Daily Archive

CWG: How many soldiers fought during the Civil War?

KM: 3.8 million men (and many boys) fought during the Civil War, from 1861 - 1865.

CWG: How many fought for the Union?

KM: 2.8 million fought to preserve the Union, roughly 13% of the total Northern population.

CWG: How many fought for the South?

KM: Just over 1 million fought for the Confederacy. Considering there were around 5 million non-blacks in the South in 1860, that accounts for roughly 20% of the total Southern (non-black) population.

CWG: How common was it to be wounded in the Civil War?

KM: For every 1,000 Federals (roughly the size of a Regiment at the beginning of the war), 112 were wounded. That number was higher for Confederates; 150 of every 1,000 Confederates were wounded.

CWG: Did battle wounds kill more soldiers or disease?

KM: Disease was much more deadly overall. While a Union soldier stood a 1 in 18 chance of dying in battle, he stood a 1 in 8 chance of dying of disease. Johnny Reb stood a 1 in 5 chance of dying of disease and a 1 in 8 chance of dying in combat.

CWG: how was the North and South, respectively ready for the casualties they faced inthe Civil War?

KM: Neither side was ready. The entire U.S. Army only had about 16,000 regular soldiers before the Civil War broke out, and most of those were out West. In April 1862 at the battle of Shiloh we see the first real staggering casualty numbers of the war. In just two days the Union lost over 10,000 men (killed or wounded) and the Confederates lost 9,700. That’s nearly 20,000 men in one battle.

CWG: this must have put an incredible strain on the ability to care for the wounded and dying.

KM: These kind of casualty numbers caused an enormous strain on the medical care required for the soldiers. When the War broke out there were just 113 surgeons in the U.S. Army, by the end there would be 12,000 in the Union ranks, and an additional 3,200 in the Confederate Army. Many men no doubt expired on the field having simply bled to death before proper care could be administered.

CWG: did medical care improve much as the war continued?

KM: Care for the wounded improved greatly as the War drew on. Mortality rates for surgeries especially improved as doctors improved their understanding of the body, disease, and the application of medical procedures.

Interview with Professor Steven E. Woodworth
12/27/2006

Recommended reading for this interview?

• Jefferson Davis and His Generals, Woodworth
• The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, Sword
• For Cause & For Country, Jacobson

Subject: John Bell Hood’s Atlanta and Tennessee campaigns (1864)

Also: read the interview with Dr. Woodworth about troop unit sizes during the Civil War

CWG: it’s pretty popular to bash Hood. There seems to be a strong Hood-hater crowd. Your thoughts?

SW: I think Hood has received something less than a fair shake from the historians, especially from those like Sword. For balance, read Steve Davis’s Atlanta Will Fall.

CWG: how important is the background to the Atlanta campaign important in understanding Hood’s involvement in it, assuming command late in that campaign?

SW: The fate of Atlanta was, from a Confederate point of view, all but decided by Joe Johnston. Given that a Union army of approximately 100,000 men, of the degree of toughness and experience it possessed, commanded by a general of Sherman’s skill and resolution, was advancing toward Atlanta, it’s fall was probably certain by the time the Federals crossed the Chattahoochee. Hood was given a hopeless assignment.

CWG: So what do you do when you’re assigned to do the impossible but you are expected to make a serious attempt at it?

SW: Well, in the case of Hood at Atlanta, you can’t retreat, since any further retreat will give up the city at once. When an opposing army executes a turning maneuver (which any Civil War army could do to any other at any time–even Burnside did it to Lee) the army that is turned must either retreat or attack. (In the case of Burnside and Lee, Burnside was stalled by the absence of the pontoons so as to negate his turning maneuver and relieve Lee of the necessity either of retreating or of attacking.) Sherman was almost unequaled in his propensity and skill for turning maneuvers. When Sherman turned him, Hood could not retreat, and so had to attack. His plans were reasonably skillful, though making good plans is probably the least difficult of a commanding general’s duties.

CWG: your evaluation of Hood at Peachtree on July 20th, where Hood lost nearly 5,000 men?

SW: At Peachtree Creek he failed due to 1) his own physical inability to oversee the maneuver, 2) lack of adequate staff work (endemic to Confederate armies), and 3) Hardee’s apparent lack of cordial cooperation. Of course, the Confederates had at best an infinitessimally small margin of error at Peachtree Creek given who they were fighting against (Thomas)

CWG: your evaluation of Hood at Atlanta on July 22, where Hood lost 8,500 men?

