The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War

the

Atlanta

 Savannah 

Camp igns

1864

and
CMH Pub 75–13

Cover: Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, c. 1888, by Thure de Thulstrup 

(courtesy of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park)
by

J. Britt McCarley

Center of Military History

United States Army

Washington, D.C., 2014

the Atlanta

 Savannah 

Camp igns

1864

and

5

Introduction

Although over one hundred fifty years have passed since the 

start of the American Civil War, that titanic conflict continues to 

matter. The forces unleashed by that war were immensely destructive because of the significant issues involved: the existence of the 

Union, the end of slavery, and the very future of the nation. The 

war remains our most contentious, and our bloodiest, with over 

six hundred thousand killed in the course of the four-year struggle. 

Most civil wars do not spring up overnight, and the American 

Civil War was no exception. The seeds of the conflict were sown 

in the earliest days of the republic’s founding, primarily over the 

existence of slavery and the slave trade. Although no conflict can 

begin without the conscious decisions of those engaged in the 

debates at that moment, in the end, there was simply no way to 

paper over the division of the country into two camps: one that 

was dominated by slavery and the other that sought first to limit 

its spread and then to abolish it. Our nation was indeed “half slave 

and half free,” and that could not stand. 

Regardless of the factors tearing the nation asunder, the 

soldiers on each side of the struggle went to war for personal 

reasons: looking for adventure, being caught up in the passions 

and emotions of their peers, believing in the Union, favoring 

states’ rights, or even justifying the simple schoolyard dynamic 

of being convinced that they were “worth” three of the soldiers 

on the other side. Nor can we overlook the factor that some went 

to war to prove their manhood. This has been, and continues 

to be, a key dynamic in understanding combat and the profession of arms. Soldiers join for many reasons but often stay in the 

fight because of their comrades and because they do not want to 

seem like cowards. Sometimes issues of national impact shrink 

to nothing in the intensely personal world of cannon shell and 

minié ball.

Whatever the reasons, the struggle was long and costly and 

only culminated with the conquest of the rebellious Confederacy, 
6 

the preservation of the Union, and the end of slavery. These 

campaign pamphlets on the American Civil War, prepared in 

commemoration of our national sacrifices, seek to remember 

that war and honor those in the United States Army who died to 

preserve the Union and free the slaves as well as to tell the story of 

those American soldiers who fought for the Confederacy despite 

the inherently flawed nature of their cause. The Civil War was our 

greatest struggle and continues to deserve our deep study and 

contemplation.

 Richard W. Stewart, PH.D.

Chief of Military History 
7

the Atlanta and 

Savannah Campaigns

1864

Strategic Setting

In 1864, as the Civil War entered its fourth year, the most 

devastating conflict in American history seemed to grind on 

with no end in sight. In order to break the stalemate, President 

Abraham Lincoln appointed Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant general 

in chief of the U.S. Army and nominated him for promotion to 

lieutenant general, which Congress duly confirmed on 2 March. 

As the North’s most successful field commander, Grant had built 

his reputation in the Western Theater, which stretched from the 

Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Mississippi River in the 

west and from the Ohio River in the north to the Gulf of Mexico 

in the south. His impressive résumé included victories at Forts 

Henry and Donelson, Tennessee; Shiloh, Tennessee; Vicksburg, 

Mississippi; and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Before heading east to 

assume his new duties, Grant designated his most trusted subordinate, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, to succeed him as commander 

of the Military Division of the Mississippi, a sprawling geographic 

command that spanned most of the Western Theater.

Sherman traveled with Grant as far as Cincinnati, Ohio. 

During the trip, the two men devised the Union Army’s grand 

strategy. In the coming campaigns, all Federal forces would advance 

as one; the main effort would occur on two fronts. Grant would 

attack General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, which 

defended Richmond, the Confederate capital. Sherman’s objective was General Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, which 
8 

protected Atlanta, Georgia, 

the largest manufacturing and 

transportation center in the 

Deep South. Grant directed 

Sherman “to move against 

Johnston’s army, to break it 

up, and to get into the interior 

of the enemy’s country as 

far as you can, inflicting all 

the damage you can against 

their war resources.” Through 

unified action, the Federals 

would prevent the two main 

Confederate armies from 

reinforcing each other, as they 

had done in 1863. 

After meeting with 

Grant, Sherman headed to 

Nashville, Tennessee, and 

assumed command of the 

three armies he would lead in the Atlanta Campaign. By far the 

largest was Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas’ 75,000-strong Army of 

the Cumberland, consisting of Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s IV 

Corps, Maj. Gen. John M. Palmer’s XIV Corps, Maj. Gen. Joseph 

Hooker’s XX Corps, and Brig. Gen. Washington L. Elliott’s cavalry 

corps. Next in size was Sherman’s former command, the 25,000-man 

Army of the Tennessee led by Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson, which 

comprised Maj. Gen. John A. “Black Jack” Logan’s XV Corps and 

two small divisions from the XVI Corps under Brig. Gen. Grenville 

M. Dodge. The third and smallest was Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield’s 

13,000-strong Army of the Ohio, composed of the XXIII Corps 

and Maj. Gen. George Stoneman’s cavalry division. In addition to 

the infantry and cavalry units, Sherman’s army group boasted an 

artillery component numbering 254 guns commanded by Brig. 

Gen. William F. Barry. Altogether, Sherman led over 113,000 tough 

and confident soldiers who had known mostly success against their 

Confederate adversaries in the West.

A vast array of depots, warehouses, and arsenals linked by an 

extensive railroad network supported Sherman’s army group. The 

logistical chain began at Louisville, Kentucky, Sherman’s base of 

operations; continued south to the forward base at Nashville; and 

General Sherman

(Library of Congress)
9

ended at Chattanooga, the advanced depot. The two most important railroads were the Louisville and Nashville and the Nashville 

and Chattanooga, both private lines that functioned under the 

Army’s U.S. Military Railroad agency. South of Nashville, railroad 

guards, regular troop detachments, and combined arms expeditions operating in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi provided 

security against Confederate guerrillas and cavalry raiders bent on 

cutting Sherman’s supply line. In 1864, the Military Division of the 

Mississippi operated from 744 to 1,062 miles of railroad. During 

the buildup for the Atlanta Campaign, an average of 145 railcars 

arrived at Chattanooga each day carrying 1,600 tons of supplies, 

including ammunition, provisions for soldiers and animals, 

uniforms, weapons, and equipment, until the army’s warehouses 

fairly burst at the seams by early May.

Federal rail operations extended nearly to the fighting front 

throughout the march to Atlanta, with 5,000 Army wagons pulled 

by 33,000 mules carrying supplies from the railhead to the combat 

troops. Over 28,000 horses kept officers and cavalrymen mounted 

or served as draft animals for the artillery batteries. In addition, 

900 horse-drawn ambulances transported battlefield casualties. 

Georgia’s state-owned Western and Atlantic Railroad connected 

Atlanta, the Gate City of the South, with Chattanooga, a distance 

of 140 rail miles. Both the Northern and the Southern armies used 

the Western and Atlantic—the Federal rail line running south 

from Chattanooga and the Confederate line heading north from 

Atlanta.

Opposing Sherman’s legions was the Army of Tennessee 

under General Johnston. One of the ranking officers in the antebellum Regular Army, Johnston had risen to quartermaster general 

before resigning his commission and offering his services to the 

Confederacy. He was quickly appointed as a full general in the 

Confederate Army. He commanded the main Confederate army 

in the field in Virginia until he was wounded at the Battle of Seven 

Pines in the spring of 1862, losing his command to Robert E. Lee 

in June of that year. During his tenure, he had often quarreled with 

Confederate President Jefferson Davis, establishing a contentious 

relationship that worsened over time. In December 1863, Davis 

had appointed Johnston commander of the Army of Tennessee 

only after his first choice, Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee, had refused 

the job. Further aggravating an already tense situation was a 

memorandum that Johnston had submitted to Davis in January 
10 

1864 proposing that slaves be recruited and armed as soldiers. The 

proposal was the brainchild of Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne, one 

of Johnston’s division commanders. The Confederate president 

had found the document so inflammatory that he immediately 

suppressed it.

At the start of the Atlanta Campaign, the Army of Tennessee 

numbered about 55,000 men divided into three corps. Since its 

inception, the Confederacy’s second-largest field army had suffered 

one defeat after another before it achieved a stunning victory at 

Chickamauga, Georgia, in September 1863, only to be routed at 

Chattanooga just two months later. Commanding the two infantry 

corps were General Hardee and Lt. Gen. John B. Hood, and Maj. 

Gen. Joseph Wheeler led the cavalry corps. The artillery consisted 

of 144 guns and was commanded by Brig. Gen. Francis A. Shoup. 

In short, the Confederates in northern Georgia were outnumbered 

by roughly two to one. In mid-May, President Davis improved the 

odds considerably by transferring Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk’s Army 

of Mississippi to the Army of Tennessee, providing an additional 

20,000 troops for the defense of Atlanta. 

Unlike the Federals, the Confederates had devised no overarching campaign plan. Shortly before Johnston had assumed 

command of the army, Davis had written him a long letter painting 

a rosy picture of the army’s condition, conveying the “hope that 

General Hardee

(Library of Congress)

General Johnston

(National Archives)
11

you will soon be able to commence active operations against the 

enemy,” defeat the Federal force at Chattanooga, and recapture 

lost territory in Tennessee. The ever-cautious Johnston replied 

that “difficulties appear to me [to be] in the way” of assuming an 

aggressive posture. He maintained that “I can see no other mode of 

taking the offensive here than to beat the enemy when he advances, 

and then move forward. But to make victory probable, the army 

must be strengthened.” Johnston offered numerous reasons for 

remaining on the defensive, ranging from logistical difficulties to 

the enemy’s superior numbers. This exchange set the pattern for 

future correspondence between Davis and Johnston, in which the 

president would attempt to prod the general into attacking, only to 

be told that the conditions for an assault were unfavorable. 

After the Federals had driven the Confederates from the 

mountain ridges overlooking Chattanooga, the Army of Tennessee 

established its winter camp at Dalton, Georgia. Johnston anchored 

his defensive line on Rocky Face Ridge, which rose 700 feet above the 

surrounding plain and extended 15 miles south to the north bank of 

the Oostanaula River beyond Resaca, Georgia. An army could cross 

the rugged ridgeline at only three points: Mill Creek Gap—also 

known as Buzzard Roost—northwest of Dalton and through which 

the Western and Atlantic Railroad passed; man-made Dug Gap, 

southwest of Dalton; and the tortuous Snake Creek Gap, northwest 

of Resaca. Despite its menacing appearance, Rocky Face Ridge had 

several weaknesses. First, the northern end was open to attack from 

Cleveland, Tennessee. Second, the railroad ran along the eastern 

face, leaving it vulnerable to interdiction from the three gaps. Third, 

Rocky Face’s seeming natural strength, especially along its northern 

end, fed Johnston’s careless hope that Sherman would oblige him by 

launching frontal assaults against his positions (Map 1). 

In reality, Sherman’s plan for dealing with the Confederate 

stronghold at Dalton evolved over time, assuming final form 

only after he had responded to changing conditions. He initially 

considered having Thomas and Schofield demonstrate against 

Rocky Face, while McPherson executed a deep turning movement 

from his northeastern Alabama base to threaten the industrial 

center of Rome, Georgia, about fifty miles southwest of Dalton. 

But Johnston had anticipated Sherman’s operational plan and sent 

Polk’s command to defend Rome.

What Johnston had failed to foresee was an attack on Resaca 

via Snake Creek Gap. Though aware of the gap and the danger it 
DUG GAP

8 May

RESACA

14–15 May

MILL CREEK GAP

[BUZZARD ROOST]

8 May

to Cleveland

Rocky Face Ridge

Snake Creek Gap

Coosawattee R

Conasauga R

Camp Creek

Snake

Western & Atlantic

RR

Tunnel Hill

Graysville

La Fayette

Villanow

Spring Place

Old Town

Tilton

Chattanooga

Dalton

Ringgold

Resaca

T E N N E S S E E

G E O R G I A

THOMAS Axis of AdvanceMcPHERSON Axis of AdvanceSCHOFIELD Axis of AdvanceConfederate EntrenchmentsBattle

7–19 May 1864

UNION ADVANCE

CHAT TANOOGA TO E TOWAH RIVER

0 10 5

Miles

DUG GAP

8 May

RESACA

14–15 May

MILL CREEK GAP

[BUZZARD ROOST]

8 May

to Cleveland

Rocky Face Ridge

Snake Creek Gap

Coosawattee R

Conasauga R

Camp Creek

Snake

Western & Atlantic

RR

Tunnel Hill

Graysville

La Fayette

Villanow

Spring Place

Old Town

Tilton

Chattanooga

Dalton

Ringgold

Resaca

T E N N E S S E E

G E O R G I A

THOMAS Axis of AdvanceMcPHERSON Axis of AdvanceSCHOFIELD Axis of AdvanceConfederate EntrenchmentsBattle

7–19 May 1864

UNION ADVANCE

CHAT TANOOGA TO E TOWAH RIVER

0 10 5

Miles
Map 1

LAY’S FERRY

15–16 May

CASSVILLE

19 May

Gravelly Plateau

Coosa R

Oostanaula R

Etowah R

Etowah R

ke

Creek

Western & Atlantic RR

Summerville

Adamsville

Calhoun

Adairsville

Hermitage

Cass Station

Allatoona

Euharlee

Coosaville

Rome

Kingston
14 

posed to his line of communications, he had failed to post a cavalry 

detachment in a position to detect enemy movements there. While 

Sherman knew nothing about this critical omission, he soon 

benefited from it. Due to detachments resulting from bureaucratic 

miscues and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks’ Red River campaign in 

Louisiana, McPherson’s army was left with only four of its nine divisions, rendering an advance on Rome impractical. Instead, Sherman 

decided to send McPherson through Snake Creek Gap to cut the 

Western and Atlantic at Resaca. To the north but within supporting 

distance, Thomas would conduct diversionary attacks along Rocky 

Face Ridge from Mill Creek Gap to Dug Gap, while Schofield threatened Dalton from the north. Sherman’s intent was to pry Johnston’s 

army from its entrenchments by placing McPherson’s army on the 

railroad between the Confederates and Atlanta. Johnston would 

be forced to fight in the open to regain his supply line, presenting 

Sherman with an opportunity to destroy the Army of Tennessee in 

one decisive battle at the start of the campaign.

Operations

From Rocky Face Ridge to Resaca

The Atlanta Campaign began on 7 May 1864, when the 

Union IV, XIV, and XXIII Corps advanced toward Rocky Face 

Ridge at Mill Creek Gap and into Crow Valley north of Dalton to 

distract the Confederates. On the next day, the XX Corps attacked 

at Dug Gap in a further effort to divert Johnston’s attention. In 

the meantime, lead elements of McPherson’s army reached the 

unguarded western entrance to Snake Creek Gap after scrambling 

over undulating terrain characteristic of northwestern Georgia. 

Johnston remained oblivious to the threat to Resaca—focusing 

instead on Dalton to the north and Rome to the southwest—while 

Wheeler’s cavalry monitored every approach to the south except 

Snake Creek Gap. Concern for the safety of Rome led Johnston to 

spread Polk’s force from there to Resaca. On 7 May, units of Brig. 

Gen. James Cantey’s division arrived at Resaca and began digging 

in along the hills west of the railroad bridge over the Oostanaula, 

their position overlooking Camp Creek. 

About 1600 on 9 May, McPherson’s troops first encountered 

Southern cavalry between Snake Creek Gap and Cantey’s earthworks. McPherson’s mission was to cut the Western and Atlantic 

at Resaca and then head north, attacking Johnston’s army as it 
15

withdrew south from Dalton. But the discovery of Confederates 

where he had expected none caused McPherson to lose sight of 

his objective. He halted, evaluated the situation, and decided to 

withdraw to the gap, fearing that a lack of cavalry would leave him 

vulnerable as he advanced 

north toward Johnston’s 

army. Sherman later chided 

McPherson for his loss of 

nerve: “Well, Mac, you have 

missed the opportunity of a 

lifetime.”

To his credit, Johnston 

responded quickly and effectively to the sudden threat at 

Snake Creek Gap. First, he 

sent Hood’s three divisions 

south toward Resaca. Then, 

from 10 to 12 May, he halted 

all of Polk’s arriving units 

at Resaca and placed Polk 

in command there. When 

Wheeler’s troopers reported 

that nearly all of Sherman’s 

units had left Dalton, Johnston 

immediately ordered his 

remaining infantry to march to Resaca. The Confederate chieftain 

correctly guessed that Sherman intended to cut off the Army of 

Tennessee from its supply line and then destroy it. By 12 May, most 

of Sherman’s army group had crowded into the Snake Creek Gap 

area to strike Resaca. Howard’s IV Corps was the sole exception, 

marching along the Western and Atlantic Railroad from Dalton 

toward Resaca, its progress slowed by Wheeler’s cavalry.

By 14 May, most Confederate and Federal units had arrived 

at Resaca. The Southerners held the high ground east of Camp 

Creek and west of the Western and Atlantic. Polk’s command, 

now functioning as a corps under Johnston’s direction, anchored 

the Confederate left resting on the Oostanaula downstream 

from the railroad bridge. Hardee’s corps occupied the center of 

the Confederate line, with Hood’s corps holding the right and 

extending to the Conasauga River, which joined the Coosawattee 

River nearby to form the Oostanaula. The right-angle junction 

General McPherson

(Library of Congress)
16 

between Hardee’s right and Hood’s left resulted in a salient on high 

ground held by two infantry brigades and three artillery batteries. 

Wheeler’s cavalry covered the Confederate right beyond the 

Conasauga, while Brig. Gen. William H. Jackson’s cavalry division 

of Polk’s corps and one of Hardee’s infantry divisions protected the 

left flank across the Oostanaula.

