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  The Rebels Strike Back Rarely has a general assumed command of an army under more inauspicious circumstances than those facing John Bell Hood on the morning of Monday, July , . His army was backed up to a city it had to hold—a fact that limited his strategic options and room to maneuver. He also had to keep his force positioned to cover the prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville, some  miles to the south. There thousands of captured Yankees sweltered in the July heat and humidity. Should one of Sherman’s raiding parties reach that prison and liberate those Northerners, the resulting panic among civilians in Central and South Georgia could both undermine Confederate morale and result in massive damage to some of the farms, factories, and railroads that helped feed and supply Secessionist armies in Georgia and Virginia. At the least, Hood would have to detach large numbers of troops from the Army of Tennessee to pursue the fugitives and to protect the lives and property of the area’s civilians. To his front Hood found a confidant, vigorous enemy force numbering some ninety-five thousand men. Johnston’s retreat across the Chattahoochee had removed the last major natural obstacle between Sherman’s army group and Atlanta. Two of the four railroads radiating from Atlanta were either in possession of the Federals or damaged (the Western & Atlantic from Chattanooga and the Montgomery & West Point, torn up west of Opelika by Rousseau’s raiders). On the day Hood assumed command of the Rebels, McPherson reached and cut the Georgia Railroad east of Decatur. With that line severed, Atlanta lost its importance as a rail hub, and the tracks running from Columbus through Macon became the Confederacy’s only east-west rail route. After July  only the Macon  The Rebels Strike Back & Western linked Atlanta and its defending army to the rest of Rebeldom. Should Sherman break that railroad, the Secessionists could not remain in the city. Much of Atlanta’s industrial importance had been lost with Johnston’s retreat over the Chattahoochee, and Union artillery would soon wreck much of what industry remained in the city itself. Almost all movable machinery and government supplies had been sent to other cities in early July. Most of Atlanta’s civilian population had fled. Hood, in fact, was fighting to hold a city that had been reduced to a symbol, not a place that was itself any longer of value to his country. Hood’s own army was hardly in shape to wage a great struggle on which the life of its nation depended. Casualties, sickness, and desertion had reduced its strength to below sixty thousand. The long retreat from Dalton had sapped the morale of many of the Confederate soldiers. Many others who had retained their faith in Johnston were demoralized by his departure. Still others who regarded Johnston as a failure also doubted Hood’s fitness to head the army. The Army of Tennessee also suffered from several serious problems in its high echelons—some of long standing, some created or exacerbated by the campaign of May and June. Brig. Gen. William W. Mackall, the chief of staff and a devoted friend of Johnston’s, remained at his post for the first week of Hood’s tenure as army commander. Mackall clearly resented Hood’s elevation to a post he believed rightfully Johnston’s. When he was relieved from duty on July  after refusing to shake hands with Bragg at army headquarters, he petulantly took many of the chief of staff’s office records off with him. Hood chose as his successor Brig. Gen. Francis A. Shoup, who had been the army’s chief of artillery. Hardee, now Hood’s senior subordinate, remained at the head of his corps. Like Mackall, but for different reasons, he very much resented Hood’s promotion. He soon made it clear that he wished to leave the army to avoid serving under Hood. Hardee’s bitterness, however, seems to have been owing less to any fondness for Johnston then to the fact that a much younger officer, once junior to him and whose competence he clearly doubted, had been chosen as the army’s new commander. President Davis denied Hardee’s request for a transfer. Had Hardee left, Hood would have lost his only experienced corps commander. Stewart, now the army’s third-ranking officer, had been at the head of a corps for less than three weeks and had never handled...

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