Johnston by the Numbers
On July 16, Davis drew a line in the sand. Atlanta was in peril, and Joseph E. Johnston had to go. Wiring Johnston that evening, after noting a Federal advance towards the Augusta Railroad east of Atlanta, the president demanded the following information: “I wish to hear from you as to present situation, and your plan of operations so specifically as will enable me to anticipate events.” This was an ultimatum: provide a detailed plan of action or else. Johnston again replied in generalities. After dismissing the Union move as a “slight change” by “Schofield’s corps,” which he had already reported to Bragg, Johnston repeated his usual mantra:
“As the enemy has double our number, we must be on the defensive. My plan of operations must, therefore, depend on that of the enemy. It is mainly to watch for an opportunity to fight to advantage. We are trying to put Atlanta in condition to be held for a day or two by the Georgia militia, that army movements may be freer and wider.”
This, to Davis and his cabinet, was an unacceptable response. Would Atlanta be defended at all? What “freer and wider” movements mean?[1]
As to the numbers, they didn’t add up. Johnston himself told Bragg that Sherman’s infantry numbered “a little over 60,000” while Johnston’s own army contained—again, as reported by Bragg—just shy of 52,000 “effectives.” Further, a Confederate document discovered in an abandoned Rebel camp by Federals on July 18 provided an illuminating estimate of the infantry strength in every brigade in Johnston’s army, for a total combat strength of 44,400 men: 18,400 in Hardee’s Corps, 13,600 in Hood’s Corps, and 12,400 in Stewart’s command. These numbers tallied closely with the July 10 return, and probably included both officers and men, rather than the enlisted-only figures usually meant by “effectives.” Based on Johnston’s own estimates and returns, Davis clearly had reason to believe that Johnston was not facing two-to-one odds.[2]
Not surprisingly, James Seddon echoed the thoughts of Davis’s cabinet when he found that Johnston’s “answer was . . . evasive and unsatisfactory.” Only on the morning of July 17, noted Seddon, “under the belief that Genl. J. really meant to abandon Atlanta without [a] decisive engagement did the President finally decide and authorize his removal. Up to that time, frank communication of his plans or assurances . . . that he would not evacuate without making decisive battle would have kept him Commander” of the Army of Tennessee.[3]
Though Johnston’s own earlier numerical estimates damned him, his insistence that he faced “double our numbers” was not wrong. Sherman had far more than 60,000 infantry, with Federal manpower being constantly replenished by a better hospital recovery rate and the arrival of the XVII Corps in early June. At the end of that month the Federal commander reported a total of 106,070 “effectives” of all arms, including some rear area formations. In their more detailed returns, the seven Federal corps (IV, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XX, and XXIII) at the front reported a combined total of 92,658 officers and men present for duty—of which 5,054 were artillery, leaving just about 87,600 infantrymen. The three cavalry divisions of McCook, Garrard, and Stoneman added another 9,215 “effectives” giving Sherman a grand total of 101, 873 combatants, against Johnston’s 60,000. Johnston’s error was in unabashedly believing all those inflated estimates of Union losses and assuming that Sherman’s hospitalization and recovery rates were no better than his own; all of which added up to the overly optimistic expectation that Sherman’s numbers were badly depleted—optimism that Davis had no reason to reject, coming as it did from Johnston’s own headquarters.[4]
[1]OR 38, pt. 5, 882-883.
[2]OR 38, pt. 5, 179.
[3]Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, 8: 353.
