On the Road to Atlanta: Those confusing Shoupades

On July 5th, Joseph E. Johnston’s army abandoned their defensive works at Smyrna Campground and fell back a few miles to the previously prepared defenses of Francis A. Shoup’s River Line. Shoup’s concept was a radical departure from standard defensive practice in 1864, an attempt to form an impregnable defense with a minimum of troops, thus freeing up most of Johnston’s combat power for maneuver or counterattack. The line consisted of 36 forts, or “Shoupades” defended in company strength, with interlocking fields of fire.

On the morning of the 5th, headquartered “near Chattahoochee Bridge,” Johnston tersely informed Richmond, via Bragg, that “in consequence of the enemy’s advance toward the river below my left, we this morning took this position.” Curiously, he dismissed the new line as being only “slightly intrenched,” a comment which only confirmed Francis Shoup’s subsequent assertion that Johnston never fully grasped the point of all his hard work and planning. “I foresaw that the spirit of my design was not understood or not heeded by Gen. Johnston, Shoup lamented.[1]

It soon became apparent that the troops also failed to grasp the design. Texas Capt. Sam Foster, in Granbury’s Brigade, recorded that “after going about 5 miles, we came to something new in the shape of works. . . . A line of posts put in the ground standing strait up and about 10 to 12 feet out of the ground with port holes to shoot through . . . about every 150 to 200 yards there is a regular stockade that will hold about 50 men. We are told that this thing is 20 miles long, and each end rests on the Chattahoochee.” Private William Norrell of the 63rd Georgia, a member of Walker’s Division, had stronger words: “Pens or elevations in the way of fortifications . . . all which appeared ridiculous. . . . The man who put up such works, which looked more like a large pen for stock to be driven in, deserved eternal disgrace as an army engineer, and should be publically branded as incompetent.” Lieutenant Hamilton Branch of the 54th Georgia, also a member of Walker’s command, thought they were “the strangest sight we have seen since we have been here.” There was, he added, a fort “on every little rise and commanding every little valey . . . between these were rails and logs about 12 feet in length stuck up in the ground close together, the whole forming (as some of the men remarked) a wall between the Cornfeds and the Wheatfeds.” Robert Patrick, a teamster in the Army of Mississippi, noted that “instead of the regular ditch and embankments, they have stuck upright stakes made of trees and saplings. . . . It is a miserable concern in my estimation, and a few well directed shots from the enemy’s light artillery would knock those logs northwest and crooked. . . . Some engineers have remarkably brilliant ideas,” he sneered, “and this is one of them.” Shoup, the object of this criticism, complained that “no information or instructions had been given to the army” so that when “the troops . . . saw what they were expected to defend, they were greatly amused and made all sorts of ridiculous remarks.” More alarmed than amused, that very evening Walker ordered his men “to pull down the stockade and build a breastwork instead.”[2]

See also this earlier Emerging Civil War Post concerning this unusual concept: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2014/07/09/the-road-to-atlanta-the-untested-line-of-francis-shoup/

[1]OR 38, pt. 5, 865; Shoup, “Dalton Campaign,” 263.

[2]Foster, One of Cleburne’s Command, 102; “Tuesday—July 5,” William O. Norrell Diary, KMNBP; Mauriel Phillips Joslyn, Charlotte’s Boys Civil War Letters of the Branch Family of Savannah (Berryville, VA: 1996), 261; Shoup, “Dalton Campaign,” 263; Taylor, Reluctant Rebel, 190-91.