Critic’s Corner

By Stephen Davis · Originally published May-June 2026 · pp. 63

Bull’s narrative of his service in the campaign and in the Federal occupation of Atlanta, May 13-November 15, runs about 30% of his entire memoir. This alone makes Soldiering one of the most reliable and informative sources for those of us who write about the war in Georgia. Editor Bauer does not add much; his explanatory notes are infrequent and brief. When Bull relates the attack of Stewart’s Confederate division on the second day of Resaca, Bauer adds not a word. And he is not free from error. Sherman did not lose 6,800 men at Resaca. He identifies (and indexes) the battle in which Bull’s regiment fought on May 25 as that of Dallas; it is New Hope Church. Bull got it right, terming the action at New Hope “the Hell Hole.” Because it draws on his wartime diary, Bull’s reminiscence is unusually dependable as to fact. “On May 25th the weather changed,” he writes, “and I find recorded in my diary that for twenty-one days it stormed every day.” Instead of describing military movements during this time, the author usually keeps his focus on “soldiering.” Example: “One of the hardest conditions we had to face in the service, when in the field, was the lack of opportunity to keep clean.” The men’s heavy woolen clothing took much time to dry; Bull states that they needed a full day to do their laundry, and such days were rare during an active campaign. On the other hand, preparing food could be a speedy exercise. By this time, the veterans had become efficient cooks: “It was the work of only a few minutes to make our fire and boil our coffee and fry our pork.” From time to time, the New Yorker offers up tactical pearls. On the afternoon of May 19, as Federals pressed up toward the Rebels’ line near Cassville, Northern skirmishers encountered musketry from sharpshooters posted in the town’s buildings. I’ve re-checked Castel and McMurry: this is the first time I’ve seen this. Bull’s account of the action at Kolb’s Farm, June 22, near Kennesaw Mountain, is notably detailed, running for six pages. The 123rd was one of two Federal skirmisher regiments that made initial contact with Hood’s troops before they launched their assault on Hooker’s lines. Readers of this column may recall my recounting an incident related by John Hennessy in Return to Bull Run (1993), how at Second Manassas, West Virginia, Capt. David Gibson foretold his death in battle. We see the same strange incident in Soldiering. On May 25, a friend, Jim Cummings, approached Bull and confided that he would not survive the next battle. Bull, of course, tried to reassure him, saying, “we all had such ‘warnings’ at times but they never came true.” This one did. That night, after the fighting at New Hope had ended, Bull’s regiment was lying prone in the front lines when it started raining. Skirmishing continued in the darkness, yet at one point Cummings stood up. “Jim,” Bull called out, “why do you stand and expose yourself?” “I don’t think there is any more danger in standing here than lying in the mud,” Cummings answered; “I have had enough of that.” A minute later Jim Cummings was shot in the head. He died later that night. After Johnston’s army retreated across the Chattahoochee, Sherman’s forces closed in on Atlanta. On the morning of July 20, Thomas’ Army of the Cumberland crossed

Peachtree Creek. Bull states that his superiors did not expect the Rebels to attack that day: “no orders were given to put our Brigade in position to defend itself in case of attack.” This is one of the clearest confirmations of the Federals’ lack of preparation for the surprise assault Gen. John B. Hood was to launch at Peachtree Creek. When the Johnnies attacked, Bull was in the thick of the fight, firing seventy rounds in the three-hour engagement. Union artillery helped repel the enemy assault; its gunfire was so loud, Bull remembered, that his comrades’ hearing did not return for several days. During Sherman’s semi-siege of Atlanta, Bull’s regiment was positioned in the XX Corps lines north of the city. He could plainly see the Confederate fort ahead, astride the Peachtree Road (now the site of the Fox Theatre downtown). Sherman did not order his troops to attack such strong positions, but from time to time, both sides sallied against each other’s works. Bull describes one such sortie, July 27, when the 13th New Jersey stormed across no man’s land to take out some Rebel sharpshooters perched in a building. “The pickets were soon driven back, and the sharpshooters with them, two of the houses were burned, and the ridge cleared with the capture of thirty-three Johnnies,” Bull declared, affirming that “while it was a small affair, it was exciting while it lasted.” When Sherman determined to break his semi-siege of Atlanta by marching most of his troops around toward Jonesboro, the XX Corps did not participate. It withdrew to the Chattahoochee bridges, dug in and waited till Sherman’s column broke the Macon & Western Railroad below Atlanta on August 31. After Hood’s army had abandoned the city the next day, XX Corps troops occupied it on September 2. Bull gives the two-and-a-half-month Federal occupation just a few pages before turning his attention to the “March to the Sea,” which began on November 15, 1864. His account of the event is just as spritely and engaging as his of the Atlanta Campaign, but I’ve run out of space. Maybe I’ll pick up in another column and finish the story, which Bull carries all the way to the Grand Review of Union troops in Washington, May 24, 1865. Writing in Civil War Times Illustrated, April 1978, Robert D. Hoffsommer trilled, “Sergeant Rice Bull…wrote a memoir that constitutes the most engrossing narrative of a soldier’s Civil War service that this reviewer has read in many a moon.” Think about that, and about how dull many Civil War memoirs can be, and you’ll realize why Rice C. Bull’s Soldiering remains such a treasure. Stephen Davis has been writing about the Civil War

for over 50 years. He is author of Texas Brigadier to the

Fall of Atlanta: John Bell Hood (2019) and Into Tennessee & Failure: John Bell Hood (2020). With Bill Hendrick he wrote The Atlanta Intelligencer Covers the Civil War (2022). His book, The National Tribune Remembers the Atlanta Campaign: Battles, Skirmishes, Marches and Camp Life as Recalled by the Union Veterans Themselves, was published by Savas Beatie in 2025.