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John Bell Hood. (National Archives)
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Lt. Gen. John
Bell Hood
Youngest Confederate General's Rise And Fall Were Meteoric
By Bethanne Kelly Patrick
Military.com Columnist
On battlefields at Second Manassas, Antietam and Fredricksburg, young John Bell Hood distinguished himself as a brigade and division commander willing to go wherever he sent his Confederate troops. In 1862, the 33-year-old Hood became the eighth and youngest Confederate general of full rank, after a swift rise through the ranks.
Hood had graduated from West Point near the bottom of his 1853 class, which included future Union foes James B. McPherson and John Schofield. After two years' service in California during the Indian wars, Hood was assigned to a new cavalry regiment in Texas under the command of Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee.
A Kentuckian by birth, Hood threw in his lot with his beloved Lee in 1861, resigning his first lieutenant's commission in the U.S. Army and joining the Confederate Army as a major. He was soon given command of Lee's "shock troops," known as Hood's Texas Brigade, who gained a reputation for hard fighting and reckless courage as the war progressed.
Hood lost the use of an arm on the second day at Gettysburg and lost a leg to amputation after the Battle of Chickamauga. Thereafter, he had to be tied to the saddle in order to fight, dosed heavily with laudanum. His devotion to the Confederacy never wavered, but his abilities and judgment were in decline. After a convalescence in Richmond, Hood joined the Army of Tennessee under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston as it moved to counter Sherman's assault on Atlanta. Hood failed to coordinate effectively with his fellow corps commanders -- and when Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston with Hood, things went from bad to worse. Hood proved more aggressive and forceful, as Davis had expected, but these traits resulted in a series of disjointed counterattacks. Sherman's stranglehold on the city tightened, and on Sept. 1, 1864, Hood and his corps were obliged to evacuate Atlanta.
Hood then began to advance through Tennessee, and Schofield slowly withdrew before him, repulsing his attacks at Franklin and at Nashville. Following that disastrous defeat, Hood resigned his command in January 1865 and surrendered that May at Natchez, Miss.
After the war, he became a Louisiana merchant and prospered before losing his family and his own life in a yellow fever epidemic in 1879.
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