Despite these preparations, the Confederates occupied a 

potentially dangerous position, with the bulk of their forces 

hemmed in by a river on each flank and by a third stream behind 

them. On the opposite side of Camp Creek, McPherson’s army 

occupied the right of the Union line, reaching to the Oostanaula. 

On McPherson’s left, Hooker’s XX Corps and Palmer’s XIV Corps 

extended the Federal line, followed by Schofield’s XXIII Corps, 

which nevertheless ended far short of the Conasauga. Not until 

early on the first day of battle at Resaca did Howard’s IV Corps 

deploy on the Union left flank, but the line still failed to reach the 

Conasauga, making it vulnerable to an attack.

Flaws in his deployments notwithstanding, Sherman’s firstday battle plan called for his army group to hit Confederate positions vigorously enough to prevent Johnston from shifting units 

to confront Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Sweeny’s XVI Corps division as 

it crossed the Oostanaula downstream from Resaca. Once across, 

Sweeny’s men would march east to cut the Western and Atlantic at 

Calhoun, Georgia, in the Confederate rear.

The Union diversionary assault began about 1300 on 14 May. 

Consisting of a division each from the XIV and the XXIII Corps, 

the Federal attackers slogged across the miry bottomlands along 

Camp Creek in order to strike the enemy salient. The Confederate 

defenders repulsed the onslaught with blasts of double-shotted 

canister—a lethal antipersonnel round—fired by several Southern 

batteries. From its vantage point east of the Conasauga, Wheeler’s 

cavalry reported the Federal left flank open to attack, and Johnston 

rushed units from the Confederate left to reinforce Hood’s right. 

At roughly 1600, Hood struck with the divisions of Maj. Gens. 

Carter L. Stevenson and Alexander P. Stewart, and they routed the 

slow-moving IV Corps before it could entrench. A lone Indiana 

battery firing double-shotted canister and the timely arrival of 

Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams’ XX Corps division were all that 

kept Sherman’s left flank from being overwhelmed. Pleased with 

the day’s results, Johnston directed Hood to renew the attack early 

the next morning.
17

To the south, elements of the Union XV Corps west of Camp 

Creek seized a hill that placed the Western and Atlantic Railroad 

bridge within easy reach of Federal artillery, and they established 

a lodgment on the east bank of the creek. These Union successes 

forced Johnston to lay a pontoon bridge farther up the Oostanaula 

to remain connected with the railroad and the defenders south 

of Resaca. Having weakened his left to support Hood’s attacks, 

Johnston lacked the means to drive off the XV Corps.

At first, Sweeny’s crossing operation at Lay’s Ferry on the 

Oostanaula—near the point where Snake Creek flows into the 

river—proceeded according to plan, with Union troops crossing 

on pontoon boats and scattering Confederate cavalrymen as 

they reached the opposite bank. Then the operation began to 

unravel. For the rest of the day and well into the night, uncertainty 

reigned on both sides regarding the situation at Lay’s Ferry. Had 

the Federals crossed there, and, if so, had the rebels attempted to 

dislodge them? Crediting unsubstantiated intelligence that the 

enemy had crossed the river and now threatened his position, 

Sweeny withdrew to the north bank of the Oostanaula. Due to 

confusing reports about Sweeny’s presence at Lay’s Ferry, Johnston 

decided to cancel Hood’s dawn attack. That night, Sherman sent 

Hooker’s two remaining divisions to the Union left and directed 

Sweeny to recross the Oostanaula the next morning.

Starting about 1130 on 15 May, Hood repelled several 

attacks launched by the IV and the XX Corps. But the 70th 

Indiana Infantry under Col. Benjamin Harrison managed to seize 

a Confederate redoubt that occupied a critical point in front of 

Hood’s main line. In doing so, the Hoosiers captured the four 

cannons of Capt. Maximilian van den Corput’s Cherokee Georgia 

Battery, but enemy fire prevented the Federals from removing the 

guns. That night, Brig. Gen. John W. Geary, a XX Corps division 

commander, sent the 5th Ohio Infantry out to retrieve the guns. 

Assisted by several other troop detachments, the Buckeyes drew off 

the cannons. The incident was highly publicized and later helped 

to elect Colonel Harrison president of the United States in 1888.

Johnston’s plan for 15 May remained virtually the same as it 

had been the day before: Hardee was to reinforce Hood for another 

assault on the Union left near the Conasauga. Continuing uncertainty over Federal operations at Lay’s Ferry had led Johnston 

to cancel the attack order and then postpone the assault until 

late afternoon, only to cancel it yet again—but not before Hood 
18 

struck the Union left flank at 1600 and was repulsed with heavy 

losses. Meanwhile, Sweeny’s division recrossed the Oostanaula at 

Lay’s Ferry. Using an abandoned flatboat, the Federals secured a 

lodgment on the south bank, enabling engineers to lay a pontoon 

bridge there. Sweeny’s presence at the ferry threatened Johnston’s 

Western and Atlantic supply line, rendering his position at Resaca 

untenable. The Army of Tennessee evacuated its fortifications at 

night and began marching south toward Calhoun.

Thus ended the two-day Battle of Resaca—the first major 

engagement of the Atlanta Campaign. Northern losses totaled 

roughly 4,000, while Southern casualties came to about 3,000. 

Although the Confederates had launched several assaults against 

the Federal line, Sherman had retained the initiative throughout 

the operation. By sending Sweeny’s division to seize Lay’s Ferry, 

he maneuvered Johnston out of an apparently strong position at 

Resaca. Sherman thereby established an operational pattern he 

would use throughout the campaign. Using the bulk of his army 

group to fix Johnston’s army in place, Sherman would send a flying 

column to sever the Confederate supply line, forcing Johnston to 

choose between fighting a battle in the open or withdrawing to the 

next strongpoint on the road to Atlanta. 

Cassville and the Dallas–New Hope Church–Pickett’s

Mill Line

The region that the armies now entered was generally flatter 

and more arable than the rugged terrain through which they had 

just passed. The remainder of Polk’s corps arrived, raising the Army 

of Tennessee’s troop strength to 70,000. Johnston intended to fall 

back along the Western and Atlantic Railroad, occupying a succession of blocking positions while tempting Sherman into launching a 

potentially disastrous frontal assault. Because he had failed to make 

a careful study of the topography south of Dalton, Johnston discovered few naturally strong positions on which to anchor a defensive 

line. As a result, he withdrew from both Calhoun and Adairsville, 

Georgia, during 16 to 18 May, his rear guard delaying the Union 

pursuit. As the Federals passed through Adairsville, Sherman 

decided to split his army group into three segments to quicken the 

pace. While one of McPherson’s divisions followed the Oostanaula 

River southwest to Rome, the rest of the Army of the Tennessee, 

followed by Thomas’ IV and XIV Corps, took the road south from 

Adairsville toward Kingston, Georgia. Only Hooker’s XX Corps and 
19

Schofield’s XXIII Corps took the southeasterly road to Cassville, 

Georgia, a declining town that the railroad had bypassed years 

before. With the Federals thus divided, Johnston decided to spring a 

trap on the Union column marching toward Cassville.

Johnston prepared his ambush with care. He first sent Hardee’s 

corps and the army’s wagon train to the south to assume a blocking 

position on the Kingston Road. Then he directed Polk’s corps 

to deploy along Two Run Creek north of Cassville and block the 

Adairsville Road. Hood would form on Polk’s right and occupy a 

range of hills overlooking the road. Polk and Hood were to attack 

the approaching Union column and destroy it. On the morning of 

19 May, Johnston took his place with the ambush force, having just 

issued a blustering order: “Soldiers of the Army of Tennessee . . . I

lead you to battle.” But the commanding general’s confidence soon 

gave way to doubt, as Hood reported a Union force of unknown 

strength advancing on his rear from the east. Losing his nerve, 

Johnston ordered Hood and Polk to withdraw south of Cassville. He 

later regretted his decision. Though small, the Union column was 

no phantom, and yet Johnston believed that Hood had overreacted. 

Up to this point, Johnston had regarded Hood as a protégé, but the 

incident at Cassville shook his confidence in the younger man. To 

make matters worse, the budding Johnston-Hood command partnership had generated considerable resentment among Hardee 

and other subordinates, further poisoning the atmosphere at army 

headquarters.

In any event, a Confederate assault at Cassville might 

well have failed anyway because it was unlikely that Hood and 

Polk together could have defeated both Schofield and Hooker. 

Moreover, Thomas had approached to within supporting distance 

by midmorning of 19 May. Worse yet, Union artillery fire from the 

hills north of town soon rendered Johnston’s line untenable. That 

night, after conferring with several of his senior commanders, 

Johnston ordered a withdrawal to the Etowah River. The Army of 

Tennessee retreated yet again, the foot soldiers’ pace quickening in 

response to news that Federal cavalry had seized a bridge over the 

Etowah southwest of Cassville. Johnston’s pattern of retreating in 

order to avoid battle played into Sherman’s hands, enabling him to 

cover half the distance from Dalton to Atlanta in barely two weeks. 

As a result, Union morale soared while Confederate morale began 

to sink. But the return to hillier, more defensible terrain seemed to 

indicate more fighting ahead.
20 

The terrain south of the Etowah River was rugged and heavily 

forested with few roads. Johnston initially posted his army in the 

Allatoona Mountains south of the river, near the Western and 

Atlantic Railroad cut known as the Allatoona Pass. Recalling the 

terrain from a journey he had made there in the 1840s, Sherman 

decided to cross the Etowah more to the west, where the hills 

lay farther south from the river and the countryside was flatter. 

Aiming for the town of Dallas, Georgia, about fifteen miles south 

of the river, Sherman intended to outflank Johnston from the 

Allatoona Mountains all the way back to the Chattahoochee River, 

about ten miles northwest of Atlanta. (See Map 2.) 

Sherman gave his armies a few days’ rest before setting out 

for Dallas. For the first time in the campaign, the Federals were 

operating away from their railroad lifeline and having to carry 

their supplies. On 23 May, they crossed the Etowah with twenty 

days’ rations stuffed into their knapsacks, haversacks, and supply 

wagons. McPherson marched on the right, Thomas in the center, 

and Schofield on the left, gradually changing direction from south 

to east. True to character, Sherman fretted ceaselessly along the 

way. “We are now all in motion like a vast hive of bees,” he wrote, 

“and expect to swarm along the Chattahoochee in five days.” His 

timetable proved overoptimistic, for it would take him six weeks 

rather than five days to reach the Chattahoochee and the outskirts 

of Atlanta.

When Confederate cavalry reported the renewed Federal 

advance, Johnston left Hood to guard Allatoona Pass, sent Hardee 

toward Dallas, and placed Polk between the two. After a single day’s 

hard march, Sherman’s men neared the town from several directions. Realizing that the Dallas crossroads was Sherman’s objective, 

Johnston concentrated his army there on 24 May. Hardee held the 

Confederate left, followed by Polk in the center and Hood on the 

right. From their vantage point on the crest of Elsberry Mountain, 

the rebels observed the approaching Union forces to the west.

On 25 May, the Federals crossed Pumpkin Vine Creek west of 

Dallas, heading east. Johnston directed Hood to occupy the crossroads at New Hope Church, about four miles to the northeast. By 

midmorning, Hood’s three divisions had deployed around the 

Methodist log meetinghouse, with Maj. Gen. Thomas C.Hindman’s 

division on the left, Stewart’s division in the center, and Stevenson’s 

division on the right. Hardee and Polk formed on Hood’s left. 

Union prisoners reported Hooker’s XX Corps nearby. Indeed, 
21

Geary’s division was heading straight for the church, accompanied 

by Thomas and Hooker. Confederate prisoners indicated that a 

large enemy force lay ahead. In response, Geary dug in, Hooker 

summoned his two remaining divisions, and Thomas alerted two 

more Union corps. Sherman also happened to be in the area, and 

he incorrectly assumed that Hooker was on Johnston’s right flank. 

The sparse roads, rugged terrain, and dense woods contributed to 

the Federals’ confusion about the enemy’s location and strength.

Meanwhile, the skies darkened, and rain began to fall, 

heralding a month of foul weather that would drastically alter the 

campaign’s tempo. Torrential rains soon transformed the roads 

into quagmires, making them virtually impassable. The weather 

turned hot and humid, and swarms of mosquitoes and other 

insects plagued the men incessantly. Dwindling supplies only 

added to their misery. Small wonder the soldiers in blue nicknamed the region around Dallas “the Hell Hole.”

The XX Corps began its movement about 1600, struggling 

through tangled thickets toward the crossroads, with Maj. Gen. 

Daniel A. Butterfield’s division on the left, Geary in the center, and 

Williams on the right, each division compressed into a narrow 

column. The battle developed into a clash between Williams’ Union 

division and Stewart’s Confederate division, the latter protected 

by log breastworks and supported by sixteen cannons. It was no 

contest. As the weather deteriorated, Williams suffered about 

800 casualties, while Geary and Butterfield lost another 800 men 

combined. Confederate losses came to about 350 troops. Sherman 

blamed Hooker for the XX Corps’ failure to seize the crossroads, 

which the latter bitterly resented.

On the following day, 26 May, McPherson held Dallas, Thomas 

confronted New Hope Church, and Schofield extended the Federal 

left toward Pickett’s Mill. Union cavalry secured both flanks, but 

a gap separated McPherson and Thomas. Johnston’s three corps 

continued to occupy the same positions, except that Cleburne’s 

division of Hardee’s corps now extended the Confederate right 

beyond Hood’s position toward Pickett’s Mill. Confederate cavalry 

covered both flanks.

On 27 May, Sherman attempted to turn the strengthened 

Southern right flank. More than just a flanking maneuver, it was 

also part of a gradual shift back to the Western and Atlantic. 

Sherman’s army group had so few supply wagons that it could 

not operate far from the railroad for long. Although the Federals 
From

Rome

DALLAS

28 May

NEW HOPE CHURCH

25 May

KOLB’S FARM

22 Jun

KENNESAW MOUNTAIN

27 Jun

LATIMER’S FARM

17–18 Jun

GILGAL CHURCH

15 Jun

PICKETT’S MILL

27 May

SMYRNA CAMPGROUND

4 JuL

Brush Mountain–Lost Mountain Line

Mud Creek Line

Kennesaw Mountain Line

Smyrna Line

Outer Defensive Line

Isom’s Ferry

to Rome

Pine Mountain

Allatoona Pass

Lost Mountain

Brush Mountain

Etowah R

Etowah R

Pumpk ni

V ni e

Cr ad

n

o

o

N

C

y

r

Noyes’ Cr

Soap Cr

Western & Atlantic RR

t

A

&

n

r

e

t

s

e

W

nal

ci t

RR

Cassville

Cass Station

Allatoona

Acworth

Canton

Burnt

 Hickory

Euharlee

Van Wert

Big Shanty

Roswell

New Cross

Keys

Powder Springs

Kingston

Marietta

THOMAS Axis of AdvanceMcPHERSON and HOWARD Axis of AdvanceSCHOFIELD Axis of AdvanceConfederate EntrenchmentsBattle

UNION ADV

23 May–2 September 1864

ANCE

E TOWAH RIVER TO JONESBORO

0 10 5

Miles
PEACHTREE CREEK

20 JuL

ATLANTA

22 JuL

EZRA CHURCH

28 JuL

UTOY CREEK

6 Aug

JONESBORO

31 Aug–1 Sep

Fortications

of Atlanta

Railroad Defense Line

Jonesboro Line

Lovejoy Station Line

Chattahoochee River Line

Mason and

Turner’s Ferry

Chattahoochee

R

Sweet Water Cr

Flint R

Nickajack Cr

Atlanta & West Pont RR

Georg ai RR

Ma

c

o

n

&

Wes

tern

RR

Buckhead

Rough and Ready

East Point

Utoy

Sandtown

Sweet Water

Fairburn

Red Oak

Fayetteville

Fosterville

Palmetto

County Line

Lovejoy’s Station

Decatur

Atlanta

Jonesboro

Campbellton

Map 2

PEACHTREE CREEK

20 JuL

ATLANTA

22 JuL

EZRA CHURCH

28 JuL

UTOY CREEK

6 Aug

JONESBORO

31 Aug–1 Sep

Fortications

of Atlanta

Railroad Defense Line

Jonesboro Line

Lovejoy Station Line

Chattahoochee River Line

Mason and

Turner’s Ferry

Chattahoochee

R

Sweet Water Cr

Flint R

Nickajack Cr

Atlanta & West Pont RR

Georg ai RR

Ma

c

o

n

&

Wes

tern

RR

Buckhead

Rough and Ready

East Point

Utoy

Sandtown

Sweet Water

Fairburn

Red Oak

Fayetteville

Fosterville

Palmetto

County Line

Lovejoy’s Station

Decatur

Atlanta

Jonesboro

Campbellton
24 

had started with twenty days’ rations, they had already consumed 

most of their provisions. Sherman started the flanking maneuver 

by ordering Howard to assemble a task force from the XIV Corps, 

the XXIII Corps, and his own IV Corps. He then directed Howard 

to turn Johnston’s right flank near Pickett’s Mill and strike the 

Confederate rear area. In the meantime, units along the rest of the 

Federal line were to divert the Southerners’ attention.

About 1100, Howard’s task force began its flank march and was 

soon discovered by Confederate scouts. Along the way, Howard 

became disoriented and sent word to Thomas: “No person can 

appreciate the difficulty in moving over this ground unless he can 

see it,” Howard wrote. “I am . . . facing south, and am now turning 

the enemy’s right flank, I think.” Howard was mistaken, however. 

