Johnston was an officer who, by the common consent of the military men
of both sides, was reckoned second only to Lee, if second, in the
qualities which fit an officer for the responsibility of great
commands.... He practised a lynx-eyed watchfulness of his adversary,
tempting him constantly to assault his entrenchments, holding his
fortified positions to the last moment, but choosing that last moment
so well as to save nearly every gun and wagon in the final withdrawal,
and always presenting a front covered by such defenses that one man in
the line was, by all sound military rules, equal to three or four in
the attack. In this way he constantly neutralized the superiority of
force his opponent wielded, and made his campaign from Dalton to the
Chattahoochee a model of defensive warfare. It is Sherman's glory
that, with a totally different temperament, he accepted his
adversary's game, and played it with a skill that was finally
successful, as we shall see.--_Major-General Jacob D. Cox, U. S. V.,
in "Atlanta."_
The two leading Federal generals of the war, Grant and Sherman, met at
Nashville, Tennessee, on March 17, 1864, and arranged for a great
concerted double movement against the two main Southern armies, the Army
of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee. Grant, who had been made
commander of all the Federal armies, was to take personal charge of the
Army of the Potomac and move against Lee, while to Sherman, whom, at
Grant's request, President Lincoln had placed at the head of the Military
Division of the Mississippi, he turned over the Western army, which was to
proceed against Johnston.
It was decided, moreover, that the two movements were to be simultaneous
and that they were to begin early in May. Sherman concentrated his forces
around Chattanooga on the Tennessee River, where the Army of the
Cumberland had spent the winter, and where a decisive battle had been
fought some months before, in the autumn of 1863. His army was composed of
three parts, or, more properly, of three armies operating in concert.
These were the Army of the Tennessee, led by General James B. McPherson;
the Army of Ohio, under General John M. Schofield, and the Army of the
Cumberland, commanded by General George H. Thomas. The last named was much
larger than the other two combined. The triple army aggregated the grand
total of ninety-nine thousand men, six thousand of whom were cavalrymen,
while four thousand four hundred and sixty belonged to the artillery.
There were two hundred and fifty-four heavy guns.
Soon to be pitted against Sherman's army was that of General Joseph E.
Johnston, which had spent the winter at Dalton, in the State of Georgia,
some thirty miles southeast of Chattanooga. It was by chance that Dalton
became the winter quarters of the Confederate army. In the preceding
autumn, when General Bragg had been defeated on Missionary Ridge and
driven from the vicinity of Chattanooga, he retreated to Dalton and
stopped for a night's rest. Discovering the next morning that he was not
pursued, he there remained. Some time later he was superseded by General
Johnston.
By telegraph, General Sherman was apprised of the time when Grant was to
move upon Lee on the banks of the Rapidan, in Virginia, and he prepared to
move his own army at the same time. But he was two days behind Grant, who
began his Virginia campaign on May 4th. Sherman broke camp on the 6th and
led his legions across hill and valley, forest and stream, toward the
Confederate stronghold. Nature was all abloom with the opening of a
Southern spring and the soldiers, who had long chafed under their enforced
idleness, now rejoiced at the exhilarating journey before them, though
their mission was to be one of strife and bloodshed.
Johnston's army numbered about fifty-three thousand, and was divided into
two corps, under the respective commands of Generals John B. Hood and
William J. Hardee. But General Polk was on his way to join them, and in a
few days Johnston had in the neighborhood of seventy thousand men. His
position at Dalton was too strong to be carried by a front attack, and
Sherman was too wise to attempt it. Leaving Thomas and Schofield to make a
feint at Johnston's front, Sherman sent McPherson on a flanking movement
by the right to occupy Snake Creek Gap, a mountain pass near Resaca, which
is about eighteen miles below Dalton.
Sherman, with the main part of the army, soon occupied Tunnel Hill, which
faces Rocky Face Ridge, an eastern range of the Cumberland Mountains,
north of Dalton, on which a large part of Johnston's army was posted. The
Federal leader had little or no hope of dislodging his great antagonist
from this impregnable position, fortified by rocks and cliffs which no
army could scale while under fire. But he ordered that demonstrations be
made at several places, especially at a pass known as Rocky Face Gap. This
was done with great spirit and bravery, the men clambering over rocks and
across ravines in the face of showers of bullets and even of masses of
stone hurled down from the heights above them. On the whole they won but
little advantage.
During the 8th and 9th of May, these operations were continued, the
Federals making but little impression on the Confederate stronghold.
