Video
The Battle of Resaca: A Discussion with Bob Jenkins
Transcript
Welcome to another virtual program Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. In this program, you will see an interview with author and historian, Robert Jenkins, given by Ranger Jake Boling. Two men are sitting in their respective offices on a recorded zoom session.
(Ranger Jake) Hey ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to welcome you to another virtual program with Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park with our special guest, Mr. Robert Jenkins. As most of you know, have been watching some of our programs this month, we are uh doing specific programs on the Atlanta Campaign. We are really using this virtual platform to our advantage and trying to get creative with how we interpret, uh the major stops along the Atlanta Campaign. To not just you know jump in June with Battle at Kennesaw Mountain. And to do that we reached out. So we we try to be humble at the park and know that we do not know it all. Even though the park is, you know, kind of tasked with maintaining the Atlanta Campaign. We reach out to people that have studied it a lot more and do a great job. And that's what brings us with our special guest, Mr. Robert Jenkins today. So, uh Robert or Bob if I can call you Bob, would you mind just introducing yourself and telling us a little about yourself?
(Bob) Sure. My name is Bob Jenkins. I actually grew up in Shambly, Northeast Atlanta and, uh attended the old Sequoia High School in Durable. That's where uh the boys from Durable that lana rhythm section uh hail from. And, uh went to Georgia Southern undergrad in the 1980s, uh and after college at Southern and then Mercer Law School in Macon. I settled in Dalton in 1990 and have been practicing law in Northwest Georgia for the past 30 years. And um I've always followed my passion since I was fourth, in the fourth grade. Following, uh reading anything I could get my hands on about the Civil War, especially uh the Civil War in Georgia. And so that's, um that's sort of expanded a little bit over the years as I've researched and, um tried to go to various parts of the country, and especially in Georgia, looking at, uh different sites and trying to interpret battlefields.
(Ranger Jake) Awesome. No, that's great. And, uh Bob has also written a couple of books that we carry here and has gone on a couple of lectures here. And, as he's mentioned, he's battlefield tours and helping us interpret these battles and that's why we reached out to him for, uh you know. This next, so the focus on this video is going to be on the Battle of Resaca. So, one of the last programs we did on the Atlanta Campaign was kind of the first opening, the opening action of Rocky Face Ridge. And so, um Bob uh, take us, take us to Resaca and maybe help put it, help us put it in the bigger picture of the Atlanta Campaign if you don't mind.
(Ranger Jake) Sure, sure, happy too, Jake. First of all, you can't tell the story of Dalton without also telling the story of Resaca. um Resaca and Dalton go together much like Richmond and Petersburg go together in the 1864 Overland Campaign. um They're like peanut butter and jelly. Resaca is the Achilles' heel, if you may, of Dalton. In other words, the back door to Dalton further south, 13 miles south on the Western and Atlantic Railroad lies the little village of Resaca which is located at an important railroad bridge over the Oostanaula River which is just north of Calhoun. That is Johnston's, General Johnston's line of supply and, uh and his line of communication um the telegraph line that ran up and down the railroad line. And uh, and they of course sent emails each day back and forth to, uh you know, they had electronic mail in the 1860s. They, uh threw a telegraph of course but um so so Johnston was in communication with the rest of the country and with his President Jefferson Davis in Richmond via the Western and Atlantic Railroad and the telegraph line and he would need four trains a day to supply his army, uh in in Dalton. Later, he would need six trains a day as he moved further south and was reinforced by Polk's Army of Mississippi coming out of Eastern Mississippi and Western uh Alabama. So as far as Resaca, the town originally gets her name um from a Mexican War um location in battle named Resaca de la Palma. And um the, a number of railroad workers back in the 1840s when the Western and Atlantic Railroad, um was being built in the late 1840s had been veterans of the west of the Mexican War a couple of years prior. and uh and as late as um May 4th, Johnston is asking for, he's sending emails to Richmond asking President Davis to send him help. And um and he sends uh finally May 4th he allows General Polk just to start sending reinforcements to Johnston. Polk decides, I'm going to come and bring everybody. So he comes and starts to bring essentially two and a half divisions worth, twelve to fifteen thousand men. They're not going to get to Dalton in time to make a difference, uh to help John, Johnston at Dalton. But they are going to start arriving the 10th the 11th and the 12th of May at Resaca to make a difference there. So Johnston and Dalton will be fighting 40 to 80 more or less, but in Resaca he's going to be fighting 55 -60,000 strong against perhaps a hundred thousand- hundred six thousand federals. And one other thing about Resaca... I'm getting ahead of myself... it's the only battle in the Atlanta Campaign where all of the forces of both armies, uh Sherman having three armies in an army group and Johnston having essentially two armies, Army of Tennessee, Army Mississippi, that third corps later um under Polk, uh at the time it's called Army Mississippi. But that's at Resaca. The only time where you see actual units from all, or all five of those armies, both army groups, fighting one another and within a line of sight uh or within the same zone of each other. For example, at Kennesaw or Atlanta or Peachtree Creek or as research or Jonesborough, um all these other places, Pickett's Mill, New Hope, uh The Hellhole it's called. New Hope, Pickett's Mill in Dallas and that is sort of