On reaching the jump-off point for the attack, he gave his troops a 

breather and then deployed them. He formed Brig. Gen. Thomas 

J. Wood’s IV Corps division in the center in column of brigades, 

while posting Brig. Gen. Richard W. Johnson’s XIV Corps division 

on the left and Brig. Gen. Nathaniel C. McLean’s XXIII Corps 

brigade on the right for support. Wood started forward about 1700, 

driving a Confederate cavalry screen northeastward over Pickett’s 

Mill Creek. But Wood soon encountered trouble in the form of 

Cleburne’s division—arguably the finest combat unit in Johnston’s 

army—which held the high ground to the south. Wood’s lead 

brigade attacked Cleburne’s strong position and withdrew after 

suffering over 500 casualties in a matter of minutes. The Union 

assault at Pickett’s Mill deteriorated into a series of disjointed 

attacks that succeeded only in raising the Federal casualty count to 

1,600, while the rebels lost less than one-third that amount.

Seeking to capitalize on Cleburne’s success, Johnston sent 

Hood’s corps on a night march around the Union left flank to 

launch a surprise attack the next morning. As at Cassville, Hood 

found Federals where he had not expected them and so informed 

Johnston, who canceled the assault. This disappointing episode 

further widened the gulf that now separated Johnston and Hood.

Sherman likewise had problems with two sizable gaps in the 

Union line—one between McPherson and Thomas and the other 

between Schofield and Howard. He decided to fill the holes while 

shifting northeast toward the Western and Atlantic. Johnston soon 

discerned Sherman’s intent and, on 28 May, launched his first 

assault of the campaign to pin down the Federals in the Dallas area. 

Elements of Hardee’s corps and Jackson’s cavalry division harried 
25

but ultimately were unable to halt McPherson’s advance toward the 

railroad. The Confederates’ failure was not due to a lack of effort. 

According to an Illinois captain, “a heavy column of Rebels rose 

from a brush with a yell the devil ought to copyright”—no doubt 

the infamous rebel yell. The soldiers in gray captured some Union 

guns and then lost them when the Federals counterattacked in 

force. 

On 1 June, Federal cavalry seized the now-vacant Allatoona 

Pass. Two days later, the Union advance reached Acworth on the 

Western and Atlantic, and the Federals caught their first glimpse of 

Kennesaw Mountain towering above the mist to the south. Spirits 

rose in Sherman’s army group, for they had regained the railroad 

and had left the Hell Hole far behind. The Union chieftain gave his 

men a few days’ rest while his engineers repaired the Etowah River 

railroad bridge, before resuming the march toward Atlanta.

Just beyond Kennesaw Mountain lay Marietta, Georgia, a 

flourishing railroad town. Thirty miles farther south stood the city 

of Atlanta. To reach its geographical objective, Sherman’s army 

group would first have to cross two mountain ranges and then the 

Chattahoochee River. Sherman chose the Sandtown Road as his 

axis of advance. The former Indian trail wound generally southeast from Allatoona Pass to the Chattahoochee River and beyond, 

intersecting with most of the region’s major roads along the way. 

The first mountain range the Federals encountered consisted of 

Brush Mountain and Pine Mountain—each 300 feet tall—and Lost 

Mountain, the tallest of the trio at 500 feet. Just beyond that range 

stood Kennesaw Mountain, composed of two large peaks and one 

spur: Big Kennesaw (700 feet), Little Kennesaw (400 feet), and 

Pigeon Hill (220 feet). The Confederates posted signal stations on 

top of the mountains to monitor Federal troop movements toward 

Atlanta.

In early June, the Army of Tennessee received what would be 

its last substantial reinforcement of the campaign. As Johnston’s 

army neared Atlanta, Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown 

appointed Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith field commander of the 

Georgia militia and directed the 2,000 state troops to guard the 

numerous bridges and ferries across the Chattahoochee. Though 

grateful for the reinforcement, Johnston was understandably 

dubious of the militia, which bore the nickname “Joe Brown’s Pets” 

because many of them had received state exemptions from the 

Confederate Army. The addition of the Georgia militia boosted 
26 

the Confederates’ total strength to 72,000. In the meantime, the 

Federals received an even larger reinforcement. On 8 June, Maj. 

Gen. Francis P. Blair Jr.’s XVII Corps joined McPherson’s Army of 

the Tennessee. Blair’s 10,000 veteran troops raised the Union army 

group’s total size to 106,000, offsetting most of May’s casualties.

Johnston also pressed the Confederate War Department 

for cavalry raids against the Union supply line, while Sherman 

took steps to prevent Maj. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest’s Confederate 

cavalry division from severing railroads in Tennessee. He 

directed that Brig. Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis lead a combined arms 

force of 8,000 men and 18 guns from Union-occupied Memphis, 

Tennessee, and draw Forrest into northeastern Mississippi. On 

10 June, Forrest routed Sturgis’ much larger force at Brice’s 

Crossroads, Mississippi, but the Federals had prevented the 

Southern cavalry from interfering with Sherman’s railroads for 

several critical weeks. 

The Brush Mountain–Pine Mountain–Lost Mountain Line

On the evening of 9 June, Union cavalry had located the 

ten-mile Southern line extending along Brush, Pine, and Lost 

Mountains. Early the next morning, Federal infantry began 

deploying opposite Johnston’s new line. McPherson occupied 

the left along the Western and Atlantic before Brush Mountain. 

In the center, Thomas faced Pine Mountain. Schofield held the 

Union right opposite Lost Mountain. Brig. Gen. Kenner Garrard’s 

cavalry division protected the Federal left flank and scouted east 

toward the factory town of Roswell, Georgia. The troopers of 

General Stoneman’s division covered the Union right, while Brig. 

Gen. Edward M. McCook’s cavalry division guarded the rear. Two 

consecutive weeks of torrential rains had flooded roads, creeks, 

woods, and fields. One Federal soldier complained that “it beats all 

how much it rains here. We have had but little good weather since 

we started. . . . We get water in our trenches and the ground is wet 

all the time and of course we get wet too.”

On Johnston’s overextended line, Hood’s corps held the 

Confederate right anchored on Brush Mountain, Polk’s corps 

formed the center, and Hardee’s corps occupied the left to Gilgal 

Church, while Maj. Gen. William B. Bate’s division deployed on 

Pine Mountain, forming a salient about a mile in front of the main 

line. Not surprisingly, Bate’s troops joked that they were being used 

as “Yankee bait.” Wheeler’s horsemen patrolled the army’s right 
27

beyond Hood’s line, while Jackson’s dismounted troopers covered 

the extreme left to Lost Mountain.

Convinced that Johnston’s army was too small to defend ten 

miles of fieldworks, Sherman directed his army commanders to 

press the enemy line at all points to detect any weaknesses. He 

described the resulting close-range fighting in the dense woods 

as “a big Indian war,” while a Confederate foot soldier noted that 

“pickets on both sides kept up a continual firing, that sounded like 

ten thousand wood-choppers.”

The threat to Bate’s salient led Hardee, Bate’s superior, to 

arrange a meeting with Johnston and Polk on Pine Mountain 

to observe the situation firsthand. On the morning of 14 June, 

the generals and their staff officers gathered along the crest. At 

the time, Sherman happened to be riding along the Federal line 

opposite the mountain. Noticing the conclave of Southern officers, 

he remarked, “How saucy they are!” and directed that a battery fire 

several rounds to break up the gathering. The guns of Capt. Peter 

Simonson’s 5th Indiana Battery immediately roared into action, 

firing three rounds at a range of 600 yards. In addition to scattering 

the Confederate officers, one of the projectiles tore through Polk’s 

chest, killing him instantly. (By a twist of fate, Simonson would be 

shot and killed by a sharpshooter 

just a few days later.) That night, 

Hardee withdrew Bate from his 

precarious position. When the 

Federals took possession of Pine 

Mountain the next morning, they 

found this message: “You damned 

Yankee sons of bitches have killed 

our old Gen. Polk.” 

Sherman, meanwhile, directed all his armies to continue 

pressing the Confederates relentlessly. On 15 June, Butterfield’s XX 

Corps division advanced up the 

Sandtown Road on a reconnaissance in force and found Cleburne’s 

division dug in along the Gilgal 

Church intersection. Butterfield 

launched a frontal assault that 

Cleburne’s men repulsed with a 

Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk

(Valentine Richmond 

History Center)
28 

lethal combination of musketry and artillery fire. Geary’s XX 

Corps division attempted to succeed where Butterfield had failed 

but met with the same devastating result. At dusk the battered 

Federals dug in opposite Cleburne and waited. The Battle of Gilgal 

Church had cost the XX Corps about 650 casualties compared to 

Cleburne’s 250 losses. It was becoming all too apparent that Union 

forces suffered whenever they ran up against Cleburne’s division.

Elsewhere, the Federals fared much better. Schofield’s XXIII

Corps threatened to turn Johnston’s left beyond Lost Mountain, 

while in McPherson’s sector, Logan’s XV Corps overran a line of 

rifle pits along the Confederate right at Brush Mountain, capturing 

several hundred soldiers of the 40th Alabama Infantry. Johnston 

realized that the flanks of his Brush Mountain–to–Lost Mountain 

line were compromised, and he began to evacuate the position at 

nightfall on 16 June. During the eastward withdrawal of Hardee’s 

corps to the Mud Creek line, batteries of the XX and XXIII Corps 

pounded Cleburne’s division with solid shot and shell, inflicting 

several casualties. Among the wounded was Brig. Gen. Lucius E. 

Polk, one of Cleburne’s brigade commanders and the nephew of 

the late Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk. The younger Polk’s leg was so badly 

mangled that it had to be amputated, bringing his field service to 

an abrupt end.

The Mud Creek Line

While Polk’s corps—now commanded by Maj. Gen. William 

W. Loring—and Hood’s corps held their positions, Hardee’s four 

divisions hastily dug in along the bluffs overlooking Mud Creek. 

The point where Loring’s left joined Hardee’s right became known 

as French’s Salient, a vulnerable angle in Johnston’s line that was 

occupied by Maj. Gen. Samuel G. French’s division. Finding this 

position too weak, Johnston sent his chief engineer, Maj. Stephen 

W. Presstman, to locate more defensible terrain to the south. The 

twin peaks of Kennesaw Mountain so impressed Presstman that he 

designated a new defensive position along the imposing Kennesaw 

ridgeline. 

The Confederates had an unlikely ally in the weather. As the 

heavy rains resumed, Sherman became increasingly anxious about 

the deteriorating tactical situation and impatient with the recent 

lack of progress. On 16 June, he confided to the Army chief of staff, 

Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, that he was “now inclined to feign on 

both flanks and assault the center. It may cost us dear but in results 
29

would surpass an attempt to pass around. . . . If, by assaulting, I can 

break [Johnston’s] line, I see no reason why it would not produce 

a decisive effect.”

On 17 June, elements of the IV and XIV Corps bridged a 

flooded Mud Creek and prepared to strike French’s salient. Hardee, 

meanwhile, attacked the Union bridgehead twice but failed to 

dislodge the Federals. On the next day, Thomas concentrated 

his artillery fire on French’s position and then sent out a strong 

infantry force that scattered Confederate skirmishers screening 

both French’s and Maj. Gen. William H. T. Walker’s divisions. 

In the Battle of Latimer’s Farm, the Federals inflicted over 200 

Southern casualties yet failed to capture French’s salient.

Writing to General Grant on 18 June, Sherman expressed 

frustration with his army group’s sluggishness. “My chief source of 

trouble is with the Army of the Cumberland, which is dreadfully 

slow,” Sherman grumbled. 

A fresh furrow in a plowed field will stop the whole column, 

and all begin to intrench. I have again and again tried to 

impress on Thomas that we must assail and not defend; we 

are [on] the offensive, and yet it seems the whole Army of the 

Cumberland is so habituated to be on the defensive that, from 

its commander down to the lowest private, I cannot get it out 

of their heads.

Even as Sherman complained about Thomas’ lack of aggressiveness, Johnston decided that French’s salient jeopardized his entire 

Mud Creek line. That night, he directed the Army of Tennessee to 

evacuate under cover of a rainstorm and withdraw to their new 

position on Kennesaw Mountain.

The Kennesaw Mountain Line

The following morning, 19 June, Federal skirmishers 

discovered that the Southerners had abandoned their fieldworks. 

Sherman ordered a pursuit, believing that Johnston was headed 

for the Chattahoochee River, but the Northerners quickly discovered that the Confederates were dug in along Johnston’s Kennesaw 

Mountain line. Laid out in a six-mile arc, the position consisted 

of formidable entrenchments that blocked three main routes 

to Marietta—the Stilesboro, Burnt Hickory, and Dallas Roads. 

Wheeler’s cavalry corps held the Confederate right flank, with 
30 

Hood’s corps digging in on Wheeler’s left. In the center, Loring’s 

corps straddled the mountain from the Western and Atlantic 

southward to the Burnt Hickory Road. Hardee’s corps stretched 

from Loring’s left flank, crossed the Dallas Road, and ended on 

high ground overlooking swampy John Ward Creek. On the far 

left, Jackson’s cavalry division patrolled the roads and ridges to the 

south. To the Federals, the Kennesaw Mountain line resembled a 

massive earthen fortress. 

On the Union side, Garrard’s cavalry division covered the left 

toward Marietta to the south and Roswell to the east. McPherson’s 

Army of the Tennessee held the line opposite Hood, while Thomas’ 

Army of the Cumberland occupied its usual position in the center, 

facing both Loring and Hardee. On the right, Schofield’s Army of 

the Ohio, now functioning as Sherman’s flying column, advanced 

along the Sandtown Road west of Noyes’ Creek, approaching the 

Confederate left. McCook’s cavalry division covered the far Union 

right toward the Chattahoochee.

Annoyed with the slow pace of his army group, on 20 June 

Sherman ordered Garrard to cross Noonday Creek and attack 

Wheeler. Col. Robert H. G. Minty’s brigade was the first Federal 

cavalry across, and, to Minty’s astonishment, Wheeler’s entire 

command charged his lone brigade. The result was the largest 

Kennesaw Mountain, with Federal fieldworks in foreground 

(George N. Barnard, Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign)
31

cavalry engagement of the campaign. After a series of mounted 

saber charges and countercharges, the heavily outnumbered 

Minty retreated to Noonday Creek, where Federal artillery on the 

north bank and Col. Abraham Miller’s famed “Lightning Brigade” 

of mounted infantry provided timely support. The cavalry clash 

resulted in about a hundred total casualties.

The Battle of Kolb’s Farm

While most of the Federals kept a close watch on the 

Confederate entrenchments along Kennesaw Mountain, Hooker’s 

XX Corps and Schofield’s XXIII Corps spent 19–20 June probing for 

the Southern left flank amid heavy rains. On 21 June, the XX Corps 

approached the Powder Springs Road from the northwest and 

ultimately deployed on the north side of the road near Kolb’s farmhouse. Meanwhile, the XXIII Corps headed down the Sandtown 

Road, crossing flooded Noyes’ Creek, where Jackson’s Confederate 

cavalry had removed planks from the bridge to delay the Union 

advance. Once over the creek, Schofield’s two divisions separated. 

Brig. Gen. Milo S. Hascall’s division marched straight ahead and 

formed on Hooker’s right near the Kolb house. Brig. Gen. Jacob D. 

Cox’s division continued south on the Sandtown Road to the intersection with the Powder Springs Road and then stretched northeastward from there, forming a line that faced south and comprised the 

Union right flank. Four miles to the southwest, Stoneman’s cavalry 

division patrolled the area near Powder Springs.

Jackson’s delaying action on Noyes’ Creek had alerted 

Johnston to the threat to his left flank, which on 21 June extended 

only to John Ward Creek. That night, Johnston sent Hood’s 11,000-

man corps on a long march from its position on the Confederate 

right to the extreme left. Both Loring and Wheeler extended their 

lines to fill Hood’s empty trenches. Hood’s column passed through 

Marietta, heading southwest on the Powder Springs Road toward 

Hooker and Schofield. By the morning of 22 June, Hood had 

assembled his three divisions three miles southwest of Marietta on 

a north-south line straddling the Powder Springs Road at Mount 

Zion Church. Hindman’s division held the right of Hood’s line, 

with Stevenson’s division manning the left and extending to the 

Powder Springs Road. Stewart’s division formed in reserve behind 

Stevenson.

Johnston directed Hood to block the Federal advance on 

Marietta along the Powder Springs Road. Incorrectly believing 
32 

that Hooker’s three divisions constituted Sherman’s right flank, 

Hood decided, apparently on his own, to deploy his corps to turn 

that flank with a vigorous attack. Uncertain of the situation along 

their front, Schofield and Hooker deployed one regiment each as 

skirmishers. The Federals entered the tree line east of the Kolb 

farmhouse and captured several prisoners, who revealed that 

Hood’s corps occupied the woods just beyond. The skirmishers 

relayed this information to the main Union line, where Williams’ 

XX Corps division occupied a ridge west of the Kolb house, 

stretching northward to John Ward Creek. From there, Geary’s XX 

Corps division extended the line farther north toward the Dallas 

Road. On the XX Corps’ right, 

Hascall’s XXIII Corps division 

deployed along the Powder 

Springs Road facing southeast. 

For the first time in almost 

a month, the skies cleared 

and the sun shone, promising 

favorable conditions for Hood’s 

assault. At 1700 Hindman’s and 

Stevenson’s divisions emerged 

from the tree line arrayed in 

line of battle with few skirmishers, evidently because 

Hood expected to encounter 

minimal resistance. As a 

result, the Confederates were 

unaware, until it was too late, 

that the Federals had deployed 

forty pieces of artillery along 

their line. According to one skirmisher in blue, Sgt. Rice C. Bull 

of the 123d New York Infantry, the Federal guns opened fire with 

shot and shell as the Southern line swept into the Kolb Farm’s 

thousand-yard-wide field, endangering friend and foe alike. “We 

were in their line of fire and for a time in as much danger from 

them as the enemy,” Bull recalled, “so we tried to file off to the right 

and left out of range. Winded, we made a last effort and struggled 

through our lines. Everyone fell to the ground exhausted, and 

many were in a dead faint.”