Meanwhile, on the Dalton road there was a sharp cavalry fight, the Federal
commander, General E. M. McCook, having encountered General Wheeler.
McCook's advance brigade under Colonel La Grange was defeated and La
Grange was made prisoner.
Sherman's chief object in these demonstrations, it will be seen, was so to
engage Johnston as to prevent his intercepting McPherson in the latter's
movement upon Resaca. In this Sherman was successful, and by the 11th he
was giving his whole energy to moving the remainder of his forces by the
right flank, as McPherson had done, to Resaca, leaving a detachment of
General O. O. Howard's Fourth Corps to occupy Dalton when evacuated. When
Johnston discovered this, he was quick to see that he must abandon his
entrenchments and intercept Sherman. Moving by the only two good roads,
Johnston beat Sherman in the race to Resaca. The town had been fortified,
owing to Johnston's foresight, and McPherson had failed to dislodge the
garrison and capture it. The Confederate army was now settled behind its
entrenchments, occupying a semicircle of low wooded hills, both flanks of
the army resting on the banks of the Oostenaula River.
On the morning of May 14th, the Confederate works were invested by the
greater part of Sherman's army and it was evident that a battle was
imminent. The attack was begun about noon, chiefly by the Fourteenth Army
Corps under Palmer, of Thomas' army, and Judah's division of Schofield's.
General Hindman's division of Hood's corps bore the brunt of this attack
and there was heavy loss on both sides. Later in the day, a portion of
Hood's corps was massed in a heavy column and hurled against the Federal
left, driving it back. But at this point the Twentieth Army Corps under
Hooker, of Thomas' army, dashed against the advancing Confederates and
pushed them back to their former lines.
The forenoon of the next day was spent in heavy skirmishing, which grew to
the dignity of a battle. During the day's operations a hard fight for a
Confederate lunette on the top of a low hill occurred. At length, General
Butterfield, in the face of a galling fire, succeeded in capturing the
position. But so deadly was the fire from Hardee's corps that Butterfield
was unable to hold it or to remove the four guns the lunette contained.
With the coming of night, General Johnston determined to withdraw his army
from Resaca. The battle had cost each army nearly three thousand men.
While it was in progress, McPherson, sent by Sherman, had deftly marched
around Johnston's left with the view of cutting off his retreat south by
seizing the bridges across the Oostenaula, and at the same time the
Federal cavalry was threatening the railroad to Atlanta which ran beyond
the river. It was the knowledge of these facts that determined the
Confederate commander to abandon Resaca. Withdrawing during the night, he
led his army southward to the banks of the Etowah River. Sherman followed
but a few miles behind him. At the same time Sherman sent a division of
the Army of the Cumberland, under General Jeff. C. Davis, to Rome, at the
junction of the Etowah and the Oostenaula, where there were important
machine-shops and factories. Davis captured the town and several heavy
guns, destroyed the factories, and left a garrison to hold it.
Sherman was eager for a battle in the open with Johnston and on the 17th,
near the town of Adairsville, it seemed as if the latter would gratify
him. Johnston chose a good position, posted his cavalry, deployed his
infantry, and awaited combat. The Union army was at hand. The skirmishing
for some hours almost amounted to a battle. But suddenly Johnston decided
to defer a conclusive contest to another time.
Again at Cassville, a few days later, Johnston drew up the Confederate
legions in battle array, evidently having decided on a general engagement
at this point. He issued a spirited address to the army: "By your courage
and skill you have repulsed every assault of the enemy.... You will now
turn and march to meet his advancing columns.... I lead you to battle."
But, when his right flank had been turned by a Federal attack, and when
two of his corps commanders, Hood and Polk, advised against a general
battle, Johnston again decided on postponement. He retreated in the night
across the Etowah, destroyed the bridges, and took a strong position among
the rugged hills about Allatoona Pass, extending south to Kenesaw
Mountain.
Johnston's decision to fight and then not to fight was a cause for
grumbling both on the part of his army and of the inhabitants of the
region through which he was passing. His men were eager to defend their
country, and they could not understand this Fabian policy. They would have
preferred defeat to these repeated retreats with no opportunity to show
what they could do.
Johnston, however, was wiser than his critics. The Union army was larger
by far and better equipped than his own, and Sherman was a
master-strategist. His hopes rested on two or three contingencies that he
might catch a portion of Sherman's army separated from the rest; that
Sherman would be so weakened by the necessity of guarding the long line of
railroad to his base of supplies at Chattanooga, Nashville, and even
far-away Louisville, as to make it possible to defeat him in open battle,
or, finally, that Sherman might fall into the trap of making a direct
attack while Johnston was in an impregnable position, and in such a
situation he now was.