SW: At the Battle of Atlanta Hood and his men did absolutely everything that should have been necessary to win a victory. Had they executed an attack like that one on Hooker and the Army of the Potomac at the time of Chancellorsville, I believe they would have won a victory at least as impressive. On the other hand, if Lee and Jackson and the Army of Northern Virginia could somehow have been transported through time and space to attack McPherson and Logan and the Army of the Tennessee at Atlanta, I believe the Federals would still have prevailed. The Army of the Tennessee was simply stout enough to withstand any blow the Confederates could conceivably have dealt, barring the presence of overwhelming Confederate numbers.

CWG: your evaluation of Hood at Ezra Church July 28 where 3,000 Confederate casualties took place?

SW: Ezra Church was of course an unmitigated flop–a complete fiasco from a Confederate point of view. It is attributable to a gross blunder by Stephen D. Lee and of course also to Hood’s own inability to oversee events personally and, perhaps, as well, to his lack of attention to detail.

CWG: and Jonesborough August 31st - Sept 1st?

SW: Jonesboro was much the same, as Ezra Church, in overall concept.

CWG: So your overall assessment og Hood in Atlanta would be?

SW: Therefore, my assessment of Hood’s performance in the Atlanta campaign is that he was 1) physically incapacitated by wounds from exercising fully effective command of a Confederate field army, and 2) possibly somewhat careless of details, as Lee had suggested.

CWG: let’s turn to Hood’s Tennessee campaign. Set the background up for us and place Hood in the reality he was facing.

SW: The Tennessee campaign is the same thing only more. What is a Confederate commander to do, in November 1864? Suppose you’re a Confederate army commander at that time. You’ve got to try something that at least seems to have a remote chance of saving the cause. What do you do? it’s hard to think of any course of action that could have won it for the Confederacy at that point. Would Jefferson Davis and Confederate public opinion have tolerated a passive policy of simply sitting down in front of Atlanta, poised to hinder Sherman’s advance farther into the interior of Georgia? Would they have insisted that Hood attempt to retake Atlanta?

CWG: Would the North Georgia policy, if pursued persistently, have yielded better results in the long run?

SW: Well, it would have piled up fewer casualties, but the end result would have been Union victory anyway. I’d say the worst criticism to which Hood is liable for the Tennessee campaign is that he acted out of desperation and failed about as spectacularly as is possible to imagine.

CWG: what responsibility should we lay at the feet of the Confederate political authorities?

SW: Maybe we should blame the Confederate political authorities for keeping their military fighting, throwing away lives by the thousand in utterly desperate gambits, when all rational hope of victory was past.

CWG: what significance or role did Franklin/Nashville have in the overall war effort for the South (for late 1864)?

SW: Franklin and Nashville had a limited impact on the overall course of the war simply because they failed to change anything. The Union controlled Tennessee before the campaign and controlled it even more solidly afterward. Confederate chances for success in the campaign were, from the outset, rather desperate. The impact of the battles was 1) to increase the overall Confederate death toll of the war, and 2) to remove whatever latent threat to Union control of Tennessee might have been posed by Hood’s army lurking in north Alabama. For example, it seems unlikely that Schofield’s two corps would have been shifted to the east coast if Hood, with an as yet unbroken Army of Tennessee, were still lurking just outside the state, threatening to move north.

And yet, would that have changed the outcome of the war? No, Sherman could have accomplished his purpose without Schofield, and the overall outcome would have been the same. Perhaps the crowning irony of the battles of Franklin and Nashville is that they were fought at a time when the war was already decided. by late November 1864 it is difficult to imagine any train of events that could have led to a Confederate victory.

Important quotes related to the Battle of Franklin:

When we got to the turnpike near Spring Hill, lo! and behold; wonder of wonders! the whole Yankee army had passed during the night. The bird had flown.

- Confederate Private Sam Watkins, 1st Tennessee Infantry

[Hood was] wrathy as a rattlesnake this morning, striking at everything.

- Confederate General John Brown to Maj. Vaulx of Cheatham’s staff, on the disposition of John Bell Hood on the morning of November 30th, upon learning that the Federals had escaped from Spring Hill in the early morning hours and had headed toward Franklin.

