John Bell Hood - in Memoriam

In Memoriam

John Bell Hood is interred in the Hennen family tomb at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. He is memorialized by Hood County in Texas and the U.S. Army installation, Fort Hood in central Texas.

Stephen Vincent Benét's poem Army of Northern Virginia included a poignant passage about Hood:

Yellow-haired Hood with his wounds and his empty sleeve,

Leading his Texans, a Viking shape of a man,

With the thrust and lack of craft of a berserk sword,

All lion, none of the fox.

When he supersedes

Joe Johnston, he is lost, and his army with him,

But he could lead forlorn hopes with the ghost of Ney.

His bigboned Texans follow him into the mist.

Who follows them?

Private Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee Infantry "Maury Greys" wrote the following epitaph to Hood, published in various editions of his memoirs Company Aytch:

But the half of brave Hood's body molders here.

The rest was lost in honor's bold career.

Though fame and limbs he scattered all around;

Yet still though mangled was with glory crowned.

For ever ready with his blood to part,

War left him nothing whole, except his heart.

In Bell I. Wiley's 1943 book, The Life of Johnny Reb, the Common Soldier of the Confederacy, he recounts that after the defeats in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign, Hood's troops sang with wry humor a verse about him as part of the song The Yellow Rose of Texas.

My feet are torn and bloody,

My heart is full of woe,

I'm going back to Georgia

To find my uncle Joe .

You may talk about your Beauregard,

You may sing of Bobby Lee,

But the gallant Hood of Texas

He played hell in Tennessee.