Not yet, however, was Sherman inclined to fall into such a trap, and when
Johnston took his strong position at and beyond Allatoona Pass, the
Northern commander decided, after resting his army for a few days, to move
toward Atlanta by way of Dallas, southwest of the pass. Rations for a
twenty days' absence from direct railroad communication were issued to the
Federal army. In fact, Sherman's railroad connection with the North was
the one delicate problem of the whole movement. The Confederates had
destroyed the iron way as they moved southward; but the Federal engineers,
following the army, repaired the line and rebuilt the bridges almost as
fast as the army could march.
Sherman's movement toward Dallas drew Johnston from the slopes of the
Allatoona Hills. From Kingston, the Federal leader wrote on May 23d, "I am
already within fifty miles of Atlanta." But he was not to enter that city
for many weeks, not before he had measured swords again and again with his
great antagonist. On the 25th of May, the two great armies were facing
each other near New Hope Church, about four miles north of Dallas. Here,
for three or four days, there was almost incessant fighting, though there
was not what might be called a pitched battle.
Late in the afternoon of the first day, Hooker made a vicious attack on
Stewart's division of Hood's corps. For two hours the battle raged without
a moment's cessation, Hooker being pressed back with heavy loss. During
those two hours he had held his ground against sixteen field-pieces and
five thousand infantry at close range. The name "Hell Hole" was applied to
this spot by the Union soldiers.
On the next day there was considerable skirmishing in different places
along the line that divided the two armies. But the chief labor of the day
was throwing up entrenchments, preparatory to a general engagement. The
country, however, was ill fitted for such a contest. The continuous
succession of hills, covered with primeval forests, presented little
opportunity for two great armies, stretched out almost from Dallas to
Marietta, a distance of about ten miles, to come together simultaneously
at all points.
A severe contest occurred on the 27th, near the center of the
battle-lines, between General O. O. Howard on the Federal side and General
Patrick Cleburne on the part of the South. Dense and almost impenetrable
was the undergrowth through which Howard led his troops to make the
attack. The fight was at close range and was fierce and bloody, the
Confederates gaining the greater advantage.
The next day Johnston made a terrific attack on the Union right, under
McPherson, near Dallas. But McPherson was well entrenched and the
Confederates were repulsed with a serious loss. In the three or four days'
fighting the Federal loss was probably twenty-four hundred men and the
Confederate somewhat greater.
In the early days of June, Sherman took possession of the town of
Allatoona and made it a second base of supplies, after repairing the
railroad bridge across the Etowah River. Johnston swung his left around to
Lost Mountain and his right extended beyond the railroad--a line ten miles
in length and much too long for its numbers. Johnston's army, however, had
been reënforced, and it now numbered about seventy-five thousand men.
Sherman, on June 1st, had nearly one hundred and thirteen thousand men and
on the 8th he received the addition of a cavalry brigade and two divisions
of the Seventeenth Corps, under General Frank P. Blair, which had marched
from Alabama.
So multifarious were the movements of the two great armies among the hills
and forests of that part of Georgia that it is impossible for us to follow
them all. On the 14th of June, Generals Johnston, Hardee, and Polk rode up
the slope of Pine Mountain to reconnoiter. As they were standing, making
observations, a Federal battery in the distance opened on them and General
Polk was struck in the chest with a Parrot shell. He was killed instantly.
General Polk was greatly beloved, and his death caused a shock to the
whole Confederate army. He was a graduate of West Point; but after being
graduated he took orders in the church and for twenty years before the war
was Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana. At the outbreak of the war he entered
the field and served with distinction to the moment of his death.
During the next two weeks there was almost incessant fighting, heavy
skirmishing, sparring for position. It was a wonderful game of military
strategy, played among the hills and mountains and forests by two masters
in the art of war. On June 23d, Sherman wrote, "The whole country is one
vast fort, and Johnston must have full fifty miles of connected
trenches.... Our lines are now in close contact, and the fighting
incessant.... As fast as we gain one position, the enemy has another all
ready."
Sherman, conscious of superior strength, was now anxious for a real
battle, a fight to the finish with his antagonist. But Johnston was too
wily to be thus caught. He made no false move on the great chessboard of
war. At length, the impatient Sherman decided to make a general front
attack, even though Johnston, at that moment, was impregnably entrenched
on the slopes of Kenesaw Mountain. This was precisely what the Confederate
commander was hoping for.