As the rebels moved to within close range, no fewer than 

five Union batteries hammered the gray and butternut line with 

General Hood 

(Hal Jespersen)
33

case shot and canister. During the assault, Battery I, 1st New York 

Light Artillery, alone fired 669 rounds. Many of the attackers took 

shelter from the firestorm, using every available depression on that 

vast killing field. As Hindman’s and Stevenson’s assault collapsed, 

Stewart’s division advanced on the left but came to a halt when 

it encountered Hascall’s line, ending the attack. The Battle of 

Kolb’s Farm cost the Confederates 1,000 casualties compared to 

the Federals’ 350 losses. At nightfall, Hood withdrew to Mount 

Zion Church. Though badly managed, Hood’s assault had blunted 

Sherman’s flanking maneuver via the Powder Springs Road and 

bought precious time for the Confederate forces on the Kennesaw 

line. This latest setback further delayed Sherman’s timetable, 

leading him to make a fateful decision: he would forgo another 

flank attack and launch a frontal assault instead.

In the meantime, Johnston’s appeals to Richmond for a 

cavalry raid to sever Sherman’s supply line seemed to bear fruit. 

On 20 June, a force of 1,600 Confederate cavalry under Brig. Gen. 

Gideon J. Pillow left Oxford, Alabama, to cut the Western and 

Atlantic Railroad between Chattanooga and Dalton. Four days 

later, Pillow attacked the Union garrison at La Fayette, Georgia, 

well short of his objective. He lacked artillery to batter the fortified 

buildings that the Northern troops were using for cover and reluctantly withdrew when Union reinforcements arrived, returning to 

Alabama without having reached the Western and Atlantic. For 

the moment, at least, the Federal supply line remained intact and 

fully operational, but Pillow’s failed raid nevertheless reinforced 

Sherman’s decision to attack.

The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain

Sherman was confident that Johnston’s Kennesaw Mountain 

line was overextended and that launching simultaneous attacks 

on several key points would cause it to collapse and perhaps 

lead to a breakthrough that would end the campaign with one 

decisive blow. Sherman’s plan was ambitious, to say the least. The 

Southern line now ran eight miles from the Canton Road north 

of Kennesaw Mountain to the Marietta-Sandtown Road south 

of Kolb’s Farm. Sherman decided to stretch Johnston’s line even 

farther by probing its flanks and then breaking the line at two 

points in the center.

On 24 June, he issued orders giving his subordinates three 

days to reconnoiter the enemy’s lines, choose the points of attack, 
34 

and deploy the assault units. Sherman designated the Army of 

the Cumberland to launch the main assault. Thomas’ men would 

pierce the Confederate center along the Dallas Road and then 

seize the Western and Atlantic just south of Marietta. On Thomas’ 

left, McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee would support the main 

effort by puncturing the Confederate line just south of Pigeon 

Hill, advancing a strong skirmish line to carry the summit of Big 

Kennesaw, and sending a combined force of infantry and cavalry 

toward Marietta. On the Union right, Schofield’s Army of the Ohio 

would conduct a diversion along the Powder Springs Road near 

the Kolb’s Farm battlefield. Sherman set up his command post on 

a hill near the center of Thomas’ line. To facilitate communication, 

he had telegraph wire strung to the headquarters of his three army 

commanders.

On 25 June, Schofield showed Sherman the obstacle he faced 

on the Union right: Hood’s corps was strongly entrenched along its 

entire two-mile front. Schofield noted that a frontal assault on such 

a position would only waste soldiers’ lives. Sherman agreed and 

modified Schofield’s mission. The next day, two brigades from Cox’s 

XXIII Corps division began probing the Olley’s Creek area. One of 

the brigades crossed the creek unopposed, seized a hill, and dug in 

there, having turned Johnston’s left flank. Johnston made no attempt 

to expel the lone Union brigade, leaving Schofield free to exploit 

the opportunity the next morning. As the sun set, Sherman’s army 

group made frantic last-minute preparations for what the Union 

commander hoped would be the decisive battle of the campaign.

McPherson’s Assault

Following an hour-long artillery barrage, McPherson’s 

multipronged assault began at 0815 on 27 June. To the north, the 

attack on Marietta met with stiff resistance and soon stalled. In 

the center, elements of eight Union regiments, advancing in open 

order on Big Kennesaw, struck four veteran Confederate regiments. The combination of steep, rocky terrain and Confederate 

firepower proved too much for the Federal attackers, who nevertheless maintained a steady fire on the defenders. On the southern 

end, roughly 5,500 infantrymen from Logan’s XV Corps attacked 

the Confederates dug in along Pigeon Hill. Brig. Gen. Morgan L. 

Smith’s two brigades combined with one of Brig. Gen. William 

Harrow’s brigades to form an assault force that hit the seam 

between Walker’s division of Hardee’s corps and French’s division 
35

of Loring’s corps, but the Federals could make little headway. Heavy 

artillery fire forced many soldiers in blue to take cover among the 

huge boulders. Some Confederate defenders even hurled rocks 

down at the attackers (Map 3). 

McPherson’s assault lasted barely two hours, resulting in 850 

Union casualties compared to fewer than 300 Confederates. Sgt. 

Theodore F. Upson of the 100th Indiana Infantry noted that he and 

some of his comrades had become trapped in the no-man’s-land 

separating the two forces at Pigeon Hill. “We were in a bad fix,” 

Upson recalled. “We could not go ahead and could not get back. We 

took cover as best we could and kept up a desultory fire. . . . There 

we staid till night came. . . . Then, tired and discouraged, we fell back 

to a new line of works. . . . The assault had failed miserably along the 

whole line.”

Thomas’ Assault

A mile and a half to the south, General Thomas and his 

subordinates had made careful preparations for the Army of the 

Cumberland’s part in the 27 June assault. Thomas and Howard, the 

IV Corps commander, had selected a hilly ridgeline along a tributary of John Ward Creek where the opposing armies stood just 

330 yards apart. The two Union generals were unaware that the 

Confederate entrenchments on 

this part of the line happened 

to be flawed. The earthworks 

conformed to the actual crest of 

the hill rather than the military 

crest, resulting in “dead space” 

along the forward slope where 

attacking soldiers might find 

shelter. Maj. Gen. Benjamin 

F. Cheatham’s division of 

Hardee’s corps defended this 

part of the Confederate line, 

which included a salient that 

Southern soldiers dubbed the 

Dead Angle. Not surprisingly, 

it was on this part of the line 

that the dead space was located. 

Cleburne’s division was dug in 

on Cheatham’s right. 

General Thomas

(Library of Congress)
Big Kennesaw Mountain

Pigeon Hill

“Dead Angle”

Pine

Mountain

Brush Mountain

Little Kennesaw

Mountain

Brush Mountain–Lost Mountain Line

Kennesaw Mountain Line

Mud Creek Line

CLEBURNE

CHEATHAM

ST EV EN

SON STEWAR T JACKSON

HINDMAN

BATE

WALKER

FRENCH

WALTHALL FEATHERSTON WHEELER

H A R D E E H O O D

L O R I N G

BLAI R (XVII)

DODGE (XVI)

LOGAN

( X V )

( XX III)

HOWARD (IV )

PALMER

( XIV )

HOOKER ( XX )

T

H

O

M

A

S

S

C

H

O

F

I E L D

M

c

P

H

E

R

S O N

Noyes’ Creek

John Ward Creek

Mud Creek

Olley’s Creek

Western & Atlantic RR

Kolb

P O W D E R S P R I N G S

R O A D

M A C L A N D

R O A D

S A N D T OW N

R O A D

BURNT HICKORY RO A D

STILESBORO RO A D

D A L L A S R O A D

Big Shanty

Marietta

27 June 1864

A SKETCH OF THE

B AT TLE OF KENNESA W MOUNTAIN

Confederate Position

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

Union Attack

Union Feint and Demonstration

Map 3
37

At 0900, nearly an hour behind schedule and after a token 

fifteen-minute artillery barrage, five Union brigades from the 

Army of the Cumberland left their trenches in densely packed 

columns and started downhill toward the stream. From there 

it was uphill to the waiting Confederates. Thomas’ plan was 

for the assault troops to punch through the Southern line, and 

then he would feed reserve units into the opening. Speed was 

essential to the operation’s success, with the assault columns 

under orders to cross the lethal middle ground without pausing 

to shoot. All three brigades from Brig. Gen. John Newton’s 

IV Corps division attacked on the northern end, while two 

brigades from Brig. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis’ XIV Corps division 

advanced to the south.

In Newton’s division, only Brig. Gen. Charles G. Harker’s brigade 

could make much headway, thanks to a draw that partially shielded 

the attackers from the deadly fire of Cleburne’s division. Riding into 

battle on a fine white horse at the head of his troops, Harker made 

an easy target for enemy marksmen and fell mortally wounded. With 

their leader gone, the men of Harker’s brigade lost heart and retreated 

without having reached Cleburne’s line. In the meantime, a fire started 

in the fallen leaves and dry brush. The flames consumed some of the 

gravely wounded men of Harker’s brigade, whose shrieks could be 

heard above the din of battle. On Cleburne’s left, Lt. Col. William 

H. Martin, the commander of the 1st/15th Arkansas Consolidated 

Infantry, ascended the parapet waving a handkerchief as a flag of 

truce, the Confederate officer risking death to secure the rescue of 

wounded Federals from the woodland inferno.

Of Davis’ assault force, only Col. Daniel McCook Jr.’s brigade 

reached Cheatham’s line. McCook himself was mortally wounded 

as he tried to enter the Confederate works near the Dead Angle, 

where Pvt. Sam R. Watkins and his comrades of the 1st/27th 

Tennessee Consolidated Infantry were fighting for survival. 

“Column after column of Federal soldiers were crowded upon that 

line,” Watkins recalled, 

a solid line of blazing fire . . . from the muzzles of the Yankee 

guns being poured right into our faces, singeing our hair and 

clothes, the hot blood of our dead and wounded spurting on us, 

the blinding smoke and stifling atmosphere filling our eyes and 

mouths. . . . My gun became so hot that frequently the powder 

would flash before I could ram home the ball. . . . There was 
38 

not a single man in the company who was not wounded, or had 

holes shot through his hat and clothing.

The Confederate batteries posted behind the Dead Angle enfiladed Davis’ two brigades at short range with canister and case 

shot. Rather than run the gauntlet back to the main line, some 

of the Federals retreated downhill about thirty yards to the dead 

space, where they dug frantically with every available implement, 

including their bare hands.

By noon, it was clear that Thomas’ attack had also failed. 

Although the four Union assault divisions had not broken through 

any part of Johnston’s line, they still held some forward positions. 

In a flurry of telegraphic messages, Sherman queried Thomas on 

their options, indicating his preference for another attack. But 

Thomas refused to acquiesce: “We have already lost heavily to-day 

without gaining any material advantage; one or two more such 

assaults would use up this army.”

While the main attack sputtered out, Schofield’s XXIII

Corps pushed far beyond the Confederate left flank, until the 

Federal advance stood closer to Atlanta than did Johnston’s 

army. To the south of Schofield, Stoneman’s cavalry division 

had moved to within five miles of 

the Chattahoochee River. Sherman 

rightly called Schofield’s efforts 

of 27 June “the only advantage of 

the day.” 

Sherman reluctantly concluded that his bid to end the campaign 

with one decisive battle had failed. 

He resumed his usual flanking 

tactics, shifting more troops to the 

right and collecting supplies to 

support them. In the meantime, 

a truce on 29 June enabled the 

Northerners to gather their 

wounded and bury their dead. The 

Battle of Kennesaw Mountain had 

cost the Union about 3,000 casualties and the Confederates roughly 

1,000—the largest one-day casualty 

count of the campaign thus far.

General Schofield

(Library of Congress)
39

In the aftermath of his Kennesaw Mountain triumph, Johnston 

received visits from two Confederate senators, who indicated that 

President Davis was tiring of the general’s passive strategy of withdrawing from one defensive position to another without bringing 

Sherman to battle. In response, the Confederate commander 

renewed his plea for Davis to send cavalrymen such as Forrest 

and Brig. Gen. John H. Morgan on raids to sever Federal lines of 

communications north of Chattanooga. Anticipating this possibility, Sherman had already planned to send another expeditionary 

force from Memphis to keep Forrest occupied. Johnston’s reliance 

on outside assistance thus left him dependent on circumstances 

beyond his control. Had he adopted a more aggressive strategy in 

northern Georgia, at the very least he might have appeased Davis 

and disrupted Sherman’s routine of flanking the Confederates out 

of their defensive lines at minimal cost to his forces.

The Smyrna Line

In resuming his flanking tactics, Sherman intended to pry 

Johnston out of the Kennesaw line through maneuver rather than 

brute force. Once again, McPherson’s army would lead the way, 

advancing beyond Schofield’s right toward the Chattahoochee 

River. Garrard’s cavalry division would occupy McPherson’s 

trenches, while Stoneman’s horsemen continued to patrol the 

Chattahoochee to the mouth of Sweet Water Creek. McPherson’s 

drive to the river began on the night of 2 July, with his wagons 

carrying ten days’ rations for the soldiers and forage for the horses. 

Notified of Federal movement beyond his left flank, Johnston 

immediately issued evacuation orders. He transferred his supplies 

to the Chattahoochee, wrecked the Western and Atlantic from 

Kennesaw Mountain to Marietta, and withdrew his three infantry 

corps, posting Wheeler’s cavalry as a rear guard to delay the Federal 

pursuit. The Kennesaw Mountain defensive line had served the 

Confederates well, enabling them to stall the Union offensive for 

two weeks and repulse a full-scale frontal assault while inflicting 

disproportionate casualties.

On the morning of 3 July, Union skirmishers found 

the Southern trenches empty. Sherman pursued the enemy, 

intending to strike the Confederates while they were crossing the 

Chattahoochee. The Federals crowded onto all available roads 

leading toward Marietta, with Thomas’ army advancing on the left 

along the Western and Atlantic, Schofield marching in the center, 
40 

and McPherson moving on the right. About four miles southeast 

of Marietta, the rebels had used slave labor to build a six-mile line 

of fieldworks running from Nickajack Creek on the Southern left 

to Rottenwood Creek on the right. The line crossed the Western 

and Atlantic Railroad at Smyrna Station.

Sherman planned to launch a diversionary attack on 

Johnston’s center while turning his left flank. Confident that 

his adversary would evacuate the Smyrna line without a fight, 

Sherman predicted, “No general, such as [Johnston], would invite 

battle with the Chattahoochee behind him.” He was mistaken. 

Loring’s corps held the right of the Confederate line, Hardee’s 

corps occupied the center, and Hood’s corps was dug in on the left. 

The Confederate infantry was augmented by several hundred of 

Smith’s Georgia militia. On the Fourth of July, Howard’s IV Corps 

attacked Loring’s position along the railroad but could make little 

headway. Although Dodge’s XVI Corps captured some enemy rifle 

pits at Ruff ’s Mill on the rebel left, the Federals failed to penetrate 

Hood’s main line. After learning that the Federals were turning his 

flank, Johnston evacuated the Smyrna line on the night of 4–5 July 

and withdrew his army four miles to an impressive line of fortifications along the north bank of the Chattahoochee River.

The Chattahoochee River Line

In mid-June, as the Confederates had begun to occupy the 

Kennesaw line, General Shoup, the Army of Tennessee’s chief of 

artillery, approached Johnston with a proposal to construct a crescent-shaped line of earthworks that would cover the Western and 

Atlantic Railroad bridge spanning the Chattahoochee. Johnston 

gave his approval, and Shoup immediately set to work, directing a 

team of engineer officers who in turn supervised about 1,000 slave 

laborers. In just one week, they built a marvel of military engineering, a five-mile-long fortified bridgehead featuring a series of 

mutually supporting, arrowhead-shaped redoubts later dubbed 

Shoupades after their designer. The fortifications were situated 

along a chain of hills running from the railroad bridge to Mason 

and Turner’s Ferry. Shoup had intended for his entrenchments to 

be held by a relatively small force, freeing the bulk of Johnston’s 

army for offensive operations. But Johnston violated the designer’s intent by adding two miles of trenches on the left along high 

ground extending to Nickajack Creek and then by squeezing most 

of the Army of Tennessee into the extended line.
41

When the Federals reached Johnston’s new line on 5 July, 

Sherman considered attacking but his chief engineer, Capt. Orlando 

M. Poe, wisely cautioned against a frontal assault. Sherman heeded 

Poe’s advice, avoiding what could have been an even bloodier 

repulse than had occurred at Kennesaw Mountain. Instead, Thomas 

deployed astride the railroad on the left, McPherson moved into 

position on the right, and Schofield formed in reserve. Sherman 

and a number of other Union officers—including Maj. James 

A. Connolly, a XIV Corps staff officer—climbed nearby Mount 

Wilkinson to study the Chattahoochee River line. The officers got 

a far better view than they had anticipated. “Mine eyes have beheld 

the promised land . . . of Atlanta,” Connolly later wrote, “glittering 

in the sunlight before us, and only 8 miles distant.” The major 

watched Sherman “stepping nervously about, his eyes sparkling 

and his face aglow—casting a single glance at Atlanta, another at 

the River, and a dozen at the surrounding valley to see where he 

could best cross the River, how best he could flank them” (Map 4). 

