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Could Joe Johnston have saved Atlanta?
Dr. Meade summed up the civilian point of view [...] when he said that Atlanta had nothing to fear, for Johnston was standing in the mountains like an iron rampart.
-Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
Dr. Meade takes his usual role in the story of being nobly confident in that which will not come to pass. The year has struck 1864, and Sherman is starting his famous attack through Georgia. Sherman took his army down the railroad. Johnston defends, Sherman flanks, Johnston retreats, sets up another defensive line, and repeat. By the time they get to Atlanta, Davis is fed up with Johnston and swaps in Hood. Hood is too aggressive, assaults the Union boys, and ultimately can't hold the city.
But could Johnston have? Davis sacked him for a reason; the dance across Georgia had left him with no confidence that Johnston wouldn't keep retreating past the city he was supposed to protect. But Johnston had good reason for his retreats too. Sherman had roughly double the men. Sherman kept flanking him because he had the manpower to do so. When he besieged Atlanta, he did so by cutting off the railroads leading into the city. That necessarily left his soldiers spread along a much wider arc than the defender needed to maintain. That might have given a more cautious, more defensive in temperament commander than Hood a chance. A commander like Joe Johnston.
Provided, of course, that Johnston was willing to stand there and fight. Davis might have been right to replace him, even if he chose the wrong replacement. And it might have been a minor point; that no one short of Mecha-Napoleon could have saved that city. But when I cast about for the type of commander I'd assign to defend that city, a name comes to mind.
Could Joe Johnston have saved Atlanta?
Discussion (32)
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Doubtful. The biggest thing was the resources. The North and Sherman had them. The Confederacy did not.
Edited to add: And Sherman's tactics contributed to further problems with Southern infrastructure and movement of goods with what became known as Sherman's bowties. Part of the reason they were headed to Terminus (original name of Atlanta) was because they were destroying the railroads, and Atlanta was a hub.
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Yeah; that's a further question. Suppose the Union got stuck outside the city, that Sherman couldn't take the city for roughly a year. If he can be stuck there while astride three of the railroads leading into town that's still got to be a royal headache for the Confederacy because they don't have the rails to bypass.
I've played a number of war games, both over the board and on video. I haven't played any that took logistics seriously enough.
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Similar to the situation Grant (and Sherman) created with Vicksburg.
You think this was bad, you should have been in the Hundred Years War. But, yes, logistics is not quite everything, but it can be a huge factor in war. It was why the Union blockaded Southern ports. It was why so much of the war happened as it did. Starve 'em out.
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Johnston understood that the South could not win the Civil War, but the North could lose it. The only chance the South had was to stay in business long enough that Northern public opinion got sick enough of the war to demand an end to it.
In the summer of 1864, Lee and Grant were stalemated at Petersburg, and Johnston was dug in at Atlanta, with no obvious progress in either theater. In hindsight we can see that this was not true, that the South militarily and economically was being ground into powder, but it was not obvious at the time to the Northern public.
McClellan was running against Lincoln in the Presidential Election of 1864. While McClellan may not have ended the war if he had won, there was certainly more chance he would than Lincoln would. The Fall of Atlanta pretty much doomed McClellan's candidacy, as it proved the war was actually being won.
So while Johnston may not have been able to hold Atlanta indefinitely, he may have been able to hold it long enough to give McClellan a decent shot at winning the election, and keep alive the possibility he would end the war. The odds of all that coming together were long, but Hood made them much longer than necessary.
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Now that I've seen in video games. Hold this position for half an hour as wave after wave of zerg crashes into your bunkers. Less common on board games. I wonder if you could interpret RISK cards as election returns.
I certainly hadn't been thinking of the political aspects of the siege, but "Could Johnston have held Atlanta at least until after election day?" is a better question than the one I asked.
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