The desperate battle of Kenesaw Mountain occurred on the 27th of June. In
the early morning hours, the boom of Federal cannon announced the opening
of a bloody day's struggle. It was soon answered by the Confederate
batteries in the entrenchments along the mountain side, and the deafening
roar of the giant conflict reverberated from the surrounding hills. About
nine o'clock the Union infantry advance began. On the left was McPherson,
who sent the Fifteenth Army Corps, led by General John A. Logan, directly
against the mountain. The artillery from the Confederate trenches in front
of Logan cut down his men by hundreds. The Federals charged courageously
and captured the lower works, but failed to take the higher ridges.
The chief assault of the day was by the Army of the Cumberland, under
Thomas. Most conspicuous in the attack were the divisions of Newton and
Davis, advancing against General Loring, successor of the lamented Polk.
Far up on a ridge at one point, General Cleburne held a line of
breastworks, supported by the flanking fire of artillery. Against this a
vain and costly assault was made.
When the word was given to charge, the Federals sprang forward and, in the
face of a deadly hail of musket-balls and shells, they dashed up the
slope, firing as they went. Stunned and bleeding, they were checked again
and again by the withering fire from the mountain slope; but they
re-formed and pressed on with dauntless valor. Some of them reached the
parapets and were instantly shot down, their bodies rolling into the
Confederate trenches among the men who had slain them, or back down the
hill whence they had come. General Harker, leading a charge against
Cleburne, was mortally wounded. His men were swept back by a galling fire,
though many fell with their brave leader.
This assault on Kenesaw Mountain cost Sherman three thousand men and won
him nothing. Johnston's loss probably exceeded five hundred. The battle
continued but two and a half hours. It was one of the most recklessly
daring assaults during the whole war period, but did not greatly affect
the final result of the campaign.
Under a flag of truce, on the day after the battle, the men of the North
and of the South met on the gory field to bury their dead and to minister
to the wounded. They met as friends for the moment, and not as foes. It
was said that there were instances of father and son, one in blue and the
other in gray, and brothers on opposite sides, meeting one another on the
bloody slopes of Kenesaw. Tennessee and Kentucky had sent thousands of men
to each side in the fratricidal struggle and not infrequently families had
been divided.
Three weeks of almost incessant rain fell upon the struggling armies
during this time, rendering their operations disagreeable and
unsatisfactory. The camp equipage, the men's uniforms and accouterments
were thoroughly saturated with rain and mud. Still the warriors of the
North and of the South lived and fought on the slopes of the mountain
range, intent on destroying each other.
Sherman was convinced by his drastic repulse at Kenesaw Mountain that
success lay not in attacking his great antagonist in a strong position,
and he resumed his old tactics. He would flank Johnston from Kenesaw as he
had flanked him out of Dalton and Allatoona Pass. He thereupon turned upon
Johnston's line of communication with Atlanta, whence the latter received
his supplies. The movement was successful, and in a few days Kenesaw
Mountain was deserted.
Johnston moved to the banks of the Chattahoochee, Sherman following in
the hope of catching him while crossing the river. But the wary
Confederate had again, as at Resaca, prepared entrenchments in advance,
and these were on the north bank of the river. He hastened to them, then
turned on the approaching Federals and defiantly awaited attack. But
Sherman remembered Kenesaw and there was no battle.
The feints, the sparring, the flanking movements among the hills and
forests continued day after day. The immediate aim in the early days of
July was to cross the Chattahoochee. On the 8th, Sherman sent Schofield
and McPherson across, ten miles or more above the Confederate position.
Johnston crossed the next day. Thomas followed later.
Sherman's position was by no means reassuring. It is true he had, in the
space of two months, pressed his antagonist back inch by inch for more
than a hundred miles and was now almost within sight of the goal of the
campaign--the city of Atlanta. But the single line of railroad that
connected him with the North and brought supplies from Louisville, five
hundred miles away, for a hundred thousand men and twenty-three thousand
animals, might at any moment be destroyed by Confederate raiders.
