SUMMARY OF THE BATTLE
Final Results: Confederate victory.
Total Est. Losses: USA 3,000; CSA 1,000
From the National Park Service Guide:
Campaign for Atlanta
By the spring of 1864 the Confederacy was weakening and the mighty war power of the Union was at last being employed. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, recently promoted to military commander-in-chief, ordered a concerted offensive by all Union armies. His orders to Gen. William T. Sherman at Chattanooga, Tenn., were to attack the Confederate army in Georgia, "break it up, and go into the interior of the enemy's country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can upon their war resources."
Sherman's 100,000 men and 254 pieces of artillery departed their encampments south and east of Chattanooga during the first week in May. Confronting them along Rocky Face Ridge, near Dalton in the mountains of northwest Georgia, were Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's 65,000 Confederates with 187 cannon. Although Confederate authorities wanted Johnston to march north into Tennessee, the campaign quickly devolved into a contest for Atlanta, railroad hub and war manufacturing and storage center for the Confederacy.
Sherman approached Rocky Face with two-thirds of his men on May 9, while the rest marched 15 miles southward through Snake Creek Gap, threatening the Western & Atlantic Railroad, Johnston's vital supply connection with Atlanta. Johnston hastily retreated and dug in at Resaca, where, on May 13-15, the Confederates repulsed Sherman's attacks. Johnston, however, fell back after a Union column crossed the Oostanaula River and again threatened the railroad.
Time and again the same strategic situation was repeated. Whenever Sherman found the Confederates entrenched in strong positions, he would attempt to hold them in place with part of his force while dispatching another portion behind their flank, attempting to cut the Western & Atlantic. Johnston retired backwards to intercept the threats. By late May he had pulled back to an impregnable position in the Allatoona Mountains. Sherman swung wide to the southwest, but Johnston, alert to Union movements, sidestepped to meet him with stubborn fighting at New Hope Church on May 25, Pickett's Mill on May 27, and at Dallas on the 28th. Sherman then returned to the railroad at Acworth, while Johnston took position across Lost, Pine and Brushy Mountains.
BATTLE AT KENNESAW
Sherman resumed his advance on June 10. A southwestward twist of the railroad forced him to operate south and west of Marietta so as not to endanger his own supply line. By June 19, although hampered by weeks of continual rain, Sherman's troops had forced Johnston to withdraw again, this time to a prepared defensive position anchored by Kennesaw Mountain, a lofty humped ridge with rocky slopes rising above the surrounding plain. Confederate engineers had laid out a formidable line of entrenchments covering every approaching ravine or hollow with cannon and rifle fire.
Again Sherman extended his lines to the south to get around the Confederate flank. Johnston countered by shifting 11,000 men under Gen. John Bell Hood to meet the threat. At Kolb's Farm on June 22 Hood struck savagely but unsuccessfully. His attack failed to drive the Northerners away, but it did temporarily check their southward extension.
Stalemated and immobilized by muddy roads, Sherman suspected that the Confederate lines, although very strong, might by thinly held and that one sharp thrust might break through and destroy the entire Southern army.
His plan called for diversionary moves against Kennesaw and the Confederate left, while the real blow, a two-pronged assault, hit Johnston's center. The attack brigades moved into position before dawn on June 27. At 8 a.m., after an artillery bombardment, they surged forward. Both attacks were brief, bloody failures. Astride Burnt Hickory Road three Union brigades totaling 5,500 men crossed swampy, heavily wooded terrain. Sheets of fire drove them under cover before reaching their objective, a mountain spur today named Pigeon Hill. Confederates on Little Kennesaw rolled huge rocks downhill at them. As soon as it became obvious that the attack would not succeed, it was recalled.
Meanwhile, south of Dallas Road, 8,000 Union infantrymen in five brigades attacked the two best divisions in Johnston's army, commanded by Gens. Patrick R. Cleburne and Benjamin Franklin Cheatham. Most of those in the assault waves were shot down. Some got to close quarters and for a few minutes there was brutal hand-to-hand fighting on top of the defenders' earthworks. Both sides grimly nicknamed this place the "Dead Angle."
The battle cost Sherman 3,000 casualties out of his 110,000-man army while the far smaller Confederate army of 65,000 lost about 1,000 men. The fighting ended the day it started, and the two sides spent the next five days glaring at each other. (Cobb 254)
Fall of Atlanta
On July 2, McPherson's army, accompanied by Major General George Stoneman's cavalry, easily circled around the Confederate left, forcing Johnston once again to withdraw toward Atlanta--this time to previously prepared positions at the Chattahoochee River. Here Sherman, reverting to his old successful tactics, sneaked around Johnston's flank and forced him to withdraw to the outskirts of Atlanta. (Cobb 254)
On July 17, exasperated by Johnston's retreats and lack of aggressiveness, President Jefferson Davis relieved him of command and replaced him with General Hood. Meanwhile, Sherman was closing in on Atlanta from the north and east. Hood tried unsuccessfully to destroy the army of Gen. George H. Thomas as it crossed Peachtree Creek on July 20.
Two days later, at the Battle of Atlanta, he struck at Gen. James B. McPherson's army and was again repulsed with heavy losses. When Sherman tried to outflank Atlanta's outnumbered defenders by maneuvering west of the city, Hood lashed out with another attack at Ezra Church on July 28. Again he was defeated.
In August Sherman placed Atlanta under siege. Both sides attempted cavalry raids to break the other's grip, but it was to no avail. Always Sherman shifted troops to cut the railroads that linked Atlanta with the rest of the South. On August 31 he seized the last one, the Macon and Western. Hood, after losing a two-day battle near Jonesboro, ordered all public property destroyed and the city evacuated. Sherman entered on Sept. 2 and triumphantly telegraphed the news to Washington, "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won."
The fall of Atlanta was a crippling blow to the Confederacy's capacity and its will to make war. Coupled with Union victories elsewhere, the war's end was now in sight. In the North there was rejoicing, and on Nov. 8 Abraham Lincoln was re-elected President, endorsing a fight to the finish. A week later Sherman left Atlanta in ruins and began his devastating March to the Sea.
Of this, one Union soldier wrote: "Destroyed all we could not eat, stole their niggers, burned their cotton and gins, spilled their sorghum, burned and twisted their R. Roads and raised Hell generally." Mrs. Louise Cornwell of Hillsboro, Georgia, wrote: "The sky was red from flames of burning houses." An old woman at Conyers told the Yankee invaders: "I've run away from you six times, clear across the south, starting back in Kentucky. I don't care where you go next, I'm done running. I'm going to let you go first, maybe I'll follow." (Cobb 254)
*Cobb - American Battlefields by Hubbard Cobb
