John Bell Hood: Cork Leg, Shattered Arm and the Youngest Army Commander

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John Bell Hood grew up in Kentucky, the son of a doctor who opposed a military career, and reached West Point through an uncle, finishing near the bottom of his class with 196 demerits in his final year against a limit of 200. A Comanche arrow pierced his left hand in Texas in the late 1850s. Joining the Confederacy for Texas, he broke a Union line during the Seven Days Battles and wept at his casualties. At Gettysburg he asked to flank rather than attack frontally, was refused, and had his left arm ruined by shrapnel. At Chickamauga he lost his right leg just below the hip, and his soldiers raised over $3,000 for a cork prosthetic smuggled through the blockade.

Strapped to his saddle, Hood wrote to Richmond criticizing Joseph E. Johnston's retreats and at 33 replaced him, becoming the youngest army commander on either side. Former classmates warned William T. Sherman that Hood would attack regardless of odds, and he launched four costly assaults around Atlanta before abandoning the city. In letters to Sherman he declared a belief in white supremacy and anger at the Union's use of Black soldiers. His march into Tennessee led to Franklin, where he sent troops across nearly two miles of open ground without artillery support, and to defeat at Nashville by George Henry Thomas, his former West Point instructor. In New Orleans he and his wife had 11 children before yellow fever killed them both in 1879.

• A surgeon sent Hood's amputated leg along in the ambulance, expecting the general to die.
• In Richmond he pursued South Carolina socialite Buck Preston, who would not give him a clear answer.
• His troops sang a bitter parody of The Yellow Rose of Texas after the Tennessee campaign.
• Yellow fever killed Hood, his wife and his eldest daughter within one week, and their 10 orphans went to seven families.
• Private Sam Watkins later wrote that the war left nothing of Hood whole but a fearless heart, and Fort Hood was renamed after 2020 legislation.