Hooker’s Despatch Evidently Misinterpreted
I do not remember that I was “very angry” about Hooker’s despatch, as General Sherman says (Vol. II, page 59), though I think Sherman was. Indeed, he had more reason to be angry than I; for the fact, and evidence of it, were so plain that the Twenty-third Corps had done its duty as ordered, that if Hooker’s despatch was meant to imply the contrary, which I doubt, that was a cause of anger to the general-in-chief, whom he had unnecessarily alarmed, rather than to me, who had no apprehension of being suspected by the general-in-chief of having failed in my duty.
In fact, I do not recollect having seen Hooker’s despatch at all until I saw it quoted in Sherman’s “Memoirs.” My recollection is that Sherman told me, on his visiting us the next day, that he had received during the battle a despatch from Hooker to the effect that his flank was unprotected. In reply to this I explained to General Sherman where my troops had been during the engagement, and showed him the dead of the 14th Kentucky lying on the advanced ground they had held while Hascall’s division was forming. I believe that if I had seen Hooker’s despatch at the time, I should have interpreted it then, as I do now, as referring, not to his immediate right, but to the extreme right of the line. I do not recollect any words, “pretty sharp” or otherwise, between General Hooker and myself on that subject, and do not believe it was ever mentioned between us. In short, I do not think I was present at the interview in the “little church” described by General Sherman (Sherman’s “Memoirs,” Vol. II, page 59). I have an impression that General Hascall was there, and that it is to him General Sherman refers. I believe the Kolb House difficulty was almost entirely a misapprehension between General Sherman and General Hooker. Why this mistake was not explained at the time or afterward I do not know, unless it was that the feelings of those two gentlemen toward each other were unfavorable to any such explanation.
I will add that General Hooker and I were together both before and after the opening of the Kolb House engagement. He knew perfectly well where my troops were, and what they were doing, and it seems to me utterly impossible that he can have meant by his despatch what General Sherman understood it to mean.
My despatches of that date to Sherman show that I had no special apprehension even in respect to our extreme right flank, and that I doubted the report that one whole corps was in our front.
My orders on that day,( 2) show that Hascall was up with Hooker at the intersection of the Marietta and Powder Spring roads, near the Kolb House, as early as 3 P. M., and that Cox was ordered up with three brigades at 4:15 P. M., before the assault began. Cox arrived with the head of his column during the enemy’s attack, and was directed by me in person where and how to put his troops in position. Hence I think I must be right in the inference that in Hooker’s despatch to Sherman of 5:30 P. M., the words “our extreme right flank” must have been intended to refer to my extreme right, and not his. He was simply unduly apprehensive for the safety of the extreme right flank of the army, not of his own corps in particular. My report to General Sherman at 9 P. M. simply shows that I did not share that apprehension; that, instead of believing there were “three entire corps in front of us,” I doubted whether there was even all of Hood’s corps.
General Hooker’s habit of swinging off from the rest of General Thomas’s army, and getting possession of roads designated for McPherson or for me, was a common subject of remark between Sherman, Thomas, McPherson, and myself; and his motive was understood to be, as General Sherman states, to get command of one of the armies, in the event of battle, by virtue of his senior commission. But the subject was never mentioned between General Hooker and me, and he never even approximated to giving me an order. No doubt he entertained the opinion that he would have a right to give orders to either General McPherson or myself under certain circumstances likely to arise, for General Sherman entertained the same opinion. What General Thomas thought on the question I never knew. My own opinion and McPherson’s were decidedly the contrary.