The Atlanta Campaign: Kennesaw Mountain and the River Line

Note:  This is the fourth part of a series of brief essays giving an overview of the Atlanta Campaign of 1864.  See previous essays here, here, and here.  Last names are only used for previously mentioned commanding generals.

The situation on June 22, 1864 as depicted in the VASSAL module of my Atlanta Is Ours! game.  Johnston has dug in around Kennesaw Mountain and Hood is about to strike Hooker at Kolb's Farm.  North is left, South is right, East is up and West is down in this perspective.

By July 3, Sherman had sent Schofield and associated cavalry around the Confederate left flank approaching the Chattahoochee River.  You can see the defensive line of Shoupades along the river with the prize city of Atlanta just beyond.  Sherman would ultimately send Schofield back around to the east to cross the Rebel right flank. 

After skirmishing and maneuvering Johnston's Army of Tennessee out of northwest Georgia, covering over 50 miles in just three weeks, we saw in my last post about the Atlanta campaign how things bogged down as Sherman attempted to push around the Confederate left flank.  Over four weeks in late May and June the Federals managed to advance only 12 additional miles. 

Johnston's forces were now entrenched around Kennesaw Mountain, the most formidable defensive line he had put together since abandoning Dalton.   While the Rebels had not managed to halt the Federal advance or even severely bloody the Yankees in battle, they had managed to frustrate them to the point where Sherman, for the first time since Resaca, sought to strike them a blow.

Essentially, Sherman's strategy remained the same as it had the past few weeks.  If he could spread the Southern line out enough with his superior numbers, there would be a weak spot somewhere to attack.  He did this primarily by using Thomas’ army to fix the Confederate position while sending McPherson and/or Schofield to go around Johnston’s left flank.

During one such extending maneuver, on June 22, Hood struck with two divisions against General Hooker’s corps at Kolb’s Farm.  Like New Hope Church and Pickett’s Mill, it was a short, sharp attack only this time the roles were reversed.  Hooker’s men were on the defensive and repulsed Hood’s attack.  Schofield continued around Hood’s position, threatening his flank.  General Henry D. Clayton’s division was brought up from reserve to cover the now greatly extended line.  From end to end it stretched almost 10 miles compared with 7 miles around Dallas and only 3 miles at Resaca.  The Confederates were less concentrated than at any time since the campaign began.

It was raining again which made movement sluggish.  So Sherman ordered an attack on the Confederate position well in advance, on June 24th for a 27th assault.  This gave the Yankees plenty of time to reconnoiter the lines and concentrate against what was thought to be the weakest points.  This time Thomas and McPherson would mount the attack, the largest since Resaca.

Union artillery opened up at 6AM on the 27th but by 11AM the attacking elements were withdrawing.  The Rebels held everywhere.  Out of some 14,500 attacking Northern troops there were some 2,900 casualties against a few hundred Confederate losses.  Another bloody repulse.  Southern casualties were less than 1,000.  These losses were small compared to the Overland Campaign occurring simultaneously in Virginia between Lee and Grant.  At Cold Harbor, for example, Grant lost 7,000 men in just a few minutes.

Nevertheless, the fighting at Kennesaw Mountain had been intense.  The Confederate line was thin and had no reserves.  But the Union troops could not punch through due to the highly defensible terrain.  The one advantage Sherman secured in the attack was that Johnston’s troops were so pinned down that only a handful of cavalry troops and the initial deployment of about 1,000 Georgia Militia were all that stood in the way of Schofield’s continued probing of the Confederate left flank.  Despite the Southern “victory” the Federals still held the initiative and another retreat was soon ordered.

About this same time Johnston’s close personal friend, Senator Louis Wigfall, was on his way to Texas from Richmond.  Wigfall visited Johnston and informed the general that the Confederate government was displeased with his seemingly endless series of retreats and his inability to deal Sherman a decisive blow.  Johnston basically shrugged, stating that the Army of Tennessee was so outnumbered and had so little in the way of logistical support as to be incapable of offensive operations.  The Southern general argued, as he had for weeks now,  that General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s excellent cavalry be called in from Mississippi to cut Sherman’s rail line and now extended line of communications as a pretext for forcing a retreat.  While militarily sound, this was a politically unrealistic request, however, since, other than a handful of infantry units, Forrest's horsemen were all that was protecting Mississippi from Federal control.

The Kennesaw Mountain line held until July 2, when Schofield’s Army of the Ohio probed to within a couple of miles of the Chattahoochee River, the last major barrier before Atlanta.  The Confederate line was now 16 miles long and Johnston had to shorten it or risk being cut off from Atlanta itself.  A much shorter line was established around Smyrna Station, about 7 miles further south.  Heavy skirmishing continued daily and by July 5 Johnston retreated again, this time into specially constructed defensive fortifications along the river.

Before the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain began, Confederate chief of artillery Brigadier General Francis A. Shoup displayed a bit of ingenuity by creating a series of log and earthen forts in the shape of arrowheads, 16 feet high and 12 feet thick along a 9 mile stretch of the river just 6 miles from Atlanta at its closest point.  These “Shoupades” were designed to require fewer men to adequately defend the line, freeing up troops for a healthy reserve to respond to whatever Sherman had in mind next.

The design was innovative and predicted the type of entrenchments that would become common in World War One, some 50 years in the future.  But most of the Southern generals had no clue what to do with them.  General William H.T. Walker’s division actually began to dismantle the Shoupades along its portion of the line and construct traditional trenches.  Other generals such as General Patrick Cleburne saw the potential for deadly crossfire between the forts and manned his position accordingly.

Probably due to a lack of understanding of his line’s design, Johnston over-concentrated his army and failed to establish adequate reserves that the Shoup's design might have afforded.  Thus he was subjected to the same Union maneuvers that had forced all the previous withdrawals.  At first Schofield’s continued probe of the Southern left flank was checked at Nickajack Creek.  Then Sherman withdrew Schofield and, based on intelligence from his cavalry, ordered a sweeping action by all three of his armies around the Confederate right flank, crossing the Chattahoochee River at several lightly guarded or unguarded locations, Thomas and Schofield at Powers Ferry and Johnson’s Ferry around July 9th with McPherson marching 10 miles further east to Roswell and crossing there on July 14th.  Shoup’s line was compromised and Johnston again retreated.

The Yankees were now less than 10 miles from Atlanta.