lems. The first was logistical. He was at
the end of a long supply line stretching
hundreds of miles north to Chattanooga
and beyond to Nashville. It was extremely
vulnerable to attack, as Sherman’s Con-
federate counterpart, John Bell Hood,
soon proved. With his army of 35,000
men, Hood began operating in the area of
Palmetto on the Chattahoochee River,
southwest of Atlanta, and demonstrating
against Union garrisons along Sherman’s
lines of communication. Hood himself had
an excellent line of communication run-
ning back to Florence, Alabama, from any
part of which he could confront Sherman
directly or harry the roads and rail lines in
his rear.
While Sherman consolidated his
strength, Confederate President Jefferson
Davis railed against him. With Southern
morale collapsing in the face of Sherman’s
victory, Davis toured Georgia making
grand speeches to a shell-shocked popu-
lace. Sherman received reports of speechesin which Davis claimed the Confederate
Amy was taking decisive action and
boasted that Sherman would soon retreat
from Atlanta as Napoleon had from
Moscow. “The fate that befell the Army of
the French Empire in its retreat from
Moscow will be re-acted,” Davis told the
people of Macon. Meanwhile, Davis said,
Hood and the fearsome cavalry raider
Nathan Bedford Forrest would be acting
against Sherman’s vulnerable communica-
tions and moving into central Tennessee.
This is exactly what Hood did, for two
reasons. First, with Confederate morale
collapsing, Hood reasoned that a series of
short, sharp offensives could only improve
the situation. “Something was absolutely
demanded,” Hood wrote in his report to
Secretary of War Judah Benjamin. Second,
Sherman’s forces were so numerically
superior to Hood’s that the latter could
only take some peripheral action. “Thus I
determined upon consultation with the
corps commanders to turn the enemy right
flank and attempt to destroy his commu-
nications and force him to retire from
Atlanta.”
In early October Hood sent a divisionunder Maj. Gen. Samuel G. French against
the Union garrison at Allatoona, threaten-
ing to massacre the troops there. This ploy
had already worked for Forrest, who
scared the Union garrison at Athens into
surrendering. French sent a letter to the
Union commander calling for him to
“avoid the needless effusion of blood.”
Fortunately for the Union cause, the gar-
rison commander, Brig. Gen. John M.
Corse, was made of sterner stuff and
replied, “We are prepared for the ‘needless
effusion of blood’ whenever it is agreeable
to you.” Union troops repelled French’s
attack. Corse himself was shot in the face
but seemed almost cheerful about his
wound. “I am shot a cheek-bone and an
ear, but am able to whip all hell yet!’ he
wrote Sherman.
On October 12, Hood followed up his
Allatoona adventure with a raid on
Resaca, where he tried the same ploy. “I
demand the immediate and unconditional
surrender of the post and garrison under
your command,” Hood wrote to the Fed-
eral commander, Colonel Clark R. Weaver.
“If the place is carried by assault, no pris-
oners will be taken.” Weaver replied defi-The day before leaving Atlanta, these Union troops
left a going away present for hard-pressed South-
erners—another bit of twisted railroad tracks known
as “Sherman bowties.”CWQ-Sum16 Sherman's March_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:40 PM Page 66