Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. French

Sir: I have placed the forces under my command in such positions that you are surrounded; and to avoid a needless effusion of blood, I call on you to surrender your forces at once, and unconditionally. Five minutes will be allowed you to decide. Should you accede to this, you will be treated in the most honorable manner as prisoners of war.

I have the honor to be very respectfully yours,

    S. G. French,
    Major General Commanding Forces C. S.

On the same leaf is a facsimile of Gen. Corse's reply to my note, and it reads:

    Headquarters Fourth Division, }
    Fifteenth Army Corps, 8:30 A.M., October 5, 1864. }

Maj. Gen. G. S. French, C. S. A.:

Your communication demanding surrender of my command I acknowledge receipt of, and respectfully reply that we are prepared for the "needless effusion of blood" whenever it is agreeable to you.

I am very respectfully, your obedient servant,

    John M. Corse,
    Major General Commanding Forces U. S.

Let us investigate this matter.

The facsimile of my letter is true, no doubt about that; but we have also the facsimile of the reply made by Corse which was sent me, and by me never received; and in the face of that Corse "declared he never knew that I did not receive it, or that it was not delivered to Maj. Sanders, the bearer of the flag of truce," until so informed by Joseph M. Brown, whose guest he was when he came to Atlanta with the artist De Thulstrup to have the battle painted; and he further told him: "I took the note (French's) and read it. It made me mad, because from what I could see of his forces, and what I knew of mine, I believed that I had about as big a force as he; hence considered the summons a superfluous piece of bravado. I sat down on a log, and pulling my notebook out of my pocket, wrote the reply across the face of one of the pages, which I tore out and handed to my staff officer with instructions to take it back to the bearer of the summons."

Not finding Maj. Sanders, of course he returned in a few minutes and gave Corse the note.

Next William Ludlow (now a general in the United States army), in his address to the Michigan Commandery, Loyal Legion, at Detroit, on April 2, 1891 (page 20), says: "Corse did reply; he wrote his answer on the top of a neighboring stump."

Then Hedley (page 223) says of Corse: "His every pound of flesh and blood was that of a hero: his eye flashed as if lighted with a Promethean spark; and his chest swelled with angry defiance to the hideous threat implied in the summons to surrender! 'Capt. Flint,' said he, 'answer this!' so Capt. Flint seated himself upon a tree stump and wrote the reply."

I care not who wrote the reply to my note; I only desire to know who kept it concealed for over twenty years, and then produced it, and, together with mine, authoritatively gave them to Hedley to photograph and publish side by side.

If Corse had it hid away, or knew where it was, then he must have been mistaken when he declared to Joseph M. Brown that he never knew that I had not received it. Besides, that I received no reply was reported officially and well known.

As regards the "hideous threat implied" in my note, it has been left to the hero of Allatoona to discover it for the first time, although the like and similar expressions have been used by many commanders in the years long past, and escaped the critical acumen of those to whom they were sent to find an implied threat therein.

No one except Ludlow, so far as I am aware, has ever published that Maj. Sanders was fired on by Corse's soldiers when approaching under a flag of truce. I made it known on an inclosure in my official report.

Adjutant Hedley says "the heroic defense of Allatoona is almost as famous as the 'charge of the Light Brigade,' and far more momentous in its results."

There was nothing momentous pending on it. It was Hood's ignorance of the enemy's position that caused the battle; it should never have been made. We had nothing to gain; we would not remain there, nor had I any means to carry stores away with me. It is well known what Hood ordered us to do: "fill up the Allatoona cut, and burn the bridge over the Etowah river," and join him on the 6th.

I here repeat that the one million rations of bread in Allatoona were not a factor in Sherman's march to Savannah. He refused to repair the railroad we had destroyed, and sent the rations north of the Etowah. Subsequently, however, he did put the road in condition so as to send the sick and wounded, etc., north from Atlanta. The war records show he had in Atlanta 3,000,000 rations and eight thousand beeves. For 65,000 men eighteen days were required 1,170,000 rations. On the march the most difficult problem Sherman had to solve was what to do with his superabundant rations.

