by Stephen Davis The study of Civil War journalism has come a long way in the last few decades. That’s especially true regardin Confederate newspapers. Fifty years ago, the go-to source was J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War (Princeton University Press, 1970). Since then, we’ve had studies of prominent editors and reporters, such as Knights of the Quill: Confederate Correspondents and their Civil War Reporting, a collection of twenty-nine articles edited by Patricia G. McNeely, Debra Reddin van Tuyll and Henry H. Schulte (Purdue University Pres 2010). In his essays on Partisa of the Southern Press: Editoria Spokesmen of the Nineteenth Century (University Press of Kentucky, 1994) Carl R. Osthaus includes one on John M. Daniel, the acerbic editor of the Richm Examiner. Upstaging this is now Peter Bridges’ book, Pen of Fir John Moncure Daniel (Kent State University Press, 2002). There are also studies of individual Southern newspapers during the war. Barbara Ellis’ The Moving Appeal: Mr. McClanahan, Mrs. Dill, and the Civil War’s Great Newspaper Run (Mercer University Press, 2003) deserves mention if only for its ponderous size (677 pages). Ford Risley of Penn Sta advances the scholarship with Dear Courier: The Civil War Correspondence of Editor Melvin Dwinell (University of Tennesse
r Covers the War Press, 2018). Professor Risley’s work focuses on the Rome (Georgia) Courier during the war. Bill Hendrick and I hope to make a similar contribution with The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the Civil War, which is due out this summer from the University of Tennessee Press. Dear Courier reprints a number of Dwinell’s articles in the newspaper. So does Writing & Fighting the Confederate War: The Letters of Peter Wellington Alexander Confederate War Correspondent, edited b William B. Styple (Belle Grove Publishing, 2002). Along with Felix G. De Fontaine, Peter Alexander, writing as “P.W.A.” for the Savannah Republican, is considered one of the preeminent reporters for Confederate newspapers. (Incidentally, one thing we’ve noticed is that historians speak of Confederate newspapers, not Federal ones. Partly this is a temporal device, referring to the four-year period of Southern nationhood. But it is also a reflection of the nationalistic fervor one sees in almost all papers operating in Confederateheld territory.1) Despite all this commendable scholarship, “the whole topic of the Civil War-era press deserves much more study,” George C. Rable wrote as recently as 2015 in Damn Yankees! Demonization & Defiance in the Confederate South (Louisiana State Universit Press). Incidentally, when Dr. Rable spoke to the Atlanta Civil War Round Table a few years ago on his book, he quoted the
The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the Civil War Stephen Davis and Bill Hendrick Order online UTPress.org or call
Confederate soldier who declared in January1862, “I have no more idea that the Yankees will whip us than that a chicken can teach Latin.” [General laughter.] …which brings us back, in a roundabout way, to our lead question: who was Clio? Well, aside from being the Greek Muse of History, “Clio” was the pen name of a reporter whose writing appeared the Atlanta Daily Intelligencer from November 1862 to June1864— more than 150 articles in all, m sent as letters from Richmond. It was the style back then for veteran reporters to cloak their identities in colorful nom de plume. Dr. Andrews lists a lot of them: for the Richmond Dispatch, Peter Alexander took the name of “Sallust.” (Many field correspondents wrote for multiple papers and took differe names for themselves; Sallust [86-35 B.C.] was a Roman historian.) Another example: Dr. George W. Bagby was the Charleston Mercury’s prolific reporter in Richmond, “Hermes.” For a long time, the identity another reporter for the Mobile Advertiser & Register, “Shadow,” was unknown. Andrew devoted a whole Appendix to the problem, and guessed that “Shadow” was Henry Watterson, who after the war famously edited the Louisville CourierJournal. (There’s an avenue in the city named after him.) More recently, Barbara Ellis and Stephen Dick have confirmed Watterson as “Shadow” by using a computerized word content analysis that compared “Shadow’s” wartime writings with Watterson’s postbellum articles in the Louisville paper But we still don’t know the identity of “Clio.” Andrews doesn’t even list him in his ind though he was able to identify Richard Hawes as “Vidi” for the Atlanta Intelligencer.3 (Vidi is Latin for “I see.”) Was “Clio” an Atlantan? Perhaps. In his letter from Richmond dated Nov. 12, 1862, he wrote of the recent death of Confederate Brig. Gen. Allison Nelson, “formerly Mayor of our city,” Nelson served briefly as Atlanta’s mayor in 1855. We also think that “Clio” was an
