General Sherman causes a change in Confederate command today in 1864


  • 18th July 1864 General J E Johnston handed over command of the Army of Tennessee to one of his Corps commanders, the over aggressive Kentucky born Texan, Lt Gen John Bell Hood. He had been a former US Cavalry Lieutenant and was only 33 years of age. His President, the Southern Jeff Davis had had enough of Johnston’s retreating in the face of the Northern General Sherman’s clever advances.

    The next five months would see this splendid Confederate army wrecked beyond recognition, culminating, after the loss of Atlanta, in the twin disastrous battles of franklin, Tn and Nashville.
    Hood had been a great Brigade (1,4, 5 Texas Regiments and 18Ga, later 3Ark regiment) and Division commander in the East, under General Lee. He wasn’t a bad Corps commander, albeit a one legged, morphine addict. He was an awfully inept Army one.
    I still love him.

    General Johnston was asked to lead what was left of The Army of Tennessee in the closing months of the war and he surrendered them in North Carolina. He was Hood’s opposite in character, cautious and deliberate, but a fine engineer.
    He attended General Sherman’s funeral and is supposed to have died of a cold caught standing in the rain that day.


  • @rjpeters70:

    Great General, that Sherman.

    And in many ways the first modern general.  His March to the Sea was a form of total war, as it involved deliberately devastating vast areas of land with the aim of breaking the enemy’s will to resist.  Sherman’s position was that “we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies.”  He once told Confederate leaders: “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.  War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”  Although he said in the same message, “My dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for any thing. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter”, he still ended up being known among Southerners as “the Atilla of the American Continent.”


  • Hood was not the man for the job, great man to lead a group of men at the front during a fight. After a good bit of discussion with some good friends on this site, I believe Longstreets was the best man for the leadership of the Army of Tennessee.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    @CWO:

    @rjpeters70:

    Great General, that Sherman.

    And in many ways the first modern general.  His March to the Sea was a form of total war, as it involved deliberately devastating vast areas of land with the aim of breaking the enemy’s will to resist.  Sherman’s position was that “we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies.”  He once told Confederate leaders: “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.  War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”  Although he said in the same message, “My dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for any thing. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter”, he still ended up being known among Southerners as “the Atilla of the American Continent.”

    I wonder what Sherman would have thought of modern Genocides.


  • Hood was better suited when under Longstreet and Lee.

    The Western commander had no choice but to shadow Sherman as Lee did Grant. I do not think Johnston was doing a bad job, but Davis replaced him. Politicians!
    Perhaps the damage was done with the loss of the Tennessee/Georgia line in November. Fantastic defensive terrain. Bragg.
    We have discussed Forrest and how he was neglected to the South’s detriment. He could have been so much more than a raider.


  • @Cromwell_Dude:

    What would you have done had you been Hood or another general in the West?

    If I was Hood I would have shadowed Sherman deep into Georgia and attempted to counter attack him near Savannah while his supply lines were at his longest.

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