Let us examine Hedley on this question. He writes, first: The regular commissaries and quartermasters foraged for the regular commands off the country; but "under the color of the license given by Sherman's orders every regiment in the army sent out an independent foraging party, whose duty it was to see that its particular command was furnished with all the DELICACIES the country afforded. These men were the most venturesome in the army;" they "took great risks and experienced startling adventures… If the negroes told the bummers stories of cruelty they had suffered, or hostility to the Union, etc., the injury was avenged by the torch." So on the twaddle of negroes these bummers, acting as judges, without appeal, executed their own sentences.

The rehearsal of these scenes afforded amusement in Washington, and "Marching through Georgia" is still a favorite hymn to the sanctimonious people who delight in cruelty to innocent women and little children.

"The bummer was a wily diplomat and learned all that was to be known of the neighbor farther down the road whom he expected to raid the next day… The bummer drew a line between the rich and the poor."

Speaking of one bummer, as an example of others, he writes: "About midnight his voice was heard arousing the camp; he had six animals, horses and mules, strung together with a motley improvised harness made of odds and ends… He bestrode one of the wheelers, and swayed in the saddle from the effects of apple-jack; his wagon was an immense box of the Tennessee pattern, high at each end, low in the middle, similar to an old Dutch galiot, loaded to the guards with the choicest of wines and liquors; and by chance there was in the cargo a box of glass goblets… Samples of the wines were sent to corps headquarters, pronounced excellent, with the intimation that a further supply would be acceptable, etc.," and so on the chapter reads to the end.

The bummers generally obliged the negroes to improvise teams, and in wagons brought their stealings into camp. "They ranged over a section between sixty to eighty miles in breadth." (Page 272.) The writer pursues a middle line: he tells us nothing about the distress of the thousands of women and children left homeless by these cruel wretches, nor does he see any of watches, plate, and jewelry stolen; and now here we are, in the last years of the century, told by the "Grand Army of the Republic" that we must not tell any of these matters to our children in our school histories.

I am now about to close my account of this battle and the false statements regarding it. I have written it because of Gen. Corse's willfully making an erroneous statement toward the close of his report about driving the division away, and because of his (so-called) famous dispatch, the gospel hymn, and the shouts of victory, congratulatory orders and admiration parties; because of Hood's statement about orders given me – all of which have thrown a glamour over the conflict, making things seem to be what they were not.

I have endeavored to dispel the illusion, remove the glamour, uncover the hidden truth to him who will seek it.

The "holding on" power of the Federal soldier in this battle was remarkable, and his faith commendable. From 11 A.M. to near the close of day they were pent up inside and around in the ditch of a small fort in such numbers that they lay on one another, sat on each other, stood on others dead or alive, praying for relief. There they stayed till, in the silence of the gloaming, they ventured out and "had the advantage of the enemy and maintained it" – without opposition, for the enemy had long been gone away!

In what I have written respecting this battle I have made no charge against the Union soldier of the want of courage or the desire to surrender.

It is they who furnish the evidence of their distress, refusal to man the parapets, and desire to surrender under the long delay and disappointments of the so-often-promised aid. Amidst all their environments, let none condemn them without cause.

The Soldiers' Grave

BY JOSEPH M. BROWN

[In Allatoona Pass, by the Western and Atlantic railroad, is the grave of an unknown soldier who fell in the battle there October 5, 1864.]

In the railroad cut there's a lonely grave
Which the trackmen hold sacred to care;
They have piled round it stones, and for it they save
Every flower, when their task calls them there.

Away from the home of his love,
Away from his sweetheart or wife,
Away from his mother, whose prayers went above,
He gave for his country his life.

We know not if, wearing the blue, he came
'Neath the "bright, starry banner" arrayed,
And, dying, that it o'er the mountains of fame
Might forever in triumph wave prayed;

Or we know not if, 'neath the "bonnie blue flag,"
He rushed forth, his country's defender,
Valiant, smote those who her cause down would drag.
And only to death did surrender.

That God only knows; and so in his hand
Let the secret unfathomed e'er rest;
But this we know, that he died for his land,
And the banner he thought was the best.

Heav'n pity the dear ones who prayed his return,
Heav'n bless them, and shield them from woes,
Heav'n grant o'er his grave to melt anger stern,
And make brothers of those who were foes!