The necessity of guarding the Western and Atlantic Railroad was an
ever-present concern with Sherman. Forrest and his cavalry force were in
northern Mississippi waiting for him to get far enough on the way to
Atlanta for them to pounce upon the iron way and tear it to ruins. To
prevent this General Samuel D. Sturgis, with eight thousand troops, was
sent from Memphis against Forrest. He met him on the 10th of June near
Guntown, Mississippi, but was sadly beaten and driven back to Memphis, one
hundred miles away. The affair, nevertheless, delayed Forrest in his
operations against the railroad, and meanwhile General Smith's troops
returned to Memphis from the Red River expedition, somewhat late according
to the schedule but eager to join Sherman in the advance on Atlanta.
Smith, however, was directed to take the offensive against Forrest, and
with fourteen thousand troops, and in a three days' fight, demoralized him
badly at Tupelo, Mississippi, July 14th-17th. Smith returned to Memphis
and made another start for Sherman, when he was suddenly turned back and
sent to Missouri, where the Confederate General Price was extremely
active, to help Rosecrans.
To avoid final defeat and to win the ground he had gained had taxed
Sherman's powers to the last degree and was made possible only through his
superior numbers. Even this degree of success could not be expected to
continue if the railroad to the North should be destroyed. But Sherman
must do more than he had done; he must capture Atlanta, this Richmond of
the far South, with its cannon foundries and its great machine-shops, its
military factories, and extensive army supplies. He must divide the
Confederacy north and south as Grant's capture of Vicksburg had split it
east and west.
Sherman must have Atlanta, for political reasons as well as for military
purposes. The country was in the midst of a presidential campaign. The
opposition to Lincoln's reëlection was strong, and for many weeks it was
believed on all sides that his defeat was inevitable. At least, the
success of the Union arms in the field was deemed essential to Lincoln's
success at the polls. Grant had made little progress in Virginia and his
terrible repulse at Cold Harbor, in June, had cast a gloom over every
Northern State. Farragut was operating in Mobile Bay; but his success was
still in the future.
The eyes of the supporters of the great war-president turned longingly,
expectantly, toward General Sherman and his hundred thousand men before
Atlanta. "Do something--something spectacular--save the party and save the
country thereby from permanent disruption!" This was the cry of the
millions, and Sherman understood it. But withal, the capture of the
Georgia city may have been doubtful but for the fact that at the critical
moment the Confederate President made a decision that resulted,
unconsciously, in a decided service to the Union cause. He dismissed
General Johnston and put another in his place, one who was less strategic
and more impulsive.
Jefferson Davis did not agree with General Johnston's military judgment,
and he seized on the fact that Johnston had so steadily retreated before
the Northern army as an excuse for his removal. On the 18th of July, Davis
turned the Confederate Army of Tennessee over to General John B. Hood. A
graduate of West Point of the class of 1853, a classmate of McPherson,
Schofield, and Sheridan, Hood had faithfully served the cause of the South
since the opening of the war. He was known as a fighter, and it was
believed that he would change the policy of Johnston to one of open battle
with Sherman's army. And so it proved.
Johnston had lost, since the opening of the campaign at Dalton, about
fifteen thousand men, and the army that he now delivered to Hood consisted
of about sixty thousand in all.
While Hood was no match for Sherman as a strategist, he was not a
weakling. His policy of aggression, however, was not suited to the
circumstances--to the nature of the country--in view of the fact that
Sherman's army was far stronger than his own.
Two days after Hood took command of the Confederate army he offered
battle. Sherman's forces had crossed Peach Tree Creek, a small stream
flowing into the Chattahoochee, but a few miles from Atlanta, and were
approaching the city. They had thrown up slight breastworks, as was their
custom, but were not expecting an attack. Suddenly, however, about four
o'clock in the afternoon of July 20th, an imposing column of Confederates
burst from the woods near the position of the Union right center, under
Thomas. The Federals were soon at their guns. The battle was short,
fierce, and bloody. The Confederates made a gallant assault, but were
pressed back to their entrenchments, leaving the ground covered with dead
and wounded. The Federal loss in the battle of Peach Tree Creek was
placed at over seventeen hundred, the Confederate loss being much greater.
This battle had been planned by Johnston before his removal, but he had
been waiting for the strategic moment to fight it.
Two days later, July 22d, occurred the greatest engagement of the entire
campaign--the battle of Atlanta. The Federal army was closing in on the
entrenchments of Atlanta, and was now within two or three miles of the
city. On the night of the 21st, General Blair, of McPherson's army, had
gained possession of a high hill on the left, which commanded a view of
the heart of the city. Hood thereupon planned to recapture this hill, and
make a general attack on the morning of the 22d. He sent General Hardee on
a long night march around the extreme flank of McPherson's army, the
attack to be made at daybreak. Meantime, General Cheatham, who had
succeeded to the command of Hood's former corps, and General A. P.
