roster of the Confederate Soldiers of Georgia 1861-1865. 5 vols. (Hapeville, GA: 1960), 4: 508-615; “Sunday, July 3” Martin Van Buren Oldham Diary, UT Martin.

[3]“Dear Wife,” July 6, 1864, Celathiel Helms letters, UDC Bound Transcripts, GDAH. The exact number of men either surrendering to the Federals or simply deserting cannot be known, but it probably comes close to 1,000 men. In May the Federal Provosts reported processing about 1,800 prisoners and 600 deserters; in June, 1,308 prisoners and 539 deserters. July’s numbers spiked: 3,200 captured and 732 deserters­—though of course, many of those prisoners were taken in the battles of Peachtree Creek, Atlanta, and Ezra Church, all fought towards the end of the month. See OR 38, pt. 1, 147, 153, 159.