I have never seen more intense rage and profound disgust than was expressed by the weary, foot-sore, battle-torn Confederate soldiers when they discovered that their officers had allowed their prey to escape.

- Mississippian Rhett Thomas

The road was strewn everywhere with the wreck of thrown away stuff that they were unable to carry in their flight.

- Confederate Lt. Spencer B. Talley, 28th TN Infantry, describing what he saw along the Columbia Pike as the rebel army followed after the Union army into Franklin

To which Lt. William H. Berryhill, 43rd Miss., (CSA) added, the road was strewn with tents, knapsacks, dirty clothing, books, paper and a great many wagons were on fire.

Burnt wagons, dead pack animals, and tossed knapsacks all seemed to indicate a demoralized retreat, heartening the Southerners with thoughts of possible enemy capitulation and a quick victory.

Patrick Brennan, The Battle of Franklin, North & South magazine, January 2005, Vol. 8., No.1: page 35.

If you prevent Hood from turning your position at Franklin, it should be held; but I do not wish you to risk too much.

- George H. Thomas (c0mmander), to John M. Schofield, regarding how to proceed if an attack was to ensue at Franklin. Contrast this with Hood’s attack at-any-cost approach at Franklin.

I do no think the Federals will stand strong pressure from the front; the show of force they are making is a feint in order to hold me back from a more vigorous pursuit.

- General John Bell Hood to Nathan Bedford Forrest

General Hood, if you give me one strong division of infantry with my cavalry, I will agree to flank the Federals from their works within two hours’ time.

- Nathan Bedford Forrest to his commander Hood. Hood engaged two Corps at Franklin; Stewart’s and Cheathams. He did not even wait for Lee’s Corps or for his artillery to effectively engage in the enusing battle. Had he waited for Lee, he would have had three more divisions and could have supported Forrest in his request.

We will make the fight.

- General John Bell Hood to a subordinate officer after surveying the battlefield from Winstead Hill, just shortly before the battle began.

I hereupon decided, before the enemy would be able to reach his stronghold at Nashville, to make that same afternoon another and final effort to overtake and rout him, and drive him in the Big Harpeth river at Franklin, since I could no longer hope to get between him and Nashville, by reason of the short distance from Franklin to that city, and the advantage which the Federals enjoyed in the possession of the direct road.

- Confederate commander of the Army of Tennessee, General John Bell Hood, quoted from Hood’s memoirs, written long after the battle.

I could easily see all the movements of the Federals and readily trace their line. I saw that they were well fortified and in a strong position. I felt that we would take a desperate chance if we attempted to dislodge them.

- Corps Commander, Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham, upon surveying the battlefield from Winstead Hill, two miles south of the Fedederal’s position in downtown Franklin.

If an assault was to be made by Hood, General Cleburne said it would be a terrible and useless waste of life.

- General Patrick R. Cleburne, Cheatham’s division, who would soon lose is own life during the assault.

General, I will take the works or fall in the effort.

- Patrick Cleburne to General John Bell Hood. leburne would fall, mortally wounded in attempting to take the works.

It was the grandest sight I ever saw when our army marched over the hill and reached the open field base. Each division unfolded itself into a single line of battle with as much steadiness as if forming for dress parade. . . The men wer etired, hungry, footsore, ragged, and many of them barefooted, but their spirit was admirable.

- James D. Porter, who served on Benjamin F. Cheatham’s staff.

The rebels had filled the plain to the south, sounding to all like “a tornado heralded by clouds of darkness and muttering thunders.”

I.G. Bennett and William M. Haigh, History of the Thirty-sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, 1876, page 644; quoted in Patrick Brennan, The Battle of Franklin, North & South magazine, January 2005, Vol. 8., No.1: page 35.

General Cleburne seemed to be more despondent than I ever saw him. Iwas the last one to receive any instructions from him, and as I saluted and bade him good-bye I remarked, ‘Well General, there will not be many of us that will get back to Arkansas,’ to which he replied, “Well, Govan, if we are to die, let us die like men.”

- Brigadier Daniel C. Govan to Cleburne, and Cleburne’s reply upon commenting just moments before the assault was ordered by Hood.

