John Bell Hood, the Confederate general who is the namesake of the most populous U.S. military base in the world (and who apparently wasn’t much of the general) is the focus for today’s #stampoftheday.
Hood isn’t on the stamp itself, which is an 8-cent stamp, issued in 1893, picturing General William Tecumsah Sherman, the Union general whose capture of Atlanta and subsequent “March Through Georgia” in 1864 greatly undermined the Confederacy’s ability to keep waging war.
Bell is connected to this stamp, and this day, because on July 17, 1864, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America put him in charge of the Army of Tennessee. Hood, who replaced General Joseph E. Johnson, who had been unable to stop Sherman’s forces as they marched along the route of the Western and Atlantic Railroad line, from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Marietta, Georgia. Throughout that march, a pattern was played and replayed: Johnston, whose forces were outnumbered, took up a defensive position, Sherman marched to outflank the Confederate defenses, and Johnston, retreated again.
In choosing Hood, who was the youngest person to command an army during the war, Davis choose someone who, according to Wikipedia, “had a reputation for bravery and aggressiveness that sometimes bordered on recklessness.” The entry adds that while he arguably was “one of the Confederacy’s best brigade and division commanders in the CSA, Hood apparently did less well as he was promoted to lead larger, independent commands late in the war.” (This, apparently, makes him a poster child for the Peter Principal, which is that everyone in a hierarchical organization gets promoted until they reach their level of incompetence.)
Trained at West Point, Hood served as a junior officer in both the infantry and cavalry of the antebellum U.S. Army in California and Texas. At the start of the Civil War, he offered his services to his adopted state of Texas. In a September 1864 letter to General Sherman, Hood explained he was fighting for the Confederacy because Sherman and his troops “came into our country with your Army, avowedly for the purpose of subjugating free white men, women, and children, and not only intend to rule over them, but you make negroes your allies, and desire to place over us an inferior race, which we have raised from barbarism to its present position, which is the highest ever attained by that race, in any country in all time.”
Hood quickly achieved his reputation for aggressive and effective leadership as a brigade commander in the army of Robert E. Lee during the Seven Days Battles in 1862, after which he was promoted to division command. He led a division under James Longstreet in the campaigns of 1862-63. At the Battle of Gettysburg, where he led the unsuccessful attack on Little Round Top, he was severely wounded, rendering his left arm useless for the rest of his life. Transferred with many of Longstreet’s troops to the Western Theater, Hood led a massive assault into a gap in the Union line at the Battle of Chickamauga, but was wounded again, requiring the amputation of his right leg. While recuperating in Richmond, he met and befriended Jefferson Davis.
Despite his injuries, Hood rejoined the Confederate Army of Tennessee, which had about 50,000 soldiers, and as Sherman, who was commanding a force of about 100,000 troops, advanced, Hood, bypassing official communication channels, started sending the government in Richmond letters very critical of Johnston’s conduct. Davis sent another general to Atlanta to investigate. After meeting with Johnston, the general interviewed Hood who gave him a letter that branded Johnston as being both ineffective and weak-willed. Johnston’s biographer, Craig L. Symonds, judges that Hood’s letter “stepped over the line from unprofessional to outright subversive.” Civil War historian Steven E. Woodworth wrote that Hood was “letting his ambition get the better of his honesty” because “the truth was that Hood actually had often told Johnston to retreat.” Davis decided to relieve Johnston and, bypassing at least one more senior official, chose Hood to lead the forces.
Hood conducted the remainder of the Atlanta Campaign with the strong aggressive actions for which he had become famous. He launched four major attacks that summer, starting almost immediately with an attack along Peachtree Creek. All of the offensives failed, particularly at the Battle of Ezra Church, with significant Confederate casualties. (Estimates are that about 3,000 Confederate soldiers died and another 32,000 were wounded or deserted, and that casualties doubled after Hood took command). Finally, on September 2, 1864, Hood evacuated the city of Atlanta, burning as many military supplies and installations as possible. In the course of the campaign.
The fall of Atlanta was especially noteworthy because it came in the midst of the 1864 presidential election. Former Union general George B. McClellan, a Democrat, was running against President Lincoln, on a peace platform calling for a truce with the Confederacy. The capture of Atlanta and Hood’s burning of military facilities as he evacuated were extensively covered by Northern newspapers, significantly boosting Northern morale, and Lincoln was re-elected by a significant margin.
Although he was disappointed in Hood’s performance, Davis did not replace him. Hood launched an effort to attack Sherman’s supply and communications lines between Chattanooga and Atlanta, with the hope that he could draw Sherman into a decisive battle. But Sherman kept his focus on his “March to the Sea” to Savannah. In fact, Sherman supposedly said, “If he [Hood] will go to the Ohio River, I’ll give him rations….my business is down south.” And Hood’s effort ultimately ended with a major defeat of his forces in the Battle of Nashville in late 1864. Hood was relieved of his command about a month later.
After the war, he moved to Louisiana and became cotton broker and worked as president of a life insurance company. During the postwar period, he began a memoir, “Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies.” Though rough, incomplete and not published until after his death, this work served to justify his actions, particularly in response to what he considered misleading or false accusations made by General Johnston, and to unfavorable portrayals in General Sherman’s memoirs. He and his family died during a yellow fever epidemic in the winter of 1878-1879.
Early in World War II, the Army saw a need for a wide-open space to test and train tank destroyers, armored fighting vehicles designed specifically to engage enemy tanks. The army found an appropriate site in Kileen, Texas which is about 70 miles north of Austin and about 160 miles south of Dallas. The camp, which was named after Hood who had begun the Civil War commanding a brigade in Texas, opened in September 1942. It initially consisted of about 250 square miles and housed almost 90,000 soldiers. It now covers more than 332 square miles and houses about 45,000 soldier and almost 9,000 civilian employees, which makes it the most populous military installation in the world.
So let’s step back for a second. The most populous military base in the US system is named after a general who thought that Blacks were an inferior race. That same general displayed questionable judgement as a commander. Moreover, his critics contend he engaged in behavior that was, at minimum, unprofessional, and, at worse, was subversive.
I’m not a soldier but this seems like an odd choice of someone to honor in the first place. And it seems equally odd that anyone, particularly a president, would still be defending that decision today. But what do I know?
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.