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182 chapter fourteen THE FALL OF ATLANTA Despite the hard fighting for Atlanta, the city would soon fall into Union hands, dimming hopes for the survival of the Confederacy. As these events transpired, Granbury’s Texans clearly understood the dire circumstances facing their cause in August and September 1864, but they stayed with their regiments anyway. From a localized perspective, their steadfastness makes sense in light of the stellar leadership they enjoyed from Hiram Granbury and Patrick Cleburne. Loyalty to the Confederate cause also kept them going. As Jason Phillips points out in Diehard Rebels, the Confederate cause engendered a loyalty sufficient to carry men through the most trying circumstances, conditions such as those that confronted Granbury’s Texans in the waning days of the war.1 As the dog days of July turned into August, Granbury’s men tried to fight the heat, boredom, and constant barrage of bullets and shells that rained down on them day and night. On August 2 Captain Foster recorded in his diary that he had “done a big days wash today. 2 prs Drawers 1 pr Socks 1 Shirt and 1 Pocket handkerchief, and it was all decently done.”2 During the first week of August an event occurred in the 7th Texas that further endeared its men to their division commander, Pat Cleburne. One day with a company of the regiment on picket duty, a cow belonging to a local farmer wandered near the picket line. Even though the Texans knew they were violating regulations, their hunger for beef took over and they 183 the fall of atlanta shot and butchered the cow. Each company took a part of the meat back to camp and began to cook it over open fires. Private T. O. Moore recalled that just as the beef began to sizzle, “one of the company looked up and saw old Pat coming down the line on a tour of inspection. We had no time to hide the beef, and knew we were in for it.” Thinking quickly, one Texan jumped to his feet, walked up to Cleburne, saluted, and said, “General, we have some nice, fat beef cooking and it is about done; come and eat dinner with us.” The wise commander stared for a long moment at the Texan and then replied, “Well it does smell good. I believe I will.” He sat down and his men handed him a piece of sizzling beef and a piece of cornbread and he “ate quite heartily.” After dinner Cleburne lighted his pipe, chatted with the men, and passed down the line with Granbury’s boys cheering him on. Private Moore later recalled, “How could we help admiring him?”3 The first two weeks in August kept the Texans busy with constant shelling , false alarms, and marching back and forth behind their defenses. East of the city, Sherman began to shift his units southwest to try to get at the railroad near East Point. Because of this, the Texans’ commanders constantly shifted them back and forth. On August 1 Captain Foster recorded a false alarm, “but from some cause or other we did not move.” Two days later Hardee moved Cleburne’s Division two and a half miles to the right along the railroad in the midst of constant skirmishing. On the night of the sixth the Texans received orders to move left and support Bate’s Division , against whom the Federals had made a small demonstration, but they arrived too late to take part in the fighting. Two days later they moved several hundred yards to the right and the next day marched back to their previous position. From August 10 to August 18 Foster reported at least four more separate movements of a few hundred yards apiece back and forth behind the fortifications. Every new threat forced Hood to spread his already sparse garrison even thinner. On August 13 Captain Foster scribbled in his diary, “Our Brigade are put in one rank about 3 feet apart, but I believe we can hold our position against any force that can be brought against us.” This optimism obviously sprang from the strength of the works the brigade occupied, which included a line of stakes fifty yards in front of the trenches, “drove down in the ground, firmly slanting from us and made sharp at the top and so close together that a man can not get thru, and high enough to strike him little above his waist. It will be...

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