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THREE. Sherman Decides to Strike
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47 Three.ShermanDecidestoStrike The Confederates worked all night on June 22 to clear the battlefield of their dead and wounded. They failed to find all of them before dawn forced an end to their mission of mercy. As a result, the Federals found quite a few bodies still in place when they moved forward to claim the field early on June 23. D. P. Conyagham, a correspondent for the New York Herald, described the battlefield for his readers. He found many Confederate dead behind a rail fence that ran along the small stream draining through the ravine. “The torn, bloody knapsacks, haversacks, blankets and frequent pools of blood around were ghastly evidences of how they suffered,” Conyagham wrote. “The sluggish stream was actually discolored with blood, and several bodies lay there yet unburied.” The correspondent found that heavy artillery fire had “piled their bodies over one another.” He also discovered several Rebel dead around the Kolb House farther east. Edwin Weller of the 107th New York thought the Confederates had suffered enough to repay Hooker’s men for the drubbing received at New Hope Church.1 Even though he could hear the Confederates using wagons to retrieve their dead and wounded during the night, Alpheus Williams counted at least sixty bodies in front of his division on the morning of June 23. George Gallup reportedly buried sixty-nine dead Rebels in front of his Fourteenth Kentucky alone.2 Sherman rode to the area early on June 23 to gauge the situation on his far right. He was still determined to reprimand Hooker for his intemperate report that all of Johnston’s army opposed the Twentieth Corps the previous day. Sherman recalled in his memoirs that Thomas had earlier complained of Hooker’s tendency to “‘switch off,’ leaving wide gaps in his line, so as to be independent, and to make glory on his own account.” He further claimed that McPherson and Schofield had also voiced similar complaints of the Twentieth Corps commander. It was time to correct this tendency in Hooker.3 48 : SHErmaN dEcIdES to StrIKE Sherman rode through Butterfield’s division and found that it had not been engaged the previous evening. As he moved farther south, he saw burial squads from Geary’s and Williams’s divisions at work and found Schofield’s command south of the Powder Springs and Marietta Road. Sherman met Hooker and Schofield near Bethel Church west of Kolb’s House as a light rain fell. According to Sherman’s own account, he showed Hooker’s dispatch implying that the Twenty-Third Corps was not firmly holding the line south of his command to Schofield. “He was very angry,” Sherman reported, “and pretty sharp words passed between them.” Schofield argued that Hascall ’s division was farther forward than any of Hooker’s men and offered to show Sherman how far east some of Gallup’s dead had been left at the start of the engagement. Hooker pretended to be unaware of this as Sherman informed him that Johnston could not possibly have massed his entire army along the Powder Springs and Marietta Road.4 After this stormy interchange, Sherman rode away from the church with Hooker and told him privately that “such a thing must not occur again; in other words, I reproved him more gently than the occasion demanded, and from that time he began to sulk.” Sherman thought Hooker’s head had been turned by his performance in the battle of Lookout Mountain, during the Chattanooga campaign, and that he was jealous of the army commanders serving with Sherman because he believed he was their superior in “former rank, and experience.” Hooker took his medicine without comment, and Sherman rode off to other parts of his long, extended line.5 Ironically, Schofield reported in his own memoirs that he was not present when Sherman met Hooker at the church. He did meet with Sherman sometime that morning and saw Hooker’s dispatch, but never confronted the Twentieth Corps commander and thought Sherman was “unnecessarily alarmed” by the entire incident. He was in touch with Hooker before and after the fight on June 22, and there could have been no misapprehension on Hooker’s part about the security of the right flank. Hascall was present at the meeting of Sherman and Hooker at the church, and Schofield thought his division commander probably got angry when he read Hooker’s dispatch . Hascall was the one who argued that Twenty-Third Corps troops were...