three, three-way, three battles in one so to speak over a week. Every one of those there are portions of a federal um unit attacking you know, a couple of divisions here, maybe a corps there, and there are portions of a confederate um side defending or attacking. Again maybe a couple of divisions, or but at um Resaca, it's the only place that we find in the Atlanta Campaign that all of both, uh army groups are in combat or in the zone of combat, uh fighting in active um, an active zone together. um Arguably that in Atlanta during the siege, but again in that particular battle where attack is the only one that we see that. It's also the largest concentration of um men uh in Georgia. Bigger in terms of the number of participants than even Chickamauga although Chickamauga was certainly a heavier casualty list. Both sides of Chickamauga had roughly 60,000 um, but but here you've got 60,000 confederates, 110 100, 600-something thousand federals. So it's the largest, actually larger than Gettysburg. uh Too, think about Resaca as essentially a two or three day battle, May the 13th, 14th, and 15th. And that's not even including the May 9, 10, 11 stuff which we can get into. The, the sort of the precursor to Resaca. But, um but three days in that, in combat in Resaca. May 13, 15 ,14, and 15 equate that with Gettysburg July 1, July 2, July 3. There are more people, more soldiers in and around Resaca and the Resaca battlefields. Actually geographically larger than Gettysburg. But that's that's, in essence, Resaca. I haven't talked about some of the specifics of Resaca that a lot of people want to know: what the casualties were there, and we have only estimates. And that's very frustrating to me because I want to be able to put numbers, um actually get numbers um nailed down and I'm working on that and hopefully one day maybe I'll iIll have something but, um because it's out there. We have a lot of muster roll records. We have a lot of uh biographies and and uh uh records that are available to us and we just need to dig for it and put it together. um Resaca probably had about 3,000 confederate losses in the two or three days of fighting between the 13th and 15th of May. That's not including the nine May stuff. um and Resaca had about five thousand perhaps federal uh casualties during that same three days spans, more if you add ones that were casualties between May 9 and May 11. um And I'll shut up. Before I leave, I want to give you some reading. um If you want to read further on Resaca, this is a Blue and Gray magazine article that was done by Steve Davis, Dr. Steve Davis. It's an excellent read, uh complete with maps and a driving guide. There's a beautiful new park that opened about five years ago uh at the Battle of Resaca. The Gordon County uh and Friends of Resaca groups um um run that. It's a state park, but it's it's well a county uh maintained and run park uh right off the interstate exit at Resaca. um There is a book uh by Dr. Phil Secrest uh who's uh just deceased now, I believe. And uh, but this one is a Mercer University Press Battle of Resaca. It's available at the Kennesaw Mountain um bookstore. uh There is um a couple of other reads, uh War Like the Thunderbolt by um a Coca-Cola attorney, uh Russ Bonds uh Russell. Bob also wrote the book, uh Chasing the Great Locomotive Chase. This is a good read. um And then kind of the treatise on the western campaign uh the the Georgia Campaign is called Decision in the West by Albert Castell and it's a great. And I'm overlooking uh the work of uh, yes the classic, uh 1992 but it's it's still all true, uh series and it's very very well done. And there's a chapter length on Resaca um uh Bill Escape. uh uh Mr. Scafee, uh or Escape is deceased now but he did a wonderful. He got us on the map in Georgia in the late 80s and early 90s. But his works uh cartography, uh he was an engineer and uh used that skill and his passion for Civil War. uh And so he has a great great work. And then there's one from a federal, uh those are all neutral perspectives. This is the federal perspective called They All Wore a Star by uh Robert Miller that's also available. All of these out that I've shown you I think are available at the Kennesaw Mountain bookstore. um and um This one is about the uh 20th Corps, the star division of the corps in the federal army. Had a different star, red for first division, white for second division, blue for third division. So red, white, and blue. But um but They All Wore a Star are the guys that captured the abandoned corporate battery at uh four gun Confederate battery at Resaca. And um and so anyway that's a little bit about uh Resaca and some of the reading materials available. Thank you for having me today.
(Ranger Jake) Oh no, thank you so much, uh Bob. That that was awesome. We really appreciate all your help with this. Bob and I have been having a lot of conversations kind of behind the scenes and he's been providing us with a lot of materials and research for later. And, of course, Bob himself has some books out that is also available in our bookstore. We don't want to jump the gun too much because we're hoping to jump, uh tagging Bob a little bit later down the Atlantic Campaign for a few of the other battles that he's written on, notably, teaser, Peachtree Creek. Hopefully we can get together again for that. But um I want to say thank you again for taking your time. uh Bob and I are uh, you know, we're, we've been running crazy. We're both sitting in our offices right now and we decided, we said, you know let's go ahead and do this. Let's knock it out. And and I really appreciate your time. It was concise, really engaging, and hopefully, we'll see a little bit later on down the Atlanta Campaign, sir. So we thank you and we'll catch up with you again.
Description
In this short interview with author and Civil War historian Bob Jenkins, park ranger Jake Boling digs into some of the key points of the Battle of Resaca. This video is made up of excerpts from a much longer interview.
Duration
13 minutes, 5 seconds
Credit
NPS Video /J. Boling
Date Created
05/21/2021
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