Sherman’s Advance
to Atlanta
In the summer of 1864, William Tecumseh Sherman maneuvered his army
to the outskirts of Atlanta, outfought several Confederate commanders, and
after four months and 50,000 casualties, conquered the “Gate City of the South.”
GRANT, SHERMAN, AND TOTAL WAR 1864BEFORE
No part of Grant’s 1864 grand strategy
❮❮ 238–39, besides the struggle against Lee
in Virginia, was more important than that
entrusted to General William T. Sherman.
JOHNSTON OR ATLANTA
Just as Grant would seek to destroy Lee’s
Army of Northern Virginia, or failing that,
take Richmond, Sherman was to destroy
Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee,
or failing that, take the railroad junction of
Atlanta. As the campaign unfolded, the capture
of Atlanta became Sherman’s principal aim.
A SYMBOLIC PRIZE
Carved out of a pine forest in 1840, Atlanta
was a child of the railroads, four of them
intersecting in the city. In the two decades
leading up to the war, it had grown into a small
bustling city, second only to Richmond as
a Southern industrial base. As Sherman
prepared to fight his way there across the
intervening mountains and ridges of
northwestern Georgia, it gained symbolic
value, as both North and South pinned their
hopes on the capture or defense of Atlanta.
Confederate defenses
Fortifications, fronted by chevaux-de-frise
(rows of wooden spikes) ringed Atlanta.
Almost a ton of shot and shell tore through
the white house in the background in the
course of the siege.F
rom the outset, it was a
campaign of maneuver.
When Sherman and his
110,000 soldiers marched
out of Ringgold, Georgia, on
May 7, 1864, he faced a wily
adversary in Joseph E.
Johnston. With only half
Sherman’s troop strength,
Johnston was a master of
the military delaying game.
He continually blocked the
80-mile (129-km) road to
Atlanta with strong defensive
works, inviting Sherman to
attack. Sherman preferred to
pin Johnston behind those breastworks
with his Army of the Cumberland, and
outflank him—first in one direction,
then in another—with his more nimble
Armies of the Tennessee and Ohio.Defensive strategy
Johnston always anticipated Sherman,
withdrawing just far enough to settle into
another defensive line. Sherman would
again advance, and the deadly game
would begin anew. There was, of course,
plenty of fighting. Names like Resaca,
Cassville, New Hope Church—the
bloodiest battle in the region known
as the “hell hole”—Pickett’s Mill, Dallas,
and Kennesaw Mountain, where the
impatient Sherman tried a direct assault
against Johnston’s formidable earthworks,
only to be thrown back with heavy losses,
would be added to both armies’
regimental standards.
Nevertheless, Sherman was making a
steady advance, and when he reached the
northern edge of Atlanta’s fortifications
two months later, he was facing a new
opponent. On July 17, Johnston was
relieved of command and replaced by
the more aggressive John Bell Hood.New leader, new tactics
Hood struck immediately. On July 20,
he surged out from behind his defenses
and hit a part of the Union army that was
separated from the rest by steep-banked
Peachtree Creek, 10 miles (16km) to the
north. But the attacks were piecemeal,
the onslaught costly. Union commanders
reported hundreds of Confederate dead
piled up before their defenses.“All lion, none of the fox,” tawny-maned
John Bell Hood was a soldier of unbridled
aggressive instincts. Though born in
Kentucky, he was a Texan by choice, and
“Hood’s Texas Brigade” became Robert E.
Lee’s favorite shock troops. Hood also
made a superb divisional commander,
despite losing a leg at Chickamauga and
the use of an arm at Gettysburg. When
he succeeded Joe Johnston in July 1864,
he became, at 33, the youngest man in
the war to lead a major army—perhaps a
factor in the rash way he bled the army to
death at the battles of Atlanta and Franklin.CONFEDERATE GENERAL (1831–79)JOHN BELL HOOD
Undaunted, Hood wheeled to the east
and two days later attacked the other
half of Sherman’s forces outside Decatur.
Throughout the long evening of July 22,
the Confederates again hurled a series of
ferocious but disjointed assaults against
the Union lines, and were repulsed with
twice as many losses as their opponents.
By the end of the night, at the Battle ofAtlanta, as this engagement
came to be called, a procession
of wagons was rumbling into
the city, carrying thousands of
wounded men. On July 28,
Sherman moved west around
Atlanta’s defenses, trying to
reach the Macon & Western
Railroad, the city’s southern
lifeline. Hood attacked at Ezra Church.
One terrific charge followed another,
all repulsed with fearful casualties.
Unable to reach around Atlanta to
cut its southern lifeline, Sherman settled
for a round-the-clock bombardment of
the city. Houses were damaged and
scores of citizens were injured or killed.
Meanwhile, the entrenched armies