Battle of Lovejoy ' s Station One Battle of Lovejoy ' s Station was fought on August 20 , 1864 , near what is now Lovejoy , Georgia , in Clayton County , during the Atlanta Campaign of the American Civil War . The two sides had arrived at something of a stalemate , with the Union army half - encircling Atlanta and the Confederate defenders staying behind their fortification s . The battle . While Confederate Cavalry commander Maj . Gen . Joseph Wheeler was absent raiding Union supply lines from North Georgia to East Tennessee , Union Army commander Maj . Gen . William T . Sherman sent cavalry Brig . Gen . Judson Kilpatrick to raid Confederate supply lines . Leaving on August 18 , Kilpatrick hit the Atlanta & West Point Railroad that evening and disabled a small area of the track . Next , he proceeded for Lovejoy ' s Station on the Macon & Western Railroad . In transit , on August 19 , Kilpatrick ' s men attacked the Jonesborough supply depot on the Macon & Western Railroad , burning great amounts of supplies . On August 20 , they reached Lovejoy ' s Station and began their destruction . Confederate Infantry ( Patrick Cleburne ' s Division ) appeared and the raiders were forced to fight into the night , finally fleeing to prevent being surrounded . Although Kilpatrick had destroyed supplies and track at Lovejoy ' s Station , the railroad line was back in operation in two days . Other Lovejoy ' s Station actions . The National Park Service considers the August 20 action to be a battle , but there were three other military actions at Lovejoy in 1864 : Brig . Gen . Edward M . McCook ' s cavalry raid of July 29 and July 30 , the September2 to September 6 action , and the November 16 cavalry action . Historical archeology is currently underway to document unexplored portions of the battlefield that exist along McDonough - Jonesboro Road , east of 41 . The Battlefield Today . The area of this historic battle has mostly been lost due to suburban sprawl of Clayton and Henry Counties , Georgia . The last on the Henry County side are the site of a battle of another kind . Local citizens , preservationists , and historians are fighting to stop the development of this rural farmland . The local community has offered to buy back the land to develop a historic park to commemorate the Civil War battle . Henry County , Georgia announced the official opening of the Nash Farm Battlefield Park , which the county has claimed was the scene of Kilpatrick ' s Raid on August 20 and the action from September 2 to September 6 , 1864 . Plans for the battlefield include converting the farmhouse into a museum and renovating the barn into a public meetings and event facility , as well as walking trails throughout the property . A survey , " Summary Report of History and Archeology of the Nash Farm Battlefield " , was completed in August 2007 . On March 12 , 2008 , Lovejoy Station was placed for the second time on the Civil War Preservation Trust ' s List of Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields . In 2010 , the National Park Service published a revised assessment of the Civil War battles in Georgia , in which the Battle of Lovejoy was reassessed in terms of its military significance and its geographic extent ( ABPP ) Contemporary sources ( such as Four Years in the Saddle , by William Leontes Curry ) , state that the cavalry charge continued on the nearby Foster farm , which is also referred to as the battle of Walnut Creek . Fighting on August 20 was continuous from Lovejoy to Walnut Creek .