Sherman kept Thomas opposite Johnston to hold the 

Confederates in place, while McPherson threatened to ford near 

Sweet Water Creek, and Schofield searched for a crossing point 

between the railroad and the town of Roswell, some twenty miles 

north of Atlanta, where Sherman had sent Garrard’s cavalry 

division to save the bridge across the Chattahoochee. When 

Garrard reported that the bridge there was already burned, 

Sherman turned his attention to Schofield, who chose Isom’s Ferry 

at Soap Creek, roughly midway between Atlanta and Roswell, 

as the best place to traverse. The Confederates lightly defended 

the south bank of the Chattahoochee there, and that part of the 

river passed between high hills, concealing the Federals and their 

pontoon train.

At 1530 on 8 July, an infantry regiment from Cox’s XXIII

Corps division began to cross the river upstream, using a stone fish 

dam submerged by heavy rains. A half hour later, Hascall’s division 

of the same corps started rowing across the stream in pontoon 

boats. The surprised defenders fired a few token shots and then 

fled at the sight of growing numbers of Union troops. By dusk, 

with one pontoon bridge completed, Cox finished traversing the 

river and began entrenching on high ground. The Confederates, 

meanwhile, made no attempt to counterattack Schofield’s bridgehead. Early the next morning, Garrard’s troopers seized Roswell’s 

textile factories. The Northern cavalrymen burned most of the 
BATTLE OF PEACHTRE

20 July

BATTLE OF EZRA CHURCH 28 July

C h a tt a h o o c h e e R i v e r

Peachtree Creek

Proctor’s Creek

North Fork of Utoy Creek

Tanyard Br

Railroad Defense Line

Western & Atlantic RR

Macon & Western RR

Mason and

Turner’s Ferry

to East Point

Elliott’s Mill

Utoy P. O.

Ezra Church

Mt. Zion

 Church

Howell’s Mill

Col

L I C KSK I L L E T

R O A D

S A N D T OW N R O A D

AT LANTA

Map 4

BATTLE OF PEACHTRE

20 July

BATTLE OF EZRA CHURCH 28 July

C h a tt a h o o c h e e R i v e r

Peachtree Creek

Proctor’s Creek

North Fork of Utoy Creek

Tanyard Br

Railroad Defense Line

Western & Atlantic RR

Macon & Western RR

Mason and

Turner’s Ferry

to East Point

Elliott’s Mill

Utoy P. O.

Ezra

 Church

Mt. Zion

 Church

Howell’s Mill

Col

L I C KSK I L L E T

R O A D

S A N D T OW N R O A D

AT LANTA
EE CREEK 

BATTLE OF ATLANTA 22 July

Peachtree Creek

Clear Creek

Sugar Creek

d Branch

Fortications

of Atlanta

Outer Defensive Line

Bald Hill

Georgia RR

to Buckhead

lier’s Mill

Clay

Troup Hurt

A. Hurt

A

DECATUR

Collier’s Bridge

Howard

Union Entrenchments

Confederate Entrenchments

Summer 1864

ATLANTA AND VICINT Y

0 1 2

Miles
44 

factory buildings and then transported the now-unemployed 

female workers to the rear. From there, the women were sent north 

to find work. His mission at Roswell accomplished, Garrard forded 

the Chattahoochee. The entire effort to gain the south bank of the 

river cost the Federals fewer than a dozen casualties.

The Union river crossings north of Atlanta compelled 

Johnston to abandon the Chattahoochee River line. Shoup was 

despondent, for his magnificent fortifications had not been put to 

the test. By the morning of 10 July, the Army of Tennessee had 

reached the south bank of the Chattahoochee, having destroyed the 

railroad and nearby wagon bridges. As the rebels withdrew toward 

the earthworks ringing Atlanta, Sherman’s army group paused 

to rest and resupply. In addition, the railroad had to be repaired, 

bridges had to be rebuilt, and crossing points strengthened prior 

to the final drive on the Gate City. But the Union commander 

was already planning his next move. “Instead of attacking Atlanta 

direct, or any of its forts,” he noted, “I propose to make a circuit, 

destroying all its railroads. This is a delicate movement, and must 

be done with caution.”

A Change in Commanders

Deeply dissatisfied with Johnston’s conduct of the campaign 

thus far, President Davis sent his military adviser, General Braxton 

Bragg, to Atlanta in mid-July to assess the situation there. In 

a conference with Bragg, Johnston repeated much of what he 

had already told Davis—that he refused to assume the offensive 

because he was heavily outnumbered and that the surest way to 

defeat Sherman was to cut his line of communications, thereby 

forcing him to abandon the campaign for want of supplies. 

Johnston further maintained that Forrest was the best choice for 

the mission because he could not spare Wheeler’s cavalry. No 

friend of Johnston—who had succeeded him as commander of the 

Army of Tennessee—Bragg informed Davis, “I cannot learn that 

he has any more plan for the future than he has had in the past.” 

Bragg further recommended that Hood replace Johnston.

Still uncertain as to his course of action, Davis consulted the 

South’s greatest field commander, General Robert E. Lee, who 

advised against the proposed command change while in the midst 

of a campaign. The president tried once more to goad Johnston 

into action, but the general replied that “as the enemy has double 

our number, we must be on the defensive. My plan of operations 
45

must, therefore, depend upon that of the enemy. It is mainly to 

watch for an opportunity to fight to advantage.” Davis had heard 

enough. On 17 July, as directed, Confederate Adjutant General 

Samuel Cooper sent the following message to Johnston: “As you 

have failed to arrest the advance of the enemy . . . and express 

no confidence that you can defeat or repel him, you are hereby 

relieved from . . . command.”

Davis appointed Hood to replace Johnston and to assume the 

temporary rank of full general pending congressional approval. 

Just thirty-three, Hood had earned a reputation in the Eastern 

Theater as a hard-hitting brigade and division commander. His 

physical appearance only enhanced that image, battlefield wounds 

having disabled an arm and cost him a leg. Hood was as ambitious 

as he was aggressive and had schemed with Bragg to secure the 

army command. Well aware of Hood’s propensity for recklessness, 

Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon cautioned him to 

“be wary no less than bold. It may yet be practicable to cut the 

communication of the enemy or find or make an opportunity of 

equal encounter whether he moves east or west.”

While Hood assumed command, the roughly 55,000 soldiers 

constituting the Army of Tennessee withdrew across Peachtree 

Creek and filed into the earthworks north and east of town. By 

the summer of 1864, Atlanta had become one of the most heavily 

fortified cities in the South, and its wartime population had mushroomed to over 20,000 civilians. In the spring of 1863, a failed 

Union cavalry raid to cut the Western and Atlantic Railroad in 

northern Georgia had convinced the city fathers to authorize a local 

engineer, Capt. Lemuel P. Grant, to design a system of fortifications 

around Atlanta. Under Grant’s supervision, conscripted slaves 

had built a ten-mile circuit of entrenchments linking numerous 

redoubts capable of holding about one hundred large-caliber guns. 

The laborers had improved the fortifications by clearing fields of 

fire and placing various obstructions—including chevaux-de-frise

and abatis—in front of the earthworks. These works—situated just 

over a mile from the city center—constituted the Confederates’ 

final defensive line. 

Sherman, meanwhile, resumed operations, sending Thomas 

on a direct line to Atlanta from the north via Peachtree Creek, 

while sending Schofield and McPherson on a more roundabout 

route to strike the Georgia Railroad east of the city. Federal troop 

strength then stood at just over 106,000. On 19 July, Sherman 
46 

learned of Hood’s promotion and consulted with McPherson and 

Schofield, both of whom had known Hood while the three were 

cadets at the U.S. Military Academy. The two men agreed that the 

new Confederate commander was bold to the point of rashness, 

which Hood had demonstrated as recently as his impetuous attack 

at Kolb’s Farm on 22 June.

While Sherman’s army group moved on Atlanta, another 

Union expedition left Memphis in search of Forrest, the 

Confederacy’s most elusive cavalryman. Maj. Gen. Andrew J. 

Smith led some 14,000 Federal infantry and cavalry and 24 pieces 

of artillery into northeastern Mississippi. On 13 July, Smith’s 

command occupied a strong position west of Tupelo and repulsed 

a series of disjointed attacks launched by 8,000 Confederates 

under Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee. Forrest’s cavalry division bore 

the brunt of the fighting, suffering 1,300 casualties, and Forrest 

himself was wounded in a rearguard action at Old Town Creek 

the following day. In the process, Smith had sidelined Forrest for 

several weeks and thus prevented him from raiding Sherman’s 

supply line. But Smith’s success was a double-edged sword. After 

all, Forrest had prevented the bulk of Smith’s veteran XVI Corps 

from joining Sherman outside Atlanta. 

Confederate defenses northwest of Atlanta

(George N. Barnard, Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign)
47

Hood’s First Sortie: The Battle of Peachtree Creek

On the morning of 20 July, the Confederates manning the 

trenches one mile south of Peachtree Creek anxiously awaited the 

order to attack the Federals crossing that stream. The men of the 

corps of newly promoted Lt. Gen. Alexander P. Stewart (formerly 

Polk’s command) held the left of the Confederate line, their flank 

anchored on the Chattahoochee. Hardee’s corps occupied the 

center, and Hood’s corps under its acting commander, General 

Cheatham, faced east toward the Georgia Railroad and the town 

of Decatur. Farther east, Wheeler’s dismounted cavalry was drawn 

up astride the railroad, opposing the Federals advancing from the 

direction of Decatur. 

Hood’s attack plan was both ambitious and complex. While 

Cheatham and Wheeler delayed the Federals to the east, Hardee 

and Stewart would attack en echelon from right to left, striking 

the Army of the Cumberland as it crossed Peachtree Creek and 

destroying it in the angle formed by the junction of the creek with 

the Chattahoochee. Though sound in concept, the assault required 

precise timing—with no fewer than seven Confederate divisions 

slated to attack in close succession (Map 5). 

On 19 July, Thomas’ army would have been vulnerable to 

such an attack. The Army of the Cumberland had spent most of 

General Cheatham

(Library of Congress)

General Stewart

(North Carolina State Archives)
48 

that day crossing the creek, but by the next morning all units were 

across and digging in south of the stream. Even so, a two-mile gap 

separated Thomas from Schofield and McPherson—a situation 

that Hood sought to exploit.

M A N E Y

B A T E

W A L K E R

C L E B U R N E

F R E N C H

W A L T H A L L L O R I N G

S T E W A R T

H A R D E E

W I L L I A M S G E A R Y

W A R D

( XIV ) P A L M E R

( XX)

N E W T O

N

(IV )

H O O K E R

Peachtree Creek

Peachtree Creek

Tanyard Branch

Clear

Creek

Collier’s

Bridge

to Buckhead

to Atlanta

P E A C HTREE RO A D

Embry

Red House

Mt. Zion Church

Howell’s Mill

Collier’s Mill

20 July 1864

B AT TLE OF PEA CHTREE CREEK

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

A SKETCH OF THE

Map 5
49

At 0500 on 20 July, the entire Union line advanced a short 

distance, with Logan’s XV Corps halting just two and a half miles 

east of Atlanta, enabling the four 20-pound Parrott rifles of Capt. 

Francis DeGress’ Battery H, 1st Illinois Light Artillery, to fire 

the Federals’ first salvo into the Gate City. Apparently killing no 

one, the shells damaged a few buildings and served notice that 

the city was under attack. Hood therefore postponed his assault 

from 1300 to 1530 in order to shift the entire rebel line to the 

right until Cheatham’s corps straddled the railroad. Although the 

Southerners now blocked the Federal advance into Atlanta from 

the east, the delay had cost Hood valuable time.

Poor communication between Hardee’s and Stewart’s corps 

only made matters worse. The miscues began when Stewart’s 

division at the far right under Loring launched its assault at 1445, 

about forty-five minutes ahead of schedule. Hardee’s attack began 

on time at 1530, but Bate’s division soon bogged down in the 

dense woods and underbrush in Clear Creek Valley. On Bate’s left, 

Walker’s division attacked along the Peachtree Road and briefly 

seized a section of the Union line held by Newton’s IV Corps 

division. But General Thomas, a former artillery instructor at 

the U.S. Military Academy, directed the fire of several Northern 

batteries and thus helped repulse Walker’s assault. To the left of 

Walker, Cheatham’s division—now under Brig. Gen. George E. 

Maney—overlapped Newton’s right, but the Federals managed to 

blunt Maney’s flank attack. By 1800, Bate at last reached Newton’s 

line, only to be driven back by U.S. artillery fire. Summoned by 

Hood, Cleburne’s division left its reserve position and headed east 

to oppose the Federals approaching from that direction. With 

Cleburne’s departure, Hardee had no more men to commit, and 

he broke off the attack.

On Stewart’s front, Loring’s division advanced farther than 

any other Confederate unit, its success due in part to the element 

of surprise achieved by the early start. Crossing the Tanyard 

Branch on the right and the Collier Road on the left, Loring’s 

troops descended onto the Peachtree Creek floodplain and struck 

Brig. Gen. William T. Ward’s (formerly Butterfield’s) XX Corps 

division, which held firm despite a ferocious Confederate assault. 

To the west on high ground near Collier’s Mill, the guns of Geary’s 

XX Corps division raked Loring’s open left flank with canister. 

On Loring’s left, Maj. Gen. Edward C. Walthall’s division swept 

around Geary’s right, but Williams’ XX Corps division countered 
50 

by refusing its left flank and subjecting Walthall’s exposed left to a 

lethal combination of musketry and artillery fire. According to one 

of Williams’ men, Sergeant Bull of the 123d New York Infantry, 

“The enemy made five charges on our line, coming at times within 

one hundred feet; yet I did not see a single Johnnie. The clouds of 

smoke from the muskets of both sides and from [a nearby battery] 

poured down on us to hide everything but the flash of the enemy’s 

guns that gave us their position.” Stewart’s division at the far left 

under French advanced but was only lightly engaged before withdrawing. By 1900 the battle was over. The rebel assault had failed 

to drive Thomas’ army into the Chattahoochee. 

The Battle of Peachtree Creek cost the attacking Confederates 

about 2,500 casualties, while the defending Federals lost 1,750. 

There were numerous reasons for the Southern defeat. Hood had 

left execution of his complex plan to his subordinates, and Hardee 

had sent his divisions forward in piecemeal fashion, exposing their 

flanks to devastating Union artillery fire. The Federals also held 

the advantage of defending high ground, forcing the Confederates 

to attack uphill and through heavy vegetation.

Hood’s Second Sortie: The Battle of Atlanta

During the Peachtree Creek fight, Wheeler’s cavalry had 

captured an elevation referred to as the Bald Hill, about two miles 

east of Atlanta, extending the Confederate outer line southward 

well below the Georgia Railroad. Early on the morning of 21 July, 

Cleburne’s division also occupied the hill and began to dig in. 

Advancing from the east, Blair’s two XVII Corps divisions drove 

the Confederates off Bald Hill. Then Lt. John Sullivan’s 3d Ohio 

Light Battery unlimbered and began firing rounds into downtown 

Atlanta. The projectiles caused minimal physical damage, yet the 

explosions terrified the city’s residents. To restore civilian morale, 

Hood decided to put an end to the Union army’s long-range artillery fire while securing the Georgia Railroad.

On 21 July, Hood devised another elaborate assault to drive 

the Federals from the Gate City. Learning that McPherson’s left 

flank had lost its cavalry screen—namely Garrard’s division, which 

was tearing up the Georgia Railroad near Stone Mountain—Hood 

decided to launch a surprise attack on the Federals east of Atlanta. 

He designated Hardee’s corps as the main strike force. That night, 

Hardee and two divisions of Wheeler’s cavalry would make a night 

march to Decatur and assault McPherson’s army from the rear 
51

while Cheatham attacked from the front, crushing the Federals in 

the jaws of the Confederate vise. In the meantime, Stewart’s corps 

and Smith’s Georgia militia would prevent Thomas and Schofield 

from coming to McPherson’s rescue.

In the darkness Hardee’s corps evacuated its trenches along 

Peachtree Creek and headed south, the weary soldiers trudging 

through the streets of Atlanta amid oppressive heat and choking 

dust. By the time the column had reached the revised jump-off 

point north and west of Terry’s Mill Pond, it was noon on 22 July—

hours behind schedule and well short of Decatur. But the men had 

marched fifteen miles, much of it under a hot sun, and were thoroughly fatigued, having spent the previous two days marching and 

fighting on little or no sleep. While Hardee’s corps made its night 

march, Cheatham’s corps filed out of its trenches east of Atlanta 

in preparation for the frontal assault on McPherson. Hardee and 

Cheatham’s empty earthworks led Sherman to assume that Hood 

had abandoned Atlanta, but Thomas and Schofield reported that 

the rebels still occupied Atlanta’s inner ring of fortifications. 

On the morning of 22 July, the right and center of McPherson’s 

line extended along a north-south axis, straddling both the Georgia 

Railroad and the Bald Hill. Earlier that morning, McPherson had 

received word of a large Confederate force moving east, so he 

refused his vulnerable left flank, facing General Dodge’s two XVI

Corps divisions southward on either side of Sugar Creek. Without 

knowing it, McPherson had placed the XVI Corps in an excellent 

position to block Hardee’s impending assault (Map 6). 

Just a few hundred yards south of the XVI Corps, Hardee 

launched his attack at 1215, and firing soon erupted as Union and 

Confederate skirmishers made contact along Sugar Creek. But 

the Southern assault lacked momentum, for the troops of Bate’s 

division had earlier struggled across a swamp, and General Walker 

was killed before his division had even deployed. As a result, the 

XVI Corps divisions of Sweeny and Brig. Gen. John W. Fuller had 

little difficulty repulsing Hardee’s two divisions at the far right. 

