Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy

CHAPTER FIVE To the Oostanaula

  To the Oostanaula By the time Sherman moved his headquarters from Nashville to Chattanooga , Grant’s grand strategy for the Union’s  military operations had begun to fall apart. It had, in fact, started to unravel even before Grant conceived it. In January  high officials in the Lincoln administration had decided to send a military expedition up the Red River into western Louisiana . They also hoped to occupy a portion of East Texas. The campaign evolved out of a complex mixture of diplomatic, economic, military, and political motives. American military forces in the area might help dissuade the French government from its efforts to establish control over Mexico. The scheme might also result in acquisition of large quantities of cotton that would enrich powerful men in the North. Whatever the motives behind it, the Red River Expedition took on a life of its own. It was to have a profound effect on the struggle for North Georgia. Federal authorities selected Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, then in charge of occupied New Orleans, as commander of the Red River force. The troops assigned to the expedition included two veteran divisions of the XVI Corps and a detachment from the XVII Corps. Northern planners assumed that Banks could quickly reestablish a strong Federal presence in western Louisiana, return the borrowed Army of the Tennessee troops to McPherson in northern Alabama, and then launch his own campaign against Mobile in accordance with Grant’s  concept. Unfortunately for the Unionists, Banks did not get his expedition under way on time. He then ran into a strong Rebel force at Mansfield, Louisiana, where he suffered a defeat on April . Over the following weeks, Banks came close to losing the fleet accompaning his column To the Oostanaula  because the falling water level in the river almost stranded the vessels. The campaign turned into a fiasco. By the time Banks extracted his army and got the expedition and the fleet to safety, it was too late to return the borrowed troops to McPherson for the campaign in Georgia. Banks’s losses and the general chaos that failure of the expedition created in his own command compelled him to abandon the projected effort against Mobile. The Rebels had won the first round of the  campaign. As April wore along, Sherman became increasingly concerned about his absent troops. On the twentieth, while still in Nashville, he heard “a rumor” that Banks had been checked along the Red River. Additional reports received the next afternoon confirmed the rumor and also brought the unwelcome news that Banks refused “for obvious reasons” to release the troops he had borrowed from the Army of the Tennessee. On the twenty-second Grant formally notified Sherman that those men would not be joining him in Georgia. “Do not let this delay or embarrass,” admonished Grant. Loss of the Army of the Tennessee veterans forced Sherman to alter his plans. With only seven, rather than the anticipated nine, divisions, McPherson’s army would be reduced to about thirty-five thousand men and, Sherman feared, would be too weak to operate at a great distance from the main Federal column. The potential danger to McPherson increased when Banks canceled the campaign against Mobile, thereby freeing Confederate forces in Mississippi and Alabama from the need to defend the Gulf Coast and releasing them to move north to oppose the Army of the Tennessee. On April , therefore, Sherman abandoned the planned march on Rome and changed the Army of the Tennessee’s objective. He ordered McPherson to cross the Tennessee River and move directly east to Lebanon , Alabama, and thence on to Summerville, Georgia. At Summerville, McPherson would be about twenty miles northwest of Rome. Depending on the circumstances, he could then turn toward Rome or go north to LaFayette and then east through Ship’s (now Maddox) Gap in Taylor’s Ridge to the small crossroads hamlet of Villanow. From Villanow the Yankees could turn south and march about thirty miles to Rome or continue east some three miles into the northern end of Snake Creek Gap. If he took the latter route, McPherson would remain much closer to Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland, thereby greatly diminishing Chattanooga to the Oostanaula To the Oostanaula  the likelihood that the Confederates would pounce on his isolated force. Still thinking only of prying Johnston out of his strong Dalton fortifications , Sherman believed...