established man of letters. In introducing him, Intelligencer editor John Steele referred to “Clio” as “one of the most distinguished Southern writers. “Clio” reported on everything he heard about: a skirmish at Culpeper Court House, prospects for Confederate recognition by England, the state of the Yankee army (“an unwieldy, half disciplined and unmanageable body”). He commented that dueling between gentlemen was passing out of fashion. He engaged in spiteful denunciatio of speculators, people driven b “a reckless, insatiable avarice such as hotel keepers who had the temerity to demand three dollars a day: “if the governme does not speedily intervene to put down extortion with a stron hand…I do not know what will become of us.”4 Because “Clio’s” handwritten articles reached the Intelligen office by mail, they were usual several days behind the paper’s
telegraphic dispatches, sent from Richmond, that John Steele relied upon for news of the war in Virginia. More than once did the editor throw up his hands at these postal delays: “How is this? Surely there must be some neglect somewhere!” “Clio,” of course, could only relate what he had heard, and p it on with comment. Burnside and the Army of the Potomac, he wrote on December 5, “has taken to ditching on the other side of the Rappahannock in the mud, and does not venture acros for falling on a Lee shore with Stone wall in the rear.”5 “Clio” sometimes scooped the telegraph. When he wrote from Richmond in May 4, 1863, that “General Jackson, by ascending the Rappahannock, succeeded in getting into the rear of the enemy,” he gave readers of the Intelligencer (printed on May 9) their first information abou Stonewall’s flank attack at Chancellorsville.
patriotism characteristic of Confederate newspapermen. “With two such Generals as Lee and Johnston, the one in Virginia, the other in Georgia, at the head of two such armies,” he enthused on June 2, 1864, “we may well be hopeful, if not confident, of the glorious results of the coming conflicts.”6 Okay. To paraphrase Meatloaf, one out of two ain’t bad.
Endnotes 1. Richard M. McMurry, “The Confederate Newspaper Press and the Civil War: An Overview and a Report on Research in Progress,” Atlanta History, vol. 42, nos. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998), 59-75. 2. Barbara G. Ellis and Steven J. Dick, “’Who Was “Shadow”?’ The Computer Knows: Applying Grammar-Program Statis in Content Analyses to Solve Mysteries about Authorship,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 4 (Winte 1996), 947-62. 3. J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War (Princeton Princeton University Press, 1970 251.
The Intelligencer building at the nort Street in Atlanta. George Barnard took during the Federal occupation, Septemb 1864. The building was destroyed in th of November 15. (Library of Congress) June 2022
4. “CLIO,” “FROM RICHMOND” (November 12), ADI, Nov. 18, 1862; Franklin M. Garrett, A and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events, 2 vol (Athens: University of Georg Press, 1962 [1954]), vol. 1, (on Nelson); “OUR RICHMOND CORRESPONDENT, ‘CL ADI, Nov. 18, 1862; “CLIO,” “FROM RICHMOND” (November 15), ADI, Nov. 21, 1862; “CL “FROM RICHMOND” (November 26), ADI, Dec. 3, 1862. 5. “THE RICHMOND MAIL,” ADI, Nov. 28, 1862; “CLIO,” “FROM RICHMOND” (December 5), ADI, Dec. 9, 1862. 6. “CLIO,” “RICHMOND” (May 4), ADI, May 9, 1863; “CLIO, “FROM RICHMOND” (May 27), ADI, June 2, 1864.
Stephen Davis, our “Critic’s Corner” columnist, resides in Cumming, Ga., with his wife Billie and two cats. His doctoral dissertation at Emory (1979) is entitled, “Johnny Reb in Perspective: The Confederate Soldier’s Image in the Southern Arts.”