On Hardee’s left, Cleburne’s division enjoyed initial success, 

exploiting a gap in the Union line between the right of the XVI

Corps and the left of Blair’s XVII Corps. As the enemy poured 

through the opening, McPherson and several of his staff officers 

were riding along that part of the line toward the threatened 

XVII Corps. The Union general blundered into soldiers of the 5th 

Confederate Infantry, who demanded that he surrender. Instead, 
52 

McPherson tipped his hat and attempted to escape but was shot 

down and died soon afterward—the only Union army commander 

to be killed in battle.

C L E B U R N E

G .

W.

 S M I TH

S T E V E N S O N

B R O W N

C L A Y T O N

M A N E Y

B A T E

W A L K E R

H A R D E E

C H E A T H

A

M

M.L. SMITH

LOGAN

( X V )

( XXIII)

DODGE (XVI)

BLAI R (XVII)

SWEENY

FULLER

Bald Hill

to Atlanta

to Decatur to Terry’s Mill Pond

Sugar Creek

Georgia RR

Troup Hurt

22 July 1864

B AT TLE OF ATLANTA

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Confederate Entrenchments

Union Position

Union Retreat

Union Counterattack

Union Entrenchments

A SKETCH OF THE

Map 6
53

Pressing on, Cleburne’s men struck the left flank and rear of 

the XVII Corps’ line, held by Brig. Gen. Giles A. Smith’s division. 

The fighting quickly became hand-to-hand with fixed bayonets 

and clubbed muskets. No sooner had Giles Smith’s Federals driven 

back Cleburne’s men, than Gustavus Smith’s Georgia militia and 

Maney’s division attacked from the front. The men of Smith’s 

Union division repulsed Maney’s onslaught, only to find that 

Cleburne was again attacking from the rear, while Maney launched 

yet another frontal assault. The combined pressure from front and 

rear forced the Federals of Smith’s division back to Bald Hill, which 

was held by Brig. Gen. Mortimer D. Leggett’s XVII Corps division.

On the Union right, meanwhile, Sherman could hear the 

din of battle to the south from his headquarters at the Howard 

house, located behind the Army of the Ohio’s line. On receiving 

word of the death of his friend and protégé McPherson, Sherman 

designated General Logan as acting commander of the Army of 

the Tennessee, while Brig. Gen. Morgan L. Smith assumed temporary command of the XV Corps. Like Sherman, Hood could hear 

the fighting along the angle formed by the XVI Corps’ and the 

XVII Corps’ lines from his headquarters near Atlanta’s City Burial 

Place. He misinterpreted the battle noise as evidence that Hardee 

had turned McPherson’s left flank: the time seemed right to finish 

off the Federals. At 1500, Hood 

ordered Cheatham to strike 

the Union center, which was 

held by the XV Corps. Thirty 

minutes later, Cheatham’s three 

divisions began their assault. 

The attacks of Stevenson’s 

division on the right and of 

Maj. Gen. Henry D. Clayton’s 

division on the left soon faltered 

due to overwhelming Federal 

firepower. Sherman lent his 

support to the XV Corps’ 

defensive effort. A former artilleryman, he directed the fire 

of five XXIII Corps batteries 

on Clayton’s open left flank. 

In the center, however, Brig. 

Gen. John C. Brown’s (formerly 

General Logan (Library of Congress)
54 

Hindman’s) division swept into the Georgia Railroad cut and routed 

the understrength Union force guarding it. Brown’s onrushing 

Confederates captured the four guns of DeGress’ battery and 

punched a hole in the Federal line that extended southward from 

near the Troup Hurt house to well below the railroad. The Army of 

the Tennessee’s new commander, Black Jack Logan, reacted quickly 

to the breakthrough, personally leading a five-brigade counterattack that by 1700 had sealed the breach in the XV Corps’ line. 

In the meantime, the fighting raged on at Bald Hill, with 

Maney and Cleburne continuing to assail the XVII Corps’ line. 

To prevent another Confederate flanking maneuver, Giles Smith’s 

division formed on Leggett’s left, facing south, while Col. Hugo 

Wangelin’s XV Corps brigade filled the gap between Smith’s left 

and the XVI Corps’ right. The fighting was at close quarters and 

seesawed back and forth across the Union fieldworks. At one 

Fighting at the Troup Hurt house, from the Atlanta Cyclorama painting

(Library of Congress)
55

point, Col. William W. Belknap—the commander of the 15th Iowa 

Infantry and a future secretary of war—captured Col. Harris D. 

Lampley of the 45th Alabama Infantry by dragging him across the 

parapet. Private Watkins of the 1st/27th Consolidated Tennessee 

Infantry recalled Maney’s final attack on Giles Smith’s line: 

We gave one long, loud cheer, and commenced the charge. Like 

a mighty inundation . . . officers with drawn swords meet officers 

with drawn swords, and man to man meets man to man with 

bayonets and loaded guns. . . . Blood covered the ground, and 

the dense smoke filled our eyes, and ears, and faces. The groans 

of the wounded and dying rose above the thunder of battle. 

His men collapsing from sheer exhaustion, Hardee ended the 

assault at nightfall. The XVII Corps’ line had held. The Battle of 

Atlanta—also known as the Battle of Bald Hill—was over.

The 22 July battle was the costliest of the Atlanta Campaign. 

The attacking Confederates had suffered about 5,500 casualties 

and the defending Federals over 3,600. Two senior leaders, Union 

General McPherson and Confederate General Walker, lay dead. 

Hood’s assault on the Army of the Tennessee had failed because he 

had demanded too much of Hardee’s corps, the men nevertheless 

pushing themselves beyond all endurance, only to come up short 

at the end of the day. Credit should also go to McPherson’s fortuitous troop deployments on the Union left flank, Logan’s inspired 

generalship during the XV Corps’ counterattack, and the grit and 

determination of the fighting men in blue.

 More Command Changes

On 27 July, Sherman selected a new commander for the 

Army of the Tennessee. After consulting with Thomas, he chose 

General Howard, who commanded the IV Corps in Thomas’ 

army. Howard also happened to be a professional soldier and a 

graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. Yet Sherman and Thomas 

knew the choice of Howard would rankle many both inside and 

outside the Army. 

First, there was the matter of General Logan, whose superb 

performance on 22 July and long association with the Army of the 

Tennessee seemed to make him the logical choice. But Sherman 

and Thomas regarded the former Illinois congressman as a political general—a mere civilian in uniform. That left General Hooker, 
56 

the XX Corps commander, who 

was not only a professional, 

but who also happened to be 

senior in grade to everyone in 

Sherman’s army group except 

Sherman and Thomas.

But Hooker had a 

history. The year before, he 

had commanded the Army 

of the Potomac in the Battle 

of Chancellorsville and had 

performed poorly. Although 

he had since proved himself as 

a corps commander, Thomas 

found him to be a difficult 

subordinate, inclined to lead 

his corps as if it were an independent command. Of course 

Howard also had a checkered past in the Army of the 

Potomac—his former command, the XI Corps, having been routed 

at both Chancellorsville, Virginia, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

That did not matter to Thomas, who found Howard easier to 

manage than Hooker. “You cannot do better than put Howard in 

command of that army,” Thomas advised. “He is tractable, and we 

can get along with him.” That was far more than could be said for 

Hooker.

In the end, Sherman’s selection of Howard made him two 

enemies for life. One of them, Hooker, immediately tendered his 

resignation, which Sherman happily accepted. The other, Logan, 

resumed command of the XV Corps, but during the postwar years 

would become a formidable adversary in the halls of Congress. As 

for the IV Corps, Maj. Gen. David S. Stanley, the senior division 

commander, succeeded Howard, and General Williams became 

acting commander of the XX Corps.

In the meantime, Hood made several command changes of his 

own. He placed thirty-year-old Stephen D. Lee—the Confederate 

Army’s youngest lieutenant general—in command of his former 

corps and returned Cheatham to his old division. Faced with a 

shortage of generals he deemed qualified for division command, 

Hood broke up the late Walker’s division, attaching the four brigades 

General Howard

(Library of Congress)
57

to Hardee’s three remaining divisions. Hood also replaced his 

chief engineer, Major Presstman, 

with the more experienced Maj. 

Gen. Martin L. Smith—a sure 

indication of the Confederate 

commander’s intent to improve 

and expand the defensive fortifications surrounding Atlanta in 

preparation for a possible siege. 

The Great Cavalry Raid

Sherman had no intention 

of storming Atlanta or laying 

siege to the city. Instead, he 

planned to cut the railroads 

bringing supplies and reinforcements to Hood’s army. 

Sherman accordingly sent 

Garrard’s cavalry division, 

already wrecking the Georgia Railroad near Stone Mountain, 

farther east, and, by the end of July, it had damaged the railroad 

to a point thirty-five miles east of Atlanta. In mid-July, Sherman 

also sent Maj. Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau’s cavalry division on 

what proved to be a highly successful raid through Alabama and 

Georgia, during which his troopers destroyed a thirty-mile stretch 

of the Montgomery and West Point Railroad. 

Garrard’s and Rousseau’s raids convinced Sherman that 

large-scale cavalry raids could do significant long-term damage to 

Confederate railroads. This was certainly true of the Montgomery 

and West Point, which in the aftermath of Rousseau’s raid, was 

reduced to an eighty-mile spur line between West Point in western 

Georgia and East Point, a rail junction six miles south of Atlanta. 

Sherman now focused on the Macon and Western Railroad, 

Atlanta’s last major rail line. To break the Macon and Western—and 

thus force Hood to abandon the Gate City—Sherman devised an 

ambitious combined arms raid to seize East Point with Howard’s 

army and to send a strong cavalry force to cut the railroad at 

Lovejoy’s Station, about twenty miles to the south. Sherman 

assigned three of his four cavalry divisions to the expedition: 

Garrard’s, McCook’s, and Stoneman’s.

Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee

(Library of Congress)
58 

Stoneman also persuaded Sherman to authorize a mission to 

rescue Union prisoners of war held at Macon and Andersonville, 

Georgia—a quixotic undertaking, to say the least, given the many 

thousands of inmates involved, their emaciated condition, and the 

considerable distance they would have to travel through hostile 

country. That Sherman would even consider such an expedition is 

astonishing, given his usual firm grasp of logistics, but the humanitarian dimension may have clouded his judgment. 

The Great Cavalry Raid—as it came to be called with supreme 

irony—began on 27 July. From the start, Wheeler’s Confederate 

cavalry kept a close watch on the Union mounted columns and 

prevented Garrard’s division from making a rendezvous with 

Stoneman’s division. McCook’s division managed to reach Lovejoy’s 

Station, where it damaged a few miles of track, but Wheeler caught 

up with McCook on 30 July and attacked him at Brown’s Mill. 

Many of McCook’s troopers were able to cut their way out, but 

over 1,300 Federals became casualties, while Wheeler’s loss was 

less than 50.

Stoneman, meanwhile, ignored his primary mission and rode 

straight for Macon, where he found a motley force of state militia 

and local citizens led by Maj. Gen. Howell Cobb waiting for him 

on the outskirts of town. The 

unexpected reception thoroughly unnerved Stoneman. 

He abruptly aborted his rescue 

mission and headed back 

toward Atlanta. Confederate 

cavalry commanded by Brig. 

Gen. Alfred Iverson intercepted 

Stoneman’s column at Sunshine 

Church, seventeen miles north 

of Macon. After several futile 

attempts at driving off Iverson’s 

command, Stoneman sent most 

of his troopers riding hard to 

the north before surrendering 

the roughly 600-man remnant 

on 31 July. 

The Great Cavalry Raid 

was a Union catastrophe. In 

addition to wrecking two 

General Wheeler

(Meserve-Kunhardt Collection)
59

Federal cavalry divisions, the Confederates soon repaired the 

damage to the railroad at Lovejoy’s Station. Adding insult to injury, 

the incident made Wheeler a hero in the South while Stoneman 

languished in captivity. The failed raid also convinced Sherman 

that only infantry could do a proper job of cutting the railroad. 

Hood’s Third Sortie: The Battle of Ezra Church

While the McCook-Stoneman raid was under way, Howard’s 

army began its march toward East Point. As a diversion, Thomas 

and Schofield skirmished with the Confederates along their front. 

On 27 July, Howard’s three corps reached the Ezra Church intersection, near the Lickskillet Road some three miles west of Atlanta. 

Howard’s men began to entrench at nightfall, using wooden pews 

confiscated from the Methodist meetinghouse for building materials. The Federals occupied a fishhook-shaped line that faced east 

and south, with the barb near the crossroads. Sherman dispatched 

Davis’ XIV Corps division to Howard’s right in order to protect 

that flank, but the division became lost and wandered into the 

wilderness bordering the Chattahoochee River. 

That evening, Hood ordered Stephen D. Lee and Stewart 

to move their corps on the Lickskillet Road to the Ezra Church 

intersection. The next morning, Lee was to launch a frontal assault 

to distract the Federals while Stewart turned their open right 

flank and pushed into the rear. But when Lee’s first two divisions 

reached the intersection, they found a large Union force already 

dug in there. Under orders to occupy the crossroads, Lee decided 

to drive off the Federal intruders (Map 7). 

At noon on 28 July, Brown’s division attacked the right of 

Howard’s line, which was held by Logan’s XV Corps. Advancing 

unsupported through dense woods, Brown’s troops could not see 

the XV Corps’ position until they received a blast of musketry and 

a countercharge at close range. The dazed Confederate survivors 

turned and fled. Ten minutes later, Clayton’s division assailed the 

XV Corps, whose lethal fire inflicted 50 percent casualties on two 

of Clayton’s brigades. When told that the XV Corps was under 

attack, Sherman replied in his usual rapid-fire manner: “‘Good . . . 

that’s fine . . . just what I wanted . . . just what I wanted, tell Howard 

to invite them to attack, it will save us trouble, save us trouble, 

they’ll only beat their brains out, beat their brains out.”

As Lee’s two badly mauled divisions regrouped in the rear, 

two of Stewart’s divisions marched to the sound of the guns. At 
60 

1400, Walthall’s division attacked over the same ground as Brown’s 

men and soon met with the same bloody result. Stewart then sent 

Loring’s division forward to cover Walthall’s retreat. About 1600, as 

the battle wound down, Stewart was struck in the head by a spent 

Battle Hill

L OGAN ( X V )

BLAI R (XVII)

S . D . L E E

C L A

Y T O N

B

R

O

W N

WALTH A L L

to Atlanta

to East Point

L I C K S K I L L ET

R O A D

Proctor’s Creek

Ezra Church

Elliott’s Mill

28 July 1864

B AT TLE OF EZRA CHURCH

Confederate Position

Confederate Attack

Union Position

Union Entrenchments

A SKETCH OF THE

Map 7
61

ball, knocking him unconscious and leaving Loring to oversee the 

withdrawal of Stewart’s two divisions.

If nothing else, the Battle of Ezra Church had revealed that 

Stephen D. Lee ranked second to none—not even Hood—in 

impetuosity. Four hours of Confederate frontal assaults had 

generated about 3,000 casualties to the Federals’ 650—a ratio of 

almost five to one. It was Kennesaw Mountain in reverse, more 

of a slaughter than a battle. Though poorly executed, the attacks 

had denied Sherman control of East Point—for now. The Federals 

may have held the field but they had not yet seized the crucial rail 

junction south of Atlanta.

Hood’s three sorties had thus failed to drive the Federals 

from the gates of Atlanta. The assaults had proved costly to the 

Confederates, resulting in almost twice as many casualties as were 

sustained by Sherman’s much larger army group. Hood had left 

the execution of his plans to subordinates who, for reasons largely 

beyond their control, failed to execute his grand designs. Perhaps 

he should have exercised more direct authority, but it is unlikely 

that even his intervention would have made much difference, 

given the Federals’ numerical superiority. Although he had failed 

to defeat Sherman, Hood had given President Davis the battles 

that he wanted. And much more fighting remained to decide the 

fate of Atlanta.

Atlanta Under Fire

From the moment that the first Union battery moved to within 

range on 20 July, the city of Atlanta had been under a continuous 

fire. On some days, Northern artillery pounded the Gate City with 

as many as 5,000 rounds of explosive shell, solid shot, and even hot 

shot designed to set buildings on fire. The object was “to make the 

inside of Atlanta too hot to be endured,” as Sherman phrased it. 

In August, the Federals brought in several siege-caliber guns and 

rained down more than 4,000 32-pound projectiles. And yet the 

five-week Union bombardment injured about a hundred civilians 

and killed twenty more, relatively low casualties considering the 

duration and intensity of the shelling. Even so, many inhabitants 

fled the city, while those who remained dug backyard bombproofs 

and endured the shelling as best they could. Defiant as ever, the 

Confederates replied with their own siege artillery that included 

a 9-inch Dahlgren smoothbore naval gun taken from the gunboat 

CSS Chattahoochee.
62 

During the bombardment, Sherman continued to extend his 

line south toward East Point while probing the Confederate works 

for weaknesses. On 2 August, the Union commander shifted 

Schofield’s army from the Union left to the right, deploying it 

along the north bank of Utoy Creek, about five miles southwest of 

Atlanta. Placing Schofield in command of a task force composed 

of Palmer’s XIV Corps and Schofield’s own XXIII Corps, Sherman 

ordered him to cut the railroad above East Point. But the attack 

was postponed when Palmer refused to take orders from Schofield, 

claiming that the latter was junior in rank to him. A political 

general, Palmer had grown tired of field service and seized on this 

dispute as a pretext for relinquishing his command.

The squabble over date of rank delayed the Union attack for 

several days, giving the Confederates ample time to strengthen 

their defenses. When Schofield finally launched his main assault 

on 6 August, it met with a bloody repulse at the hands of Bate’s 

division, keeping Hood’s last rail line open. The Battle of Utoy 

Creek cost the attacking Federals 1,000 casualties compared to the 

defending Confederates’ 200. After the battle, Sherman accepted 

Palmer’s resignation, and General Davis assumed command of the 

XIV Corps.

