John Bell
Hood was born in Owingsville, Kentucky, on 1st June, 1831. He studied
at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point
before joining the United States Army and
seeing action against Native Americans.
On the outbreak of the American Civil War
Hood joined the Confederate Army and
was given command of the Texas Brigade. He led his troops at the 2nd
Battle of Bull Run (August, 1862) and Antietam
(September, 1862). Promoted to the rank of major general he fought
at Fredericksburg (December,
1862) before being badly wounded at Gettysburg
(July, 1863). He recovered to take part in Chickamauga
(September, 1863) but was again wounded and this time lost his right
leg.
On 17th July President Jefferson Davis
promoted him to general and he took over from Joseph
E. Johnston as commander of the Army of Tennessee. Hood immediately
went on the attack and hit George H. Thomas
and his men at Peachtree Creek. Hood was badly beaten and lost 2,500
men. Two days later he took on William
Sherman at the Battle of Atlanta
and lost another 8,000 men. By 31st August, Confederate forces began
to evacuate Atlanta and by early September the city came under the
control of the Union Army.
Hood continued to adopt an aggressive policy in Tennessee and despite
heavy losses surrounded George H. Thomas
at Nashville. On 15th December, 1864, Thomas broke out of Nashville
and hammered Hood's army. Thomas captured 4,462 soldiers and those
still left alive fled into Mississippi and Alabama. The Confederate
Army in Tennessee had now been completely destroyed.
Hood from his command and was demoted to the rank of lieutenant general.
He was captured by the Union Army on
31st May, 1865 at Natchez. After the war Hood he started a business
in New Orleans but it was financially
unsuccessful. John Bell Hood died of yellow
fever on 30th August, 1879. Both his wife and eldest daughter
in the epidemic.
(1)
Mary
Boykin Chesnut, Richmond,
Virginia, diary entry (1st January, 1864)
General Hood's an awful flatterer - I mean an awkward flatterer. I
told him to praise my husband to someone else, not to me. He ought
to praise me to somebody who would tell my husband, and then praise
my husband to another person who would tell me. Man and wife are too
much one person; to wave a compliment straight in the face of one
another is not graceful.
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