by Joan Wenner, J.D. Claude “Claudius” Crozet was born in 1789 near Lyons, France, and educated as an engineer., After serving as an officer in Napoleon’s army and surviving two years as a Russian prisoner of war captured at Moscow, he immigrated to America in 1816, joined the U.S. Army, and had a stint at West Point. Later holding engineering positions within the Virginia Board of Public Works, Crozet began pushing his “vision that a new railroad could open the Shenandoah Valley for settlement and serve as a corridor for tying the Virginia Tidewater to the Ohio River.” From 1837–1845, Crozet was the Virginia Military Institute’s first presiding offic the president of its Board of Directors. In 1849, the Virginia State Legislature incorporated the Blue Ridge Railroad so exasperatingly pushed by the civil engineer. In 1849 Crozet became the chief engineer of the Blue Ridge Railroad Company. The Blue Ridge Tunnel opened in 1858. During the Civil War General Stonewall Jackson used the tunnel to quickly move forces from the Valley to east of the Blue Ridge, much “to the puzzlement and consternation of Union military leaders.” Crozet died in Midlothian, Va. aged 75 years, during January 1864 and was buried in the VMI Cemetery in Lexington where an impressive monument marks his grave. It’s said that the als impressive Library of Virginia in Richmond contains hundreds of his plans and drawings. The rural Albemarle County town of Crozet 12 miles west of Charlottesville at the base of th Blue Ridge was renamed in his honor in 1870. In 2014, Col. Edwin Dooley, a co-author of a 1989 Crozet biography spoke at VMI’s Crozet Library, describing his remarkable engineering feats
and stating that he was one of Virginia’s most important historical figures saying, “It’s incredible what he did...”
Note: The (Claudius Crozet) Blue Ridge Tunnel restoration project created a 2-1/2 mile hik trail from its eastern trailhead Nelson County, Virginia, through the 4,273-foot tunnel to the tra western end in Augusta County.
See: nelsoncounty.va.gov parks-recreation for information about this “Rails to Trails” project that incorporates the third largest pedestrian tunnel the U.S. Open sunrise to sunset though check first for closure f scheduled maintenance.
New Perspectives and General by Stephen Davis The Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War is over, and the country’s cultural conversation has moved on to other things. But for us armchai historians, the anniversary of t war’s end gives opportunity for us to sit back and consider what we’ve learned, say, since the war’s last big anniversary, the Centennial of the 1960s. In the case of the Atlanta Campaign, and Confederate General John Bell Hood, it’s bee a lot. Fifty years ago, the bibliogra could list just one book devoted to the Atlanta Campaign: Union Gen. Jacob Cox’s Atlanta (1882), by a division commander in Sherman’s army! Now, by my count, we have fully six more: Samuel Carter III, The Siege of Atlanta, 1864 (1973); James McDonough and James Jones’ War So Terrible (1987); Albert Castel’s superb Decision in the West (1992); Richard McMurry‘s excellent Atlanta 1864 (2000); my own Atlanta Will Fall (2001); and Russell Bond’s enjoyable War Like the Thunderbolt (2009). Wait, there’s more. An excellent documentary history is Larry M. Strayer and Richard A. Baumgartner, eds., Echoes of
Atlanta Campaign Bell Hood Battle: The Atlanta Campaign 1991). Atlantan William R. Scaife contributed The Campaign for Atlanta (second edition, 1993). Lee Kennett personalizes the story in Marching Through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians During Sherman’s Campaign (1995). Philip L. Secrist follows the armies’ routes in Sherman’s 1864 Trail of Battle to Atlanta (2006). A handy tour guide comes in Jay Luvaas and Harold W. Nelson, eds., Guide to the Atlanta Campaign: Rocky Face Ridge to Kennesaw Mountain (2008). Marc Wortman’s The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta (2009) is more readable than enlightening. A novel approach i the literature is Larry Peterson Decisions of the Atlanta Campaign: The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operation (2019). And all of this doesn’t includ recent studies of individual battles, Pickett’s Mill, Kennesa Mountain, Peachtree Creek, July 22, Ezra Church, by Ecelbarger, Hess and others. The really new focus, however, has been on General Hood. In the spring of 1864 Jefferso Davis wanted Joe Johnston to tak the initiative before Sherman di