In late July, following his three failed sorties, Hood had 

decided to send Wheeler on a raid to cut Sherman’s supply lines, 

an operation that his predecessor Johnston had deemed too risky 

to attempt. On 10 August, four days after the repulse of Schofield’s 

assault at Utoy Creek, Wheeler led a force of 4,000 cavalrymen, 

most of Hood’s mounted arm, northward to cut the Western and 

Atlantic, the Nashville and Chattanooga, and the Nashville and 

Decatur Railroads—a tall order for such a small force. Wheeler 

first struck the Western and Atlantic at several points between 

Marietta and Dalton, his troopers tearing up track and cutting 

telegraph lines. One week into the raid, Wheeler veered into 

eastern Tennessee to avoid Federal pursuit and to find forage for 

his horses, effectively removing himself from the theater of operations. On 17 August, Sherman informed Halleck of Wheeler’s 

detour, noting that the Confederate raiders had “damaged us but 

little.” The Union commander remarked that “East Tennessee . . . is 

a good place for him to break down his horses, and a poor place to 

steal new ones.” The raid played right into Sherman’s hands. By the 

end of August, Wheeler was riding through middle Tennessee but 

doing minimal damage to the railroads. He had failed to interrupt 
63

the flow of supplies to Sherman’s army group, and his prolonged 

absence deprived Hood of his main reconnaissance force. 

In the meantime, Sherman decided to give his cavalry one 

more chance to cut Hood’s railroad lifeline. On 18 August, he 

sent his last fresh cavalry division under Brig. Gen. Judson 

Kilpatrick on a raid to sever the Macon and Western Railroad at 

Jonesboro, Georgia, seventeen miles south of Atlanta. Severely 

wounded at Resaca in May, Kilpatrick had just returned to duty 

and was eager to make his mark on the campaign. The Federals 

arrived at Jonesboro the next morning, and Kilpatrick’s 4,700 

troopers immediately set to work, tearing up three miles of track 

over several days. One Union soldier described the final stage of 

the process: “The ties are knocked loose from the rails,” he wrote, 

“[and] made into piles, set on fire, and the rails laid on top. When 

they get red hot in the center about 20 men get hold of the ends 

and wind them edgewise around a telegraph pole or small tree. 

That fixes them.” The bent rails were dubbed Sherman’s Neckties. 

In this case, however, heavy rains prevented Kilpatrick’s horse 

soldiers from heating the rails and twisting them into uselessness. Returning to Union lines on 22 August, Kilpatrick boasted 

that it would take the Confederates ten days to repair the damage 

he had done. By the next morning, the blaring of train whistles 

An example of Sherman’s Neckties

(Battles and Leaders of the Civil War)
64 

to the south announced that they had put the railroad back in 

working order in just one day. 

Cutting Hood’s Last Lifeline: The Battle of Jonesboro

Sherman once more turned to his infantry to break the 

railroad. On the evening of 25 August, he sent most of his army 

group marching south for Jonesboro, leaving only the XX Corps 

under its new commander, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum, to guard 

the bridges across the Chattahoochee. On the morning of 26 

August, Confederate pickets reported that the Federals had evacuated their trenches. This intelligence, combined with a report from 

Wheeler indicating that his raid had been a great success, led Hood 

to believe that Sherman was withdrawing from Atlanta due to a 

lack of supplies. But he soon learned that most of the Federals were 

southwest of the city and concluded that they intended to strike the 

Macon and Western. Hood posted Jackson’s cavalry division on all 

the major roads below Atlanta to monitor Union movements there.

On the evening of 30 August, Jackson reported that Howard’s 

Army of the Tennessee was nearing Jonesboro. Hood immediately 

directed Hardee to rush both his and Lee’s corps to Jonesboro and, 

in an early morning attack, drive the Federals into the Flint River. 

Once that was accomplished, Lee would join Stewart and Smith’s 

Georgia militia in Atlanta and assault the rest of Sherman’s army 

group from the north while Hardee struck from the south. The 

ever aggressive Hood thus sought to seize the initiative even as he 

struggled to maintain his hold on Atlanta.

Although Hardee’s corps—temporarily under Cleburne—

reached Jonesboro on the morning of 31 August, Lee’s corps had 

to make a longer march and did not start arriving until early 

that afternoon. As a result, Hardee had to postpone the attack 

to 1500. By then, Howard’s army was dug in along a ridgeline 

about a mile west of the railroad at Jonesboro. The Confederates 

launched a series of disjointed and half-hearted assaults directed 

mainly at Logan’s XV Corps. The result was a bloody fiasco for the 

Southerners, who suffered over 1,700 casualties compared to less 

than 200 for the Federals.

The news of Hardee’s repulse had to be transmitted to Hood 

by courier because the Union IV, XIV, and XXIII Corps had seized 

the Macon and Western north of Jonesboro and had cut the telegraph line to Atlanta. Realizing that he had lost the railroad—and 

Atlanta with it—Hood summoned Lee’s corps to the Gate City 
65

and directed Hardee to hold Jonesboro to cover the Army of 

Tennessee’s retreat. Hood then ordered preparations for the evacuation of Atlanta to begin.

On the morning of 1 September, Sherman directed Stanley’s 

IV Corps, followed by Schofield’s XXIII Corps, to march down 

the railroad—wrecking the tracks as it advanced—and join Davis’ 

XIV Corps in attacking Hardee at Jonesboro. Early that afternoon, 

Sherman realized that Lee’s corps had left Jonesboro and instructed 

the IV Corps and the XIV Corps to strike Hardee’s right flank at 

once. The Union assault began at 1600. Cleburne’s division bore 

the brunt of the Federal onslaught and at first managed to repulse 

the Northerners. But three XIV Corps brigades assailed the angle 

in Cleburne’s line held by Brig. Gen. Daniel C. Govan’s Arkansas 

brigade and broke through. After a vicious hand-to-hand struggle, 

the Federals captured Govan and several hundred of his men. 

Somehow Hardee found enough troops to seal the breach and 

hold off the Federals until nightfall. Each side had sustained about 

1,400 casualties. 

That night, Hardee’s men evacuated their trenches and 

withdrew to Lovejoy’s Station. In the meantime, Lee’s and 

Stewart’s corps and the Georgia militia left Atlanta on the 

McDonough Road. During the evacuation, the Confederates put 

some boxcars filled with ammunition to the torch. The resulting 

explosions leveled several nearby buildings and could be heard 

as far away as Jonesboro. Sherman thought the distant rumbling 

indicated a battle in progress that might threaten Slocum at the 

Chattahoochee River. The next morning, he learned that Hardee 

had left Jonesboro and ordered a pursuit to Lovejoy’s Station, 

where he found Hardee’s corps well dug in. He decided not to 

attack until he knew the fate of Atlanta. On the morning of 3 

September, Sherman received a message from Slocum reporting 

that the XX Corps had occupied Atlanta the previous day. 

Sherman immediately wired the news to Washington: “Atlanta is 

ours, and fairly won.” As Hood’s army concentrated at Lovejoy’s 

Station, Sherman’s forces began marching north toward the city. 

The Atlanta Campaign was over.

Hood Strikes North and Sherman Plans His

Next Campaign

Arriving at Atlanta on 7 September, Sherman ordered the 

civilian population evacuated in order to shorten the city’s defen-
66 

sive lines and to use the public buildings for storage and the private 

homes for living quarters. When Hood learned of the removal 

order, he fired off a letter of rebuke to Sherman. “Permit me to say,” 

Hood wrote, “that the unprecedented measure you propose transcends, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts before brought to 

my attention in the dark history of war.” Atlanta Mayor James M. 

Calhoun also wrote Sherman, asking that he revoke the evacuation 

order, but the general rebuffed him. “You cannot qualify war in 

harsher terms than I will,” Sherman replied. “War is cruelty and 

you cannot refine it, and those who brought war into our country 

deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.” 

During the occupation, the Federals removed about 3,000 civilians 

from Atlanta.

On 21 September, Hood moved the Army of Tennessee, since 

whittled down to about 40,000 troops, from Lovejoy’s Station to 

Palmetto, Georgia, twenty-five miles southwest of Atlanta. Hood 

made the move to give his army a much-needed rest and to place 

it on the Atlanta and West Point Railroad, which now constituted 

his abbreviated supply line. While at Palmetto, President Davis 

came to discuss strategy and to deal with a feud that had erupted 

between Hood and Hardee, the senior corps commander. Davis 

reluctantly granted Hardee’s request for a transfer, appointing 

him commander of the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, 

and Florida (Map 8).

Davis also had come to evaluate Hood’s fitness to command. 

During the Atlanta Campaign, critics had accused Hood of wasting 

the lives of his men in reckless assaults. But Davis decided to retain 

Hood as commander of the Army of Tennessee, and he approved the 

general’s plan to cut the Union supply line in northern Georgia and 

force Sherman to fight a battle on ground of Hood’s own choosing. 

Hood left Palmetto on 29 September, crossed the 

Chattahoochee River, and led the Army of Tennessee northward 

to strike the Western and Atlantic Railroad, Sherman’s supply 

line between Chattanooga and Atlanta. To deal with Forrest and 

Hood—should the latter continue north into Tennessee—Sherman 

sent Thomas and two divisions to Nashville. On 5 October, Hood 

detached French’s division to attack the main Union depot between 

Chattanooga and Atlanta, which was located at Allatoona Pass. 

The Federals under Brig. Gen. John M. Corse barely managed to 

hold out in a small, yet fierce, battle that resulted in over 1,400 

total casualties out of 5,300 combatants. The Confederates met 
67

with greater success at Dalton, whose 800-man garrison surrendered without a fight. Sherman then pursued Hood’s army along 

the railroad until mid-October, when it veered westward into 

northern Alabama. During the march, Hood decided on a far 

more audacious plan that involved defeating Thomas at Nashville 

before he could concentrate his scattered forces. Once that was 

accomplished, Hood would be free to enter Kentucky—perhaps 

sweeping as far north as the Ohio River—or head east to join Lee’s 

army in Virginia.

Tennessee R

Coosa R

Chattahoochee R

S H E R M A N

S H E R M A N

S H E R M A N

29 Sep

5 Oct

13 Oct

20 Oct H O O D

H O O D

H O O D

H O

O D

21 Sep

Western & Atlantic RR

Memphis & Char leston RR

Nashville & Chattanooga RR

Atlanta & West Point RR

Guntersville

Gadsden

Stevenson

Bridgeport Ringgold

Cleveland

Dalton

Resaca

Rome

Cave Spring

Summerville

La Fayette

Gaylesville

Dallas

Jonesboro

East Point

Palmetto

Acworth

Allatoona

Lovejoy’s Station

Decatur

Chattanooga

Atlanta

TENNESSE E

ALABAMA

GEORGIA

21 September–20 October 1864

HOOD STRIKES NORTH

Confederate Movement

Union Movement

0 25 50

Miles

Map 8
68 

Abandoning the chase at Gaylesville, Alabama, Sherman turned 

his attention to defending Tennessee and resuming his advance 

through Georgia. He sent Stanley’s IV Corps and Schofield’s XXIII

Corps to Chattanooga and placed them under Thomas’ command, 

while retaining the XIV and XX Corps under Slocum (newly 

promoted to army-level command), the XV and XVII Corps under 

Howard, and Kilpatrick’s cavalry division at Atlanta. 

For his next campaign, Sherman proposed to Grant a “March 

to the Sea” in which he would sever his cumbersome supply lines, 

move his army 250 miles to the Georgia coast, and capture the port 

city of Savannah. Sherman’s army group would live off the land 

while damaging both the Confederate infrastructure and Southern 

morale. “I can make the march, and make Georgia howl!” Sherman 

assured Grant. “If we can march a well-appointed army right through 

this territory,” he argued, “it is a demonstration to the world, foreign 

and domestic, that we have a power which [Jefferson] Davis cannot 

resist. This may not be war, but rather statesmanship.” Grant gave 

his reluctant approval, and Sherman began preparing for the March 

to the Sea, trusting Thomas to defeat Hood while he headed to 

Savannah. In the meantime, President Lincoln won reelection by a 

landslide, dashing the hopes of many in the North and the South for 

a negotiated peace.

The Savannah Campaign

Before departing for the 

coast, Sherman ordered Captain 

Poe and the armies’ engineer 

troops to demolish Atlanta’s 

railroad and industrial facilities. 

The work of destruction began 

on 10 November. After reducing 

the buildings to rubble, Poe’s 

men set the ruins aflame. The 

fires raged for almost a week, 

the conflagration spreading to 

the city’s business and residential 

districts. According to XIV Corps 

staff officer Major Connolly, 

nighttime Atlanta “was bright 

as mid-day; the city . . . was one 

mass of flame, and the morrow 

General Slocum

(Library of Congress)
69

must find it a mass of ruins. . . . All the pictures and verbal descriptions 

of hell I have ever seen never gave me half so vivid an idea of it, as did 

this flame wrapped city to-night.”

Ever the perfectionist, Sherman oversaw the arrangements 

for the March to the Sea. He ordered all sick and wounded soldiers 

to the rear, leaving a core of 62,000 campaign-toughened veterans. 

He divided his army group into two wings. Howard commanded 

the Right Wing—or Army of the Tennessee—consisting of Maj. 

Gen. Peter J. Osterhaus’ XV Corps (due to the upcoming presidential election, Logan was on leave stumping for Lincoln in 

Illinois) and Blair’s XVII Corps. Slocum led the Left Wing—or 

Army of Georgia—composed of Davis’ XIV Corps and Williams’ 

XX Corps. Kilpatrick commanded the army group’s lone cavalry 

division. To increase mobility, Sherman reduced the artillery 

to 68 guns. The supply trains consisted of just 2,500 wagons 

pulled by six mules each, as well as 600 ambulances drawn by 

two horses each. The wagons carried twenty days’ rations and 

five days’ forage, and a herd of 5,000 beef cattle accompanied the 

column. But these provisions alone failed to meet the Federals’ 

minimum requirements. 

In other words, Sherman’s troops would live off the land. “The 

army will forage liberally on 

the country,” the commanding 

general declared in Special Field 

Order 120. The order stipulated 

that brigade-level detachments 

would gather provisions far 

from the main columns—a 

suspension of strict discipline 

that Sherman deemed unavoidable. Having studied the Georgia 

census records for 1860, he knew 

that the region between Atlanta 

and Savannah could sustain his 

troops as long as they marched 

at a rate of ten to fifteen miles 

per day.

The Savannah Campaign 

began on the morning of 16 

November. “We rode out of 

Atlanta by the Decatur road,” 

General Kilpatrick, as a 

major general

(Library of Congress)
70

Sherman recalled. “Behind us lay Atlanta, smouldering and in 

ruins, the black smoke rising high in the air, and hanging like a 

pall over the ruined city. . . . Then we turned our horses’ heads to 

the east [and] Atlanta . . . became a thing of the past.” Sherman 

employed feints to keep the enemy guessing as to his intentions. 

Slocum’s Left Wing headed eastward in the general direction of 

Augusta, Georgia, while Howard’s Right Wing marched south 

toward Macon, with Kilpatrick’s cavalry screening Howard’s right 

flank. Sherman’s actual objective, however, was Milledgeville, the 

state capital. For several days, the weather refused to cooperate. 

The rain fell in torrents and then turned to snow as temperatures 

plummeted. As a result, the roads soon became quagmires, slowing 

the Federals’ progress to a crawl (Map 9). 

An inevitable consequence of Sherman’s march was the widespread confiscation and destruction of civilian property and the 

psychological devastation that resulted. Dolly Sumner Lunt Burge’s 

ordeal was typical. A native New Englander who had married a wealthy 

Southern planter before the war, by November 1864, she was a widow 

managing a large plantation near Covington, on the Left Wing’s route. 

She recalled the sudden arrival of a Union foraging detail: 

Like demons they rush in! My yards are full. To my smokehouse, my dairy, pantry, kitchen, and cellar, like famished 

wolves they come, breaking locks and whatever is in their way. 

The thousand pounds of meat in my smoke-house is gone in a 

twinkling, my flour, my meat, my lard, butter, eggs, pickles of 

various kinds . . . wine, jars, and jugs are all gone. My eighteen 

fat turkeys, my hens, chickens, and fowls, my young pigs, are 

shot down in my yard and hunted as if they were rebels themselves. Utterly powerless I ran out and appealed to the guard. “I

cannot help you, Madam; it is orders.” . . . I saw nothing before 

me but starvation.

In addition to the authorized foraging details, unauthorized 

bands of Union soldiers, or “bummers,” traveled far from the 

main column seeking adventure and plunder. The bummers 

tended to deal more harshly with civilians than the legitimate 

foragers. Although relatively few of Sherman’s men committed 

rape or murder, they nevertheless terrorized Burge and countless 

other civilians in their path—which was precisely what Sherman 

had intended. 
GRISWOLDVILLE

22 Nov

WAYNESBORO

4 Dec

BUCKHEAD CREEK

28 Nov

FORT

McALLISTER

13 Dec

XIV

XIV

XIV XIV

XIV

XIV

XX

XX

XX

XX XX

XIV

XIV

XX

XX

XVII

XVII

XVII

XVII

XVII

XVII

XV

XV XV

XV

XV

XV

XV

XV

XV

XV

XV

Flint R

Oconee R

Ogeechee R

Savannah R

Ebenezer Cr

Camp

Lawton

MILLEDGEVILLE

Orangeburg

Jonesboro

McDonough

Clinton

Gordon

Jackson

Covington

Madison

Sandersville

Sylvania

Louisville

Swainsboro

Statesboro

Millen

Thomas’ Station

East Point

Decatur

Beaufort

Augusta

Savannah

Atlanta

Macon

GEORGIA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

LEFT WING Axis of AdvanceRIGHT WING Axis of AdvanceCavalry Axis of AdvanceBattle

16 November–21 December 1864

UNION ADVANCE

MARCH TO THE SEA

0 50 25

Miles

XIV XX

XV XVII

Map 9
72 

As the Union Right Wing marched south, General Hardee—

the Confederate commander in Georgia—concluded that Macon 

was Sherman’s next objective and began rushing troops to that 

point. On 19 November, Hardee boarded a train at Savannah 

and rode to Macon. He had roughly 15,000 men at his disposal, a 

motley collection that included Wheeler’s cavalry, Smith’s Georgia 

militia, and some local defense units. But when Howard’s columns 

turned eastward the next day, Hardee decided that Augusta, 

with its arsenal and gunpowder works, was Sherman’s objective. 

