The Mockingbird's Ballad

The winter had been hard and the spring was not any easier and much busier. The summer was more of the same, lots more. General Joseph E. Johnson's assumption of command in late December 1863 had brought change. Joseph Wheeler was retained as chief of the now Army of Tennessee (changed in name from the Army of Mississippi under General Bragg). A reorganization of responsibilities, territory and strategy had been put in place. Johnston, a master academic military leader, assumed that Grant and Sherman would be intent on the destruction of the Confederate Army and its' will to fight. Territory, he assumed, would not be as vital as the grinding down of the rebel military. So give them territory not chance destruction of the second most important army except Lee's. He planned accordingly; no full "big" offenses for his command. It would be jab, feint, wait; jab, pester, move and wait. Give ground to get Union casualties.

Maneuver and rabbit punch. Don't get into a full blown "great battle". No gambles, just patient, technical hide and seek. The fifty-seven-year-old Johnston, native of Virginia and 1829 graduate of West Point had thirty-two years of impressive service in the US Army before Fort Sumner. At the Civil War's opening he was a brigadier general and chief quartermaster in the old army.

Johnston knew his numbers - 63,408 soldiers including some 8,000 cavalry under Wheeler, with 189 pieces of artillery could not out-brawl William T. Sherman's muscle bound Yankee army.

Sherman was a forty-four-year-old Ohio native and as a nine-year-old orphan had been raised by power politician, Thomas Ewing. He was an 1840 graduate of the US Military Academy. He had given up the military in the 1850's to make a fortune in California. He had not accomplished that goal. At the war's beginning, he was superintendent of the Louisiana Military Academy which later became Louisiana State University. "Cump" Sherman had turned down a Confederate commission. Occasionally a bit insane, Grant valued his abilities. He was a hell of a fighter.

Sherman's 97,797 force was divided into three prongs under George Thomas, James B. McPherson and John M. Schofield. Three to two, it was Sherman over Johnston.

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"Yes, Major, whatever it takes. It must be done," General Wheeler said to his chief-of-staff, Major Stevenson. Wheeler's foot was healed now and his spirit was driven. The actions of 1863 had worn, beaten depleted and nearly demoralized his cavalry of the Army of Tennessee. They had near constant action. There was a new "Pharaoh in Eqypt" and General Wheeler was going to be about responding to his edicts - refit, retrain, restore and re-inspire the outnumbered Confederate army. Wheeler took to his part of making that happen with a sprinter's energy. As he had with the 19th Alabama infantry, he worked tirelessly to get his boys in shape. For usually fourteen hours a day, six days a week the little general in his oversized black hat was all over the Confederate cavalry encampment near Dalton, Georgia. Major Stevenson was with him half the time. The major was the only one who worked longer than the general. He brought the general his coffee in the darkness of before sunrise and finished his duties after the general had gone to a few hours rest near midnight.