Late last year I blogged about the Confederacy's lack of enough talented generals to go around during the Campaign of 1864. I pointed out that even if President Jefferson Davis had heeded the advice of Gen. Robert E. Lee to put Gen. G. T. Beauregard in command of the Army of Tennessee, and even if Beauregard were able to defend Atlanta successfully, the Confederacy would probably have lost Richmond in May or June of 1864. If Beauregard had taken command of the Army of Tennessee, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston (whom Davis entrusted with the Army of Tennessee) would have had to fill Beauregard's shoes on the east coast. It is highly unlikely that Johnston would have successfully defended Richmond against both Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler and Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. To be more specific, it is unthinkable that Johnston would have acted as boldly as Beauregard on the evening of June 15, when to reinforce his troops defending Petersburg he abandoned the Howlett Line keeping Butler from advancing westward from Bermuda Hundred. No matter how Davis shuffled his generals, he could not deploy them in a way that might win the war.
Was there any other way that the Confederacy might have prevailed? Yes, but a special case or a miracle would have been required.
I came across evidence suggesting the possibility as I wrote a thumbnail biography of John W. Sprague for a collection of postwar reports to be published in the near future by Savas Beatue. Sprague had led the 63rd Ohio as its colonel at the battle of Corinth, October 3-4, 1862. Afterward, he and his mauled regiment performed mostly garrison duty until the beginning of the Campaign of 1864. Still a colonel, he led a brigade in XVI Corps of the Army of the Tennessee, part of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's army group facing the Confederate Army of Tennessee.
Portrait of Brig. Gen. John W. Sprague, office of the Federal Army (LOC)
On July 22, 1864, the same day as the battle of Atlanta, Sprague's brigade was assigned to guard the trains of the Army of the Tennessee at Decatur, Georgia. I assumed that those trains comprised about a third of the wagons in Sherman's entire army group because the Army of the Tennessee was smaller than than Army of the Cumberland yet larger than the Army of the Ohio, the army group's other two components. Confederate cavalry outnumbering Sprague's brigade attacked the trains at Decatur. Sprague, successfully defended the trains. He was almost immediatly promoted to brigadier general. The loss of those trains would have crippled the Army of the Tennessee. Replacing the wagons, hornses and other equipment via the Western & Atlantic Railroad, Sherman's sole supply line, would have posed a difficult problem. I reasoned that it might have hindered Sherman's final maneuvers against Atlanta.
The Battles of Atlanta and Decatur, July 22, 1864
mapdatabaseinfo.blogspot.com
A little more research indicated that if Sprague had failed at Decatur on July 22, the results could have been even worse. The trains of the Army of the Ohio were headed for Decatur as well. This meant Sherman's army group would have lost not about a third but about half of its trains, as many as 1,600 ordnance and supply wagons and teams. This almost certainly would have hindered the Army of the Tennessee's move to the west of Atlanta that resulted in the battle of Ezra Church on July 28. It very likely would have delayed if not prevented the capture of Atlanta prior to the November election. [David Allison, with chapters contributed by Lisa Rickey and Blaise J. Arena, Attacked on All Sides: The Civil War Battle of Decatur, Georgia, the Untold Story of the Battle of Atlanta (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform), 122-124] If it prevented the capture of Atlanta, it might have prevented the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln.
Nonetheless, it would have been a very special case.
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