He therefore directed Wheeler and most of the Georgia militia 

to move there at once. Having set his forces in motion, Hardee 

returned to Savannah to strengthen its defenses.

The Battle of Griswoldville

On 22 November, three brigades of Georgia militia en route 

to Augusta from Macon passed through the smoking ruins of 

Griswoldville, a once-prosperous factory town, and beheld for 

the first time the devastation wrought by Sherman’s army group. 

A mile and a half east of town, they collided with Federal troops 

deployed behind rail barricades. The commander of the militia, 

Brig. Gen. Pleasant J. Phillips, assumed that a small force of 

dismounted Union cavalry blocked the road. In reality, Phillips 

had come face to face with veteran Union infantry—namely 

the 1,500 soldiers of Brig. Gen. Charles C. Walcutt’s XV Corps 

brigade—supported by a two-gun section of artillery and a pair 

of Kilpatrick’s cavalry regiments. Walcutt had just driven off a 

detachment of Wheeler’s cavalry, and, like Phillips, the Federal 

officer believed that his command faced only a small force of 

dismounted horsemen. Many of the Federals wielded Spencer 

or Henry repeating rifles, giving them an overwhelming firepower advantage. 

Phillips formed his command, which consisted mostly of illtrained boys and old men, and ordered them to attack the Union 

position. Braving a murderous fire, the Georgians reached a ravine 

about seventy-five yards from Walcutt’s position. From there, 

Phillips’ militia launched three frontal assaults; when those failed, 

they attempted to outflank Walcutt’s position but were repulsed by 

Kilpatrick’s cavalry. They fell back to the ravine and then withdrew 

at nightfall. The outcome of the Battle of Griswoldville was predictable: the Confederates suffered 650 casualties compared to fewer 

than 100 Federals, including Walcutt, who was severely wounded. 
73

Afterward, Sergeant Upson and several comrades of the 100th 

Indiana Infantry “went down on the line where lay the dead of 

the Confederates. It was a terrible sight,” Upson recalled. “It was a 

harvest of death.” 

Following the battle, the Right Wing resumed marching east 

toward the Oconee River, while the Left Wing neared Milledgeville 

and Kilpatrick’s cavalry shifted to the left flank to shield it from 

Wheeler’s cavalry. On the night of 22 November, Sherman—who 

was traveling with the Left Wing—made his headquarters at 

the Howell Cobb plantation. Sherman regarded Cobb, a former 

speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, as the worst sort of 

traitor and ordered the men of Davis’ XIV Corps to ransack his 

estate. The next morning, Sherman and the Left Wing entered 

Milledgeville. The Georgia state legislature having adjourned and 

fled, the Federals raised the U.S. flag over the statehouse and held 

a mock legislative session in which they repealed the state’s ordinance of secession. 

While Sherman’s army group paused for a day of rest, several 

emaciated men staggered into one Union camp, saying that 

they had escaped from the notorious prisoner-of-war camp at 

Andersonville. Their arrival on Thanksgiving Day, as the Federals 

feasted on the bounty of the Georgia countryside, further underscored the suffering and deprivation the prisoners had endured. 

News of the Andersonville escapees spread rapidly, and, in the 

days that followed, smoke and fire marked the Union armies’ lines 

of march, as vengeful soldiers torched barns and smokehouses 

and slaughtered farm animals. Sherman’s bummers also escalated 

their violence against civilians, going so far in one case as to hang 

a plantation owner named Canning near Louisville, Georgia, until 

he lost consciousness. When revived, a terrified Canning surrendered small amounts of gold and silver in his possession. Wheeler’s 

cavalry began to retaliate by shooting Federal prisoners, leading 

Sherman to warn Wheeler that he would execute one Confederate 

soldier for each one of his men so treated. The killings soon ceased.

The Federals left the rolling farmlands of the south-central 

piedmont and entered the flat, sandy, and swampy coastal plains 

region to the east. As the two Union wings converged on Millen, 

Georgia, Sherman directed Kilpatrick to rescue the Union prisoners held at Camp Lawton, five miles north of town. Kilpatrick 

began the expedition by feinting on Augusta to the north and 

then dashing south toward Millen, only to learn that the Federal 
74 

prisoners had been transferred elsewhere. In the meantime, 

Wheeler’s cavalry skirmished with the Union Left Wing’s advance 

at Sandersville, Georgia, on 25–26 November and nearly captured 

Kilpatrick in a surprise attack at Buckhead Creek on 28 November, 

but U.S. horse artillery repulsed the onrushing Southerners with 

canister. The Confederates suffered about 70 casualties while the 

Federals lost roughly 100. On 4 December, Kilpatrick clashed 

again with Wheeler at Waynesboro, Georgia. Supported by Brig. 

Gen. Absalom Baird’s XIV Corps division, the Federal horsemen 

drove the rebels from a series of rail barricades until they reached 

the streets of Waynesboro. To buy time for the withdrawal of the 

Confederate main body across Brier Creek to the north, Wheeler 

ordered Col. Thomas H. Harrison’s brigade to charge the Federals. 

The Northerners repulsed the charge and launched a counterattack, driving the enemy cavalrymen beyond the town. Kilpatrick 

then burned the railroad and wagon bridges across Brier Creek 

to prevent Wheeler from attacking XIV Corps’ rear. Confederate 

losses in the Battle of Waynesboro were 250 compared to the 

Federals’ 190. 

In the meantime, Sherman joined Blair’s XVII Corps of the 

Right Wing, which had crossed the Oconee River on 26 November 

and the Ogeechee River four days later. On 2 December, the XVII

Corps entered Millen, and word soon spread of the horrendous 

conditions at Camp Lawton and a mass grave that allegedly 

contained 650 Union dead. In reprisal, Sherman ordered Blair to 

burn several Confederate warehouses, the railroad depot, and a 

hotel. On the morning of 3 December, XIV Corps troops destroyed 

several miles of track on the Augusta and Savannah Railroad near 

Thomas’ Station, five miles south of Waynesboro. 

On 4 December, the two wings of Sherman’s army group 

began the final stage of the march to Savannah. The sandy soil 

of the region east of Millen yielded scant sustenance to the local 

residents, to say nothing of 60,000 Union soldiers and their 

roughly 20,000 draft animals. The Federals also had their first 

encounter with Confederate “torpedoes.” These primitive improvised explosive devices consisted of artillery shells topped with 

pressure fuses and were buried in the road. When exploding 

torpedoes severely wounded some XVII Corps soldiers, General 

Blair ordered a detail of Confederate prisoners to locate and 

remove the mines. The men in gray protested the order, claiming 

that such perilous duty violated their rights as prisoners of war. 
75

Impatient with the slow progress of his columns, Sherman—

having arrived on the scene by then—turned a deaf ear to their 

pleas. “This was not war,” he later wrote, “but murder, and it 

made me very angry.” In any event, the prisoners performed their 

hazardous task without mishap. Although the Union commander 

sent one of the prisoners across the lines to warn against the 

further use of torpedoes, the Federals had not seen the last of the 

lethal devices.

Tragedy at Ebenezer Creek

Anxious to open communications with the U.S. Navy, 

Sherman set a brisk pace for the rest of the march. No one felt 

the pressure to keep up more keenly than General Davis, whose 

14,000 troops of the XIV Corps lagged behind the rest of the army 

group. On 9 December, they marched on the old Augusta Road. 

Due to its flooded condition, black laborers, who worked for the 

Union army as pioneers, had to corduroy nearly every foot of 

it. About twenty-five miles from Savannah, the column came to 

Ebenezer Creek, which had overrun its muddy banks. Davis’ engineers repaired a damaged wagon bridge and laid a pontoon bridge 

across the 150-foot-wide creek. As the soldiers crossed, about 600 

black refugees gathered under the ancient cypress trees and waited 

their turn. Throughout the march, thousands of escaped slaves—or 

“contrabands”—had followed the Federal columns, and Sherman 

came to regard them as a serious drain on the armies’ resources.

Union XVII Corps crossing the Ogeechee River, by Theodore R. Davis

(Harper’s Weekly)
76 

With Sherman’s tacit consent, Davis waited until his troops 

were across and then ordered his engineers to destroy the wagon 

bridge and take up the pontoon bridge, stranding the refugees on 

the opposite bank. Wheeler’s cavalry had stuck close to the XIV 

Corps, and the contrabands knew this. Many of them panicked. 

Old men, women, and children plunged into the freezing waters 

of the creek and tried to swim across. Dozens of them drowned. 

Wheeler’s cavalry rounded up most of the remainder and presumably returned them to their masters. It is unknown if any of the 

captured refugees were killed or injured. The incident at Ebenezer 

Creek aroused considerable controversy in the North, thanks to 

the efforts of XIV Corps staff officer Major Connolly, who sent a 

scathing letter to his congressman that soon leaked to the press. 

When Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton later questioned 

Sherman about the incident, the commanding general justified 

Davis’ action on the grounds of military necessity. That was as far 

as the official inquiry went. 

The Battle of Fort McAllister

On 12 December, the Federals arrived near Savannah. They 

found the city defended by over 12,000 Confederates and 81 

cannons behind thirteen miles of earthworks. Hardee’s efforts 

to marshal dwindling Southern resources to protect the port 

city had clearly paid off. Moreover, their front was protected by 

impassable swamps and flooded rice fields, while the Savannah 

River covered their right flank and the Ogeechee River their left. 

For the past week, Sherman’s army group had subsisted on beef 

from the cattle herd and rice, the region’s staple crop. While no 

Union soldiers went hungry, they soon tired of the limited fare. 

Needless to say, Sherman was eager to open communications 

with the Union fleet, which was lying offshore with supplies and 

mail for the troops. But first the Federals would have to capture 

Fort McAllister, a massive earthen fortification that guarded the 

Ogeechee River approach to Savannah. The fort was defended 

by a garrison of 230 Georgia soldiers and 24 guns under Maj. 

George W. Anderson. 

Sherman assigned the mission to his former XV Corps 

division, now led by Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen. On the 

morning of 13 December, Hazen’s three brigades—numbering 

roughly 4,000 men—arrived opposite the fort. From prisoners 

the Federals learned that numerous torpedoes were buried 
77

outside McAllister’s walls. Bearing this in mind, Hazen deployed 

his division in open formation about 600 yards from the fort. 

Two and a half miles away, Sherman and Howard observed 

Hazen’s deployment from the roof of Dr. John R. Cheves’ rice 

mill on the opposite bank of the Ogeechee. At 1645, with 

daylight fading, an anxious Sherman signaled Hazen to attack, 

and the Federals rushed the fort amid a heavy small-arms and 

artillery fire. Here and there a random explosion indicated that 

an unfortunate Union soldier had set off a torpedo. Within 

fifteen minutes, Hazen’s men had swarmed into the fort and 

subdued the defenders in fierce hand-to-hand fighting. At 1700, 

signalmen on the rice mill roof contacted a nearby Navy vessel: 

“Fort McAllister is ours.” In capturing the fort, the Federals had 

sustained over 130 casualties, while the Confederate garrison 

lost about 40 killed and wounded before surrendering at bayonet 

point. 

With his supply line now open, Sherman turned his attention to capturing Savannah. On 17 December, he demanded 

Hardee’s surrender and was promptly refused. In the meantime, 

Sherman continued to encircle the city while Hardee prepared 

to evacuate. On the night of 20–21 December, the Confederates 

filed out of their trenches and headed north, crossing the milewide Savannah River into South Carolina on a hastily improvised patchwork of earthen causeways and pontoon bridges. 

By dawn Hardee’s entire force was safely across. Alerted by 

thunderous explosions along the Savannah waterfront indicating the destruction of Confederate ships and stores, Federal 

skirmishers rushed forward to investigate and discovered that 

Hardee was gone. On the morning of 21 December, Mayor 

Richard D. Arnold formally surrendered the city to the Federals, 

and, in a telegram to Washington, Sherman presented Savannah 

to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift. The president wrote 

a gracious reply in which he admitted to having doubts at the 

start of the campaign: “When you were about leaving Atlanta for 

the Atlantic coast,” Lincoln began, “I was anxious, if not fearful; 

but, feeling that you were the better judge, and remembering 

‘nothing risked, nothing gained,’ I did not interfere. Now, the 

undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours.”

The March to the Sea was over. Sherman’s gamble had paid 

off. He now shifted his gaze northward to the Carolinas and to 

Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy.
78 

Analysis

In less than four months, Sherman had captured both Atlanta 

and Savannah and was poised to move on to Richmond. The fall 

of Atlanta probably did more to ensure Lincoln’s reelection in 

November 1864 than any other event, and the March to the Sea 

eliminated Georgia as a major supplier of the Confederate Army, 

to say nothing of the material and psychological devastation 

inflicted on the civilian populace. Sherman claimed that his forces 

confiscated or destroyed roughly $100 million worth of civilian 

property. Although this figure is probably inflated, the losses 

nevertheless were staggering, amounting to an estimated 300 miles 

of railroad, 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, 13,000 cattle, 9.5 million 

pounds of corn, and 10.5 million pounds of fodder. There were 

also countless barns, bridges, cotton gins, mills, smokehouses, and 

other structures destroyed along the way. In addition, the Federals 

captured 13 locomotives, 191 rail cars, 200 heavy guns, and 35,000 

bales of cotton at Savannah.

Signaling the Assault on Fort McAllister, as Generals Howard, center, and 

Sherman, right, study a map, by Don Troiani

(Historical Art Prints)
79

As impressive as these results were, they could not conceal the 

fact that Sherman had failed to crush two beleaguered Confederate 

armies at the close of the Atlanta and Savannah Campaigns. In 

both instances, he had allowed geographical objectives to assume 

precedence over military objectives—namely the destruction of 

Hood’s and Hardee’s forces. Even so, Sherman’s three adversaries—

Johnston, Hood, and Hardee—proved unable to exploit his shortcomings as a battlefield tactician. With few exceptions, the cautious 

Johnston had allowed Sherman to flank him out of one position 

after another at minimal cost to the Federals. The aggressive Hood 

had launched a series of futile attacks that resulted in a disastrous 

attrition rate of almost two Confederate casualties to one Federal 

lost, while Hardee was simply overwhelmed by the enormity of 

his task, attempting to defend both Macon and Augusta with his 

meager forces before hunkering down inside his fortifications at 

Savannah.

While Sherman’s armies converged on Savannah, Thomas’ 

command crushed Hood’s army at Nashville on 16 December. 

Thanks to Thomas’ decisive victory in Tennessee and Sherman’s 

two triumphant campaigns in Georgia, the Confederacy teetered 

on the brink of collapse. Sherman now planned to combine his 

forces with Grant’s in Virginia to defeat Lee’s army, thereby 

bringing the war to a victorious conclusion.
80 

The Author

J. Britt McCarley is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, and holds 

a Ph.D. in history from Temple University. After working for the 

National Park Service, he came to the Army Historical Program in 

1988 and is now the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command 

(TRADOC) chief historian and the TRADOC Military History 

and Heritage Program director. He is the author of The Atlanta 

Campaign: A Civil War Driving Tour of Atlanta-Area Battlefields

(1989) and “‘The Great Question of the Campaign Was One of 

Supplies’: A Reinterpretation of Sherman’s Generalship During the 

1864 March to Atlanta in Light of the Logistic Strategy,” in Beyond 

Combat: Essays in Military History in Honor of Russell F. Weigley

(2007), and a contributor to The Whirlwind War: The United States 

Army in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (1995).
81

Further Readings

Bailey, Anne J. War and Ruin: William T. Sherman and the Savannah 

Campaign. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003.

Bull, Rice C. Soldiering: The Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull, 123rd 

New York Volunteer Infantry. Edited by K. Jack Bauer. San 

Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1977.

Castel, Albert E. Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 

1864. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.

Cox, Jacob D. Sherman’s Battle for Atlanta. New York: Da Capo 

Press, 1994.

Davis, Stephen. Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston, and 

the Yankee Heavy Battalions. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly 

Resources, 2001.

_____. What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman’s Bombardment and 

Wrecking of Atlanta. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2012.

Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s 

Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns. New York: 

New York University Press, 1985.

Hess, Earl J. Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the 

Atlanta Campaign. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 

Press, 2013.

Kennett, Lee B. Marching Through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers 

and Civilians During Sherman’s Campaign. New York: 

HarperCollins, 1995.

Luvaas, Jay, and Harold W. Nelson, eds. Guide to the Atlanta 

Campaign: Rocky Face Ridge to Kennesaw Mountain. The U.S. 

Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles. Lawrence: 

University Press of Kansas, 2008.

McMurry, Richard M. Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the 

Confederacy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. 2 vols. 

New York: Library of America, 1990.
82

Trudeau, Noah A. Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea. 

New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

Vermilya, Daniel J. The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Charleston, 

S.C.: History Press, 2014.

Watkins, Samuel R. Company Aytch: Or, a Side Show of the Big 

Show. New York: Plume, 1999.

For more information on the U.S. Army in the Civil War, please 

read other titles in the U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War 

series published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History 

(www.history.army.mil).

84 PIN : 104652–000

The

Civil

War Sesquicentennial