Hood, who arrived at Dalton from into Sherman’s rear (Connelly, Richmond in February to lead Autumn of Glory, 409-10). an infantry corps in Johnston’s Johnston was unaware of army, knew this. When Johnston Hood’s letters to the boss, and balked, blaming enemy numbers after Hood’s arrival, seemed to and position as well as his own favor him more than Hardee, the weaknesses, Hood secretly wrote army’s senior corps commander. Richmond five letters during At Resaca it was to Hood that March and April (e.g., to Davis Johnston gave the assignment for March 7, “I am eager to take the the May 14 attack. He did the same initiative,” and to Bragg, April at Cassville and at Pickett’s Mill. 13, “I have done all in my power When Johnston was interviewed to induce General Johnston to by Georgia Senator Ben Hill on move forward.”) July 1 on campaign prospects, Historians have known of this only Hood was in the room. All backstabbing for a while. What’s of this caused Hardee to grumble new, though, is recent awareness to his wife Mary, “Hood, I think, that other of Johnston’s generals is helping the General to do the were doing the same thing. strategy, and from what I can see A notorious example is when is doing most of it.” W. H.T. Walker sent Davis In mid-July 1864 Sherman’s Pat Cleburne’s emancipation armies were just a few miles proposal after Johnston said he outside Atlanta. Fearing that Gen. wouldn’t. Back-biting among Joseph E. Johnston would give up officers in the Army of Tennessee the city without a decisive battle, was a long tradition, as in the the Confederate government case of States Rights Gist writing relieved Johnston, promoted Bragg, “Hindman is one of the Hood and gave him command Chief Offenders, and is I think of the Army of Tennessee. A the most dangerous man of all.” half-century ago, the literature (Bragg Papers, Western Reserve). characterized the administration’s Joe Wheeler, for instance, wrote decision as a huge mistake. A Bragg on July 1, complaining that good instance comes from the Johnston would not let him raid writing of Joseph B. Mitchell,
Lt. Russell Tuttle of the 107th New York recorded in his diary for Nov. attended “33d Mass. concert in the evening.” But he attended others that George Barnard’s pictures capture their advertising billboards. Sometime around Nov. 8, Barnard took a number of shots of a train being at Atlanta’s downtown rail depot, called the “car shed.” Everyone knew t Sherman would be abandoning Atlanta, leading his army away on a march wh destination only a few high-ranking officers knew. But all could see the and commissary officers loading northbound trains with supplies and equi would not be carried in wagons in the forthcoming march. The perspective is a long one, encompassing army wagons to the left, the and right behind it the light-colored Georgia Railroad Bank Agency and t story “Concert Hall”—which really wasn’t a concert hall (the Atheneum wa
who in Decisive Battles of the Civil War (1955), informed us that “the change was not popular. “One man was pleased,” he adds: “General Sherman.” All this has changed. The new viewpoint is expressed by William C. Davis in his biography of the Confederate president (1991): “Davis’s only mistake with Johnston was assigning him to the command in the first place and then retaining him while he gradually lost most of north Georgia.” In the centennial, Hood at Atlanta was characterized as headstrong, even stupid, for ordering futile frontal infantry assaults against entrench enemy forces. “The recklessness of Hood,” as William Key termed it (The Battle of Atlanta, 1958). be sure, Hood’s decision to attac Schofield at Franklin five months later colors this perception. But the current literature stresses that around Atlanta in July ’64 Hood ordered attacking battles that were not only justifiable, but which offered successful prospects. At Peachtree Creek he sought to exploit a two-mile gap between Thomas’ and Schofield’s
Ellen Ponder had abandoned her house well before it came under Federal artillery fire because of its unlucky location so close to Confederate lines. Sherman ordered a heavy bombardment of Atlanta and the Rebel works for August 9. That day, Union Lt. W. W. Hopkins, a signal officer perched in a tree near the lines of Brig. Gen. John W. Geary’s Division of the XX Corps, reported “the most noticeable effect of the shelling was in front of General Geary’s Division at a fort and house. The fort was struck; also the works near it, and the house had a large hole knocked in it besides being riddled.” Several days later, a reporter for the New York Times reported, “Bundy’s battery (Thirteenth New York) has been making a target of one very fine house, until now
it presents a very ventilated appearance.” Bundy’s 13th New York battery was attached to Geary’s Division. (All photographs courtesy Library of Congress) June 2022
