Booknotes: Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command

New Arrival:

• Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command: Davis, Johnston, Hood and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864 by Dennis B. Conklin, Jr. (Savas Beatie, 2025).

When Gary Ecelbarger's The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta was published back in 2010, it was a major event in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign's military historiography, but no one could have predicted that the following fifteen years would produce an extended run of titles that, taken altogether, amply compensated us for decades of absolute neglect. During that span, numerous books have featured detailed analyses of the Confederate high command divisions that rendered the already tall task of opposing General Sherman's massive Union army group even more challenging. Throwing a new hat into the ring is Dennis Conklin's Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command: Davis, Johnston, Hood and the Atlanta Campaign of 1864.

The volume's introduction reveals that it is Conklin's contention that Jefferson Davis's "poor performance as commander-in-chief" was the factor that "played the primary role in Confederate defeat in the campaign for Atlanta." Thus, his reexamination of the campaign is largely presented "through a lens of Davis's failings" (pg. xiii).

From the description: Conklin's command study "highlights critical flaws in Jefferson Davis’s leadership and the deep mutual distrust between the Confederate president and Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Army of Tennessee, which led them to work at cross purposes. As the campaign slowly unfolded and William T. Sherman’s advancing armies claimed vast swaths of territory, tensions escalated among Davis, Johnston, corps commander John Bell Hood, and Georgia Governor Joseph Brown, further compounding the Confederacy’s strategic woes."

More from the description: "Davis’s initial unease with Johnston’s leadership partly explains why he promoted Hood to command an infantry corps in the principal Western army before the campaign began. Hood, who had honed his skills as a tactical commander under the aggressive Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia, grew increasingly exasperated by Johnston’s repeated withdrawals. This tension, Conklin argues, culminated in their inevitable clash at Cassville—a pivotal dispute driven by inconsistent maps and divergent battlefield philosophies. The ensuing correspondence among key figures in Richmond further eroded Davis’s confidence in Johnston, paving the way for Hood’s eventual rise to command the Army of Tennessee."

The reader who has eagerly consumed all of the recent literature pertaining to this topic might ask what it is that Conklin adds to an already pretty comprehensive body of work. Fortunately, the introduction to Conflict and Controversy in the Confederate High Command provides a good summary of what interpretive differences, or shades of differences, one might expect to find inside. According to the author, this book "will provide a new assessment of Joseph E. Johnston as a commander." It also provides fresh emphasis on "the role of Governor Joseph E. Brown on the outcome of the Atlanta campaign." Additionally featured is "a complete reinterpretation of the affair at Cassville on May 19, 1864." Robert Jenkins's 2024 book The Cassville Affairs: Johnston, Hood, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign, 19 May 1864 is listed in the bibliography, so it appears that Conklin was able to squeeze in consideration of that exhaustive and highly persuasive study into this post-dissertation version of his manuscript. Lastly, Conklin's "characterization of Hood's tenure as commander of the Army of Tennessee in and around Atlanta provides a final point of departure from much of the present historiography" (pp. xiii-xviii). A new voice in all this is always welcome, and I'd say that the above represents a pretty good list for drawing in readers who might be skeptical about investing their time in returning to a topic that has already been heavily revisited in recent years.