On the Road to Atlanta: Cruel and Criminal Mismanagement

When he wrote home to his wife on July 20, 1864, Colonel Carter Van Vleck was angry. Commander of the 78th Illinois Infantry from Macomb in the western part of the state, Van Vleck had seen much heavy fighting. He was engaged on Horseshoe Ridge at Chickamauga in September, 1863, and he had taken part in the assault on Pigeon Hill at Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, 1864 – an action that left him embittered and angry because of command mismanagement.

On July 19, he had witnessed more of the same. His brigade was sent to rescue Colonel Dilworth’s Third Brigade that had crossed Peach Tree Creek near Moore’s Mill, become heavily engaged, and nearly overrun. Regiments had been routed, chased back to and in some cases into the creek, with more than 100 men captured by an aggressive Confederate counterattack. In response, the 78th had been rushed across the creek and into a fight that promised to be dangerous and desperate.

Van Vleck, commanding the 78th, thought it a tense moment. As the situation had been described to him, the Third Brigade was in dire straits. “We luckily reached them in the very nick of time to save them as the Rebels had closed entirely around their flanks to the river on either side. . . . One regt had been driven through the river pell-mell with considerable loss.” Once formed, the 78th “moved into position under a severe fire from the front and both flanks on the crest of a steep ridge. I had been in position but a few moments,” Van Vleck observed, “when I could plainly see that I was entirely surrounded by the enemy except [for] a strip of almost impassable river in my rear.”[1]

“I had scarcely begun to realize my critical situation,” Van Vleck continued, “when the 86th Ill., my only support on the right, had a panic and came near being routed. If I ever thought fast of southern dungeons and my acquaintances there, it was then. I could see no salvation for us, but happily the 86th was checked and kept in position; the rest of the brigade succeeded in getting across the river and we held the hordes at bay until the [rest] of [2nd] Div. got across and then we drove [the Rebels] back to their lines.” Though the 78th had “only seven or eight men wounded,” Van Vleck thought that in no other engagement had he been “in half the danger of capture, and in none have I been in more danger of Rebel bullets.” Clearly the circumstances had been unnerving; further, like Sergeant Ferguson, he thought them unnecessary. “As usual somebody is to blame for this most cruel and criminal mismanagement. We could, and did, gain the ground we now occupy without the loss of a dozen men.” Instead, thanks to “military wise-acres” who felt ‘they must push on to the very ditches of the Rebel works . . . 300 or 400 men have again been most needlessly lost to the service through the miserable blunder of someone.”[2]

[1]OR 38, pt. 1, 694; Van Vleck, Emerging Leader, 257.

[2]Van Vleck, Emerging Leader, 257-258. Of course, Van Vleck had been part of the June 27th assault on Pigeon Hill at Kennesaw Mountain. There Colonel Mitchell’s orders had not been clear, and the 78th suffered heavily in the charge. The Third Brigade’s reported loss was 260.