Stewart, who now had Polk's corps, were to engage Thomas and Schofield in
front and thus prevent them from sending aid to McPherson.
Hardee was delayed in his fifteen-mile night march, and it was noon before
he attacked. At about that hour Generals Sherman and McPherson sat talking
near the Howard house, which was the Federal headquarters, when the sudden
boom of artillery from beyond the hill that Blair had captured announced
the opening of the coming battle. McPherson quickly leaped upon his horse
and galloped away toward the sound of the guns. Meeting Logan and Blair
near the railroad, he conferred with them for a moment, when they
separated, and each hastened to his place in the battle-line. McPherson
sent aides and orderlies in various directions with despatches, until but
two were still with him. He then rode into a forest and was suddenly
confronted by a portion of the Confederate army under General Cheatham.
"Surrender," was the call that rang out. But he wheeled his horse as if to
flee, when he was instantly shot dead, and the horse galloped back
riderless.
The death of the brilliant, dashing young leader, James B. McPherson, was
a great blow to the Union army. But thirty-six years of age, one of the
most promising men in the country, and already the commander of a military
department, McPherson was the only man in all the Western armies whom
Grant, on going to the East, placed in the same military class with
Sherman.
Logan succeeded the fallen commander, and the battle raged on. The
Confederates were gaining headway. They captured several guns. Cheatham
was pressing on, pouring volley after volley into the ranks of the Army of
the Tennessee, which seemed about to be cut in twain. A gap was opening.
The Confederates were pouring through. General Sherman was present and saw
the danger. Calling for Schofield to send several batteries, he placed
them and poured a concentrated artillery fire through the gap and mowed
down the advancing men in swaths. At the same time, Logan pressed forward
and Schofield's infantry was called up. The Confederates were hurled back
with great loss. The shadows of night fell--and the battle of Atlanta was
over. Hood's losses exceeded eight thousand of his brave men, whom he
could ill spare. Sherman lost about thirty-seven hundred.
The Confederate army recuperated within the defenses of Atlanta--behind an
almost impregnable barricade. Sherman had no hope of carrying the city by
assault, while to surround and invest it was impossible with his numbers.
He determined, therefore, to strike Hood's lines of supplies. On July
28th, Hood again sent Hardee out from his entrenchments to attack the Army
of the Tennessee, now under the command of General Howard. A fierce battle
at Ezra Church on the west side of the city ensued, and again the
Confederates were defeated with heavy loss.
A month passed and Sherman had made little progress toward capturing
Atlanta. Two cavalry raids which he organized resulted in defeat, but the
two railroads from the south into Atlanta were considerably damaged. But,
late in August, the Northern commander made a daring move that proved
successful. Leaving his base of supplies, as Grant had done before
Vicksburg, and marching toward Jonesboro, Sherman destroyed the Macon and
Western Railroad, the only remaining line of supplies to the Confederate
army.
Hood attempted to block the march on Jonesboro, and Hardee was sent with
his and S. D. Lee's Corps to attack the Federals, while he himself sought
an opportunity to move upon Sherman's right flank. Hardee's attack failed,
and this necessitated the evacuation of Atlanta. After blowing up his
magazines and destroying the supplies which his men could not carry with
them, Hood abandoned the city, and the next day, September 2d, General
Slocum, having succeeded Hooker, led the Twentieth Corps of the Federal
army within its earthen walls. Hood had made his escape, saving his army
from capture. His chief desire would have been to march directly north on
Marietta and destroy the depots of Federal supplies, but a matter of more
importance prevented. Thirty-four thousand Union prisoners were confined
at Andersonville, and a small body of cavalry could have released them. So
Hood placed himself between Andersonville and Sherman.
In the early days of September the Federal hosts occupied the city toward
which they had toiled all the summer long. At East Point, Atlanta, and
Decatur, the three armies settled for a brief rest, while the cavalry,
stretched for many miles along the Chattahoochee, protected their flanks
and rear. Since May their ranks had been depleted by some twenty-eight
thousand killed and wounded, while nearly four thousand had fallen
prisoners, into the Confederates' hands.
It was a great price, but whatever else the capture of Atlanta did, it
ensured the reëlection of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of the United
States. The total Confederate losses were in the neighborhood of
thirty-five thousand, of which thirteen thousand were prisoners.
[Illustration: SHERMAN IN 1865