قراءة كتاب The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907
was still lying behind the fence, close to the pike, and after passing Bate, Ruger had to run the gantlet of Granbury's line. Granbury had been notified that Bate was coming from the left, and hearing Ruger marching along the pike in the darkness, he mistook him for Bate, so that Schofield himself, with Ruger, rode along right under the muzzles of the muskets of Granbury's line, in blissful ignorance of the danger they were passing. Captain English, Granbury's assistant adjutant-general, advanced towards the pike to investigate, but was captured by the flankers covering the march of Ruger's column, belonging to the 23d Michigan. Elias Bartlett of the 36th Illinois, was on picket on the pike at the bridge across the creek a half mile south of Spring Hill, and he informed me that when Schofield came to his post he began eagerly to inquire what had happened, saying that he had feared everything at Spring Hill had been captured; that while they were talking, a Confederate picket, near enough to hear the sound of their voices, fired on them, and Schofield then rode on. A little later Bate came up through the fields, Granbury fell back from the fence and Cleburne and Bate then connected and adjusted a new line with Bate's left brigade refused so as to face the pike and all the rest of their line running across the country away from the pike.
Bate had utterly failed to grasp the significance of Ruger's passage, claiming that his flank was in danger, and his representations to that effect were so urgent that Johnson's division was brought up between 9 and 10 o'clock and posted on Bate's left, Johnson's line and the line of Bate's refused brigade paralleling the pike at a distance of not more than 150 yards. Many contradictory statements have been made relative to the distance of that part of the Confederate line from the pike. The owner of the land pointed out to me a small plantation graveyard as being just inside their line that night. He said that the position of their line was marked, after they had gone in the morning, by the rail barricades they had built, and by the remains of their bivouac fires, and he very positively asserted that no part of their line, facing the pike, was distant more than 150 yards from the pike. All the intervening space was cleared land. When the divisions of Cox, Wood and Kimball came up from Duck river later in the night, they marched along unmolested within that easy range of the Confederate line, and could plainly see the men around the bivouac fires. A staff officer was stationed on the pike beyond Johnson's left, where the fires first came into view, to caution the troops as they came up to march by the fires as silently as possible. Captain Bestow, of General Wood's staff, has related that when the officer told Wood, riding at the head of his division, that the long line of fires he could see paralleling the pike so closely on the right was the bivouac fires of the enemy, the veteran Wood was so astounded that he exclaimed: "In God's name, no!" When they came abreast of the fires one of Wood's orderlies, believing it to be impossible they could be the enemy, started to ride over to one of the fires to light his pipe, but had gone only a short distance when he was fired on, and came galloping back. A colonel of Johnson's division has stated that he held his regiment in line, momentarily expecting an order to open fire, until his men, one after another, overcome with fatigue, had all dropped to the ground to go to sleep. Some of Johnson's men, on their own responsibility, went out on the pike between the passage of the different divisions, to capture stragglers for the sake of getting the contents of their haversacks. They were the men who made it unsafe, as reported by General Stanley, for a staff officer or an orderly to ride along the pike when a column of troops was not passing.
General Hood had gone to bed in Thompson's house when he was informed that troops were marching along the pike. Without getting out of bed he directed Colonel Mason, his chief of staff, to send an order to Cheatham to advance on the pike and attack, but Mason admitted the next day, as stated by Governor Harris, of Tennessee, who was serving as a volunteer aide on Hood's staff, that he never sent the order. This strange neglect of the part of his own chief of staff affords a fitting climax to all the rest of the imbecility that contributed to Hood's failure after he had personally led the main body of his army to a position where by all ordinary chances success should have been certain.
There is a bit of Stanley's report that gives a clear glimpse of the situation as Schofield and Stanley believed it to be after they had met that night: "General Schofield arrived from Columbia at 7 o'clock in the evening with Ruger's division. He found the enemy on the pike and had quite a skirmish in driving them off. My pickets had reported seeing rebel columns passing, east of our position, as if to get possession of the hills at Thompson's Station, and the anxious question arose whether we could force our way through to Franklin. It was determined to attempt this, and General Schofield pushed on with Ruger's division to ascertain the condition of affairs."
Another vivid glimpse is afforded in the statement of O.J. Hack, a conductor on the railroad, who was also interested in a store at Columbia. He came down the road that day on the last train southbound, having in charge some goods for the store, and at the Spring Hill station met the last train northbound, and from the trainmen learned that the army was retreating. The two trains stood at the station that afternoon. Some time after dark, being anxious to save his goods, Hack went over to Spring Hill in quest of a guard to run the trains back to Franklin. On inquiring for headquarters he was directed to a large brick house where he found Schofield and Stanley together. Schofield, recently arrived from Duck river, had just been getting Stanley's account of the situation, and Hack said that Schofield was in a condition of great agitation, "walking the floor and wringing his hands." When Hack had told what he wanted, Schofield sharply replied that the enemy had possession of the road north of Spring Hill, and the trains could not move. The report of Stanley and the statement of Hack concur in showing that it was then Schofield's belief that Hood had possession of the Franklin pike; that the army was caught in a trap; that the only way out was the desperate expedient of forcing a passage by a night attack, and, failing in that, he must fight a battle next day under so many disadvantages that ruinous defeat, with the probable loss of the army, was staring him in the face. It would be interesting to know what Schofield then thought about his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, and his cool calculation based thereon, for which he afterwards so unblushingly claimed so much credit.
The two trains stood at the station until daylight was beginning to dawn when a detail of men came and began to build fires to burn the cars, but the detail was driven away, and the fires were extinguished before much damage was done, by the advance of the enemy. The two trains thus captured afforded the transportation to which Hood alluded in a letter to Richmond, written when he was in front of Nashville, wherein he stated that he had captured enough transportation to make use of the railroad in bringing up supplies. But Schofield ignored the loss of the two trains, for, in his official report, he explicitly states that with the exception of a few wagons, and of a few cattle that were stampeded, he arrived at Franklin without any loss.
When Schofield "pushed on with Ruger's division to ascertain the condition of affairs," on his arrival at Thompson's Station, three miles north of Spring Hill, he found camp fires still burning, but the brigade of cavalry that had been in possession