[Pick back up at page 270 in Jacobson]

We could see them [Confederate Generals on the field at a distance] casting doubting glances in the direction of the formidable foe in our front; and judging from the appearance of their grave and serious looks, we all knew that our commanders in some degree realized the dept of that yawning gulf of destruction which awaited them and us, and which only too soon would engulf us all.

- An unknown Confederate soldier; quoted in Patrick Brennan, The Battle of Franklin, North & South magazine, January 2005, Vol. 8., No.1: page 37.

A profound silence pervaded the entire army; it was simply awful, reminding one of those sickening lulls which precede a tremendous thunderstorm.

- Confederate, John M. Copley, A Sketch of the Battle of Franklin, p. 48.

Go back, and tell them to fight like hell.

- Union General George Wagner instructing the courier to return to Wagner’s men on the frontline, who would take the initial blunt from Hood’s assault.

A tremendous deluge of shot and shell . . . seconded by a murderous sheet of fire and lead from the infantry behind the works, and also another battery of six guns directly in our front. It was, he said, a scene of carnage and destruction fearful to behold.

- A Mississippian survivor who faced the withering fire from Stiles’ brigade on the Union left flank at the opening of the battle.

Great God! Do I command cowards?

- Confederate General William Loring, as he witnessed scores of his Mississippians running for their lives back toward the pike, after facing the initial onslaught of the fire from Casement’s and Stiles’ brigade on the Union left flank.

Never before did a command of the approximate strength of Casement’s in as short a period of time kill and wound as many.

- Union soldier, B.F. Thompson, 112th Illinois, in History; p. 277. Casement’s brigade was made up of 65th and 124th Indian, and the 65th Illinois.

Dam*ed Rebel sons of b_____es . . . . stand here like rocks, and whip the h___ out of them.

- John S. Casement, Union commander of the 2nd brigade

Regarding the violent clash between Opdycke’s men and pockets of Cleburne’s and Brown’s one survivor described the action as the contending elements of hell turned loose (so indelibly stamped that a) long life spent in peaceful pursuits will not suffice to erase or even dim them.

- A survivor of the 73rd Illinois regiment.

With no place to go and no place to hide, the Confederates mounted desperate attacks across the parapet - “as many as thirteen charges” according to one account - and the Federals lining the retrenchment methodically blasted them back. The space between the two gashes in the ground began to resemble a sepulchre, grotesquely lit by little more than gunfure blasts and artillery explosions. And in a particularly gruesome development, the men started building shelters out of the bodies of their comrades. All the while the nearly continuous fire from the gin house coursed through the huddled soldiers, exacting a bloody price with every sweep.

- Quoted in Patrick Brennan, The Battle of Franklin, North & South magazine, January 2005, Vol. 8., No.1: page 43; Regarding the fire General George Gordon’s Confederate troops experienced as they fought in front of the Cotton Gin.

I never saw men put in such a terrible position as Cleburne’s division for a few minutes. The wonder is that any of them escaped death or capture.

- a Federal soldier, quoted in, The Battle of Franklin, M. Foster Farley, Civil War magazine; Summer 2006: p. 58.

Heads, arms, and legs were sticking out in almost every conceivable manner . . .  The air was filled with moans of the wounded.

- Capt. John Shellenberger, 50th Ohio, Union soldier.

It was impossible to exaggerate the fierce energy with which the Confederate soldiers that November afternoon threw themsleves against the works, fighting with what seemed the very madness of despair. At some of the earthworks the press of men was so great that the dead having no place to fall, remained in an upright position.

- a Federal soldier, quoted in, The Battle of Franklin, M. Foster Farley, Civil War magazine; Summer 2006: p. 58.

Our loss of officers in the battle of Franklin on the 30th was excessively large in proportion to the loss of our men. The medical director reports a very large proportion of slightly wounded men.

- John Bell Hood, writing two days after the battle to Confederate  Secretary of War, James A. Seddon.  The South lost 53 of 100 regimental commanders in the field at Franklin.  Granbury’s brigade alone lost 70% of their regimental commanders.  Undeterred, Hood would unmercilously throw his beleaguered Army of Tennessee against Thomas in another suicidal attack just two weeks later, effectively destroying his army. He would be replaced within weeks of the loss at Nashville, having led the Army of Tennesse for roughly six months.