Siege of Atlanta (1973); Wiley Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind (“nearly 5,000 men,” 1992); Webb Garrison, Atlanta and the War (1995), Philip L. Secrist, Sherman’s 1864 Trail of Battles (2006); Steven E. Woodworth, This Great Struggle (2011). Even McMurry, in his John Bell Hood (1982), guesses “perhaps 5,000.” Fortunately, there are a few scholars who actually did the math, beginning with Livermore (1901), who came up with ca. 2,500. Following him are Connelly (1971); myself in Blue & Gray, August 1989; Castel (1992); Russell Bonds in War Like the Thunderbolt (2009). McMurry switches to 2,500 in Atlanta 1864 (2000). Robert Jenkins’ calculation of Southern losses in his recent history of the battle (Mercer University Press, 2013) is 2,316, and that against 2,167 Union killed, wounded, or missing! (Sherman put Federal casualties at 1,710.) Speaking of numbers, let’s talk about Wheeler’s raid into Sherman’s rear, that began August 10. Edward Pollard started it all in his Southern History of the War (1866): “Hood made the fatal mistake. He sent off Wheele and his entire cavalry [emphasis added] to raid on Sherman’s line of communications.” Eisenschiml and Newman (1947) claim, “He sent off his entire cavalry” [emphasis again added]. Check the returns of August 10 (the day the raid started): cavalry in the Army of Tennessee numbered 12,803 officers and men. Even those who acknowledge that Wheeler rode off with 4,500 troopers, less than half of the mounted arm, still claim that Hood’s decision to send off the raid was a blunder (for which, by the way, Hood had sought and gotten President Davis’ express permission). “All Hood had done was deprive himself of ‘his eyes and ears,’” Castel wrote in
CWTI, February 1978, ignoring that Red Jackson’s 4,500 troopers kept Hood very well informed of Sherman’s movements while Wheeler was away. Even when Hood deserves censure (Franklin perhap certainly Nashville), in recent decades writers have been more understanding, if not forgiving o his faults. No small thanks go to University of Southern California sociologist, of all people: Dr. Laurence J. Peter, who coined the phrase “Peter Principle” in 1969. Now just about everyone on the planet knows that hierarchies (including armies at war) tend to
elevate individuals to their leve of incompetence. We’ve known about this practice for a long
time. Ambrose Burnside was a competent corps leader in the Army of the Potomac, but he fail miserably as its commanding general. Same thing with Joe Hooker: able corps leader, but a dud as army commander at Chancellorsville. Now, to explai such rise-and-falls we have a catchy sociological term, and it’s stuck. Hood is “the General Whom the President Elevated Too High” (Herman Hattaway, 1999). He is “’A Bold Fighter’ Promoted beyond his Abilities” (Keith Bohannon, 2004). Perhaps the most important development in the ne “Hoodiana” overturns the old legend that the general, maimed from his wounds, resorted to laudanum. Several decades ago, writing for Blue & Gray, I trace the wobbly origin of this libel: Percy Hamlin’s 1940 biography of General Dick Ewell. I then looked at how later writers have alluded to it, and saw a lo of supposition and guessing. Even the redoubtable McMurry wrote in 1972 that Hood “may have been taking a derivative of laudanum” to ease pain from his wounds. Seeing no confirming evidence in the literature, I sought to squelch the drug-use contention. Stephen M. Hood has finally done so in his study of Hood (The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General, 2013), thanks to his discovery of the medical reports of Hood’s surgeon, Dr. John Darby. “Sam,” as we call him, ha
recently repeated the argument in Civil War Times Illustrated: “Myth Busted!,” the front cover exclaims. Those of us long-of-tooth believe that if you just live l enough, new discoveries will come along to make us all feel young and excited again. Proof comes in Sam Hood’s recent work The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood. Having discovered—I’m not kidding—a cache of Hood letters in a descendant’s attic, Sam ha seen to their publication (Sava Beatie, 2015). Henceforth all Civil Warriors writing about Jo Bell Hood must steep themselves in this wonderful research trove. Here’s just an example. In 1879 Gustavus W. Smith, who commanded the Georgia Militia in the Atlanta Campaign reflected in a letter to Hood o General Johnston’s statement to the Richmond authorities, made July 16, 1864, that he intended the have the militia hold Atlan fortifications while he took hi three infantry corps out of the to maneuver against Sherman. Smith’s comment: “Carrumba! Wouldn’t that have been a kettl of fish?” “Kettle of fish,” indeed!
Stephen Davis and Atlanta newspaperman Bill Hendrick have collaborated on a book, The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the Civil War. It is due this summer from the University of Tennessee Press.
denham Court, Brunswick, GA 315 subject to postage surcharge.
