The Atlanta Campaign Ends

Note:  This is the final installment of my high level overview of the Atlanta Campaign which I began back in May.

The situation west of Atlanta on August 28, 1864.  Sherman has disengaged from the city except along the trench line at East Point.  A large force under Thomas and Howard is concentrated for a bold move south to cut the Macon and Western Railroad, the lifeline to Hood's army.  Hood has suspicions but no clear idea what is about to happen.

August 31.  Sherman's troops are assembled along an 8-mile front to attack the rail road.  Hood has hastily dispersed his infantry and handful of cavalry to protect the rail line.  He correctly thinks that Sherman will attack at Jonesboro, but he fails to realize the threat is much more widespread than that.  Hood's attacks at Jonesboro will be pointless as most of the Union forces are positioned further north.  Atlanta is doomed.  

President Abraham Lincoln was worried.  The Union armies and navy had won many victories during the American Civil War, had almost completely blockaded the Southern Confederacy from the outside world, but the South remained defiant.  In the North the war was becoming increasingly unpopular, draft riots dotted Northern cities, particularly in New York City.  A peace movement was gaining momentum and favored Lincoln's defeat in the upcoming November elections.  

In August 1864, Lincoln felted he would lose in November.  In the far west, the Red River Campaign had ended in Northern defeat.  In Virginia, the toll of Federal casualties as Grant battled Lee in the Overland Campaign was appalling, tens of thousands in a few weeks.  Everywhere there seemed to be defeat or stalemate and the population grew weary of a fight that had no end in sight.

Sherman was before the gates of Atlanta but had so far failed to capture the city.  This too contributed to the general malaise among the North and to Lincoln's discontent.  Although his combined armies had repulsed Hood's aggressive attacks, Sherman could not see how he could capture the prize city under the present circumstances.  The city's fortifications were too strong for a frontal assault.  He held hopes that his cavalry could break the deadlock.

For most of August, the campaign shifted from the one of maneuver to a form of trench warfare that anticipated World War One.  Hood's forces remained badly outnumbered, especially in light of his battle losses during the second half of July.  But the Army of Tennessee was still strong enough to man the trenches, fully capable of repulsing the most concentrated Union attack.  Hood had a trickle of new recruits and recovering veterans wounded earlier in the campaign rejoining the Southern ranks.  His numbers improved, if slightly.

Sherman knew better than to attempt to storm the city.  And he could not isolate it without risking another concentrated Rebel attack against some weakness in his line that total siege would require.  Instead, he sent Generals Garrard, McCook, Stoneman and Kilpatrick on a series of separate raids with the intent to cut all rail lines and communications into Atlanta, thereby, it was hoped, forcing Hood to surrender the city or lose his army.   

It will be recalled that Sherman sent Garrard to the east back in July to destroy the rail line to Augusta.  The Yankee cavalry raid managed to tear up a few miles of rail, effectively ending that route of supply.  But this had little effect on Hood's army.  Almost all supplies came from Jonesboro to the south along the Macon and Western Railroad.  Next, Sherman ordered McCook and Stoneman to attack that route.  This resulted in a several miles of railway being destroyed, but the Rebels had it repaired in two days.  In mid-August, Sherman sent out Kilpatrick (augmented with Garrard’s troops) on a similar raid that was also unsuccessful.

All the while, Sherman's infantry laid siege to Atlanta.  He brought up his heavy artillery and pounded the city on a daily basis throughout August.  This resulted in a lot of property damage but few deaths.  It is estimated that that maybe as many as 100 civilians were killed or wounded as a result of these weeks of bombardment.  Time was ticking, Lincoln was worried, and Sherman was growing impatient.

Having failed to defeat the Federal advance on the battlefield, Hood ordered a cavalry raid of his own with the idea of cutting Sherman’s long logistical line back to Chattanooga.  He entrusted General Wheeler with over half of the Confederate cavalry to the task.  Wheeler managed to destroy rail lines at Big Shanty and much further north at Resaca.  On August 14, the cavalry captured Dalton, where the campaign began.  Again, a few more miles of track were dismantled.  A herd of over 1,000 cattle was captured and sent back toward Hood’s army in Atlanta.

But, as with the Federal cavalry raids, nothing much came of the rail destruction; Union engineer teams had everything repaired in a matter of days.  So a total of five cavalry raids (four Union and one Confederate) resulted in no ill effects on either army.  The infantry of both sides remained in place and, except for some minor inconvenience, remained supplied.  The siege of Atlanta continued.

Wheeler’s raid north came at a cost.  The Rebels had insufficient cavalry remaining around Atlanta to monitor the Yankee activity the way it had done so effectively for Hood in July to set up his battles (that this resulted in three Southern defeats was not Wheeler’s fault, the opportunities were real and Union marches were well known.)  The last of the four Union raids (Kilpatrick’s) went virtually unchallenged.  Moreover, what Sherman decided to do next with his infantry went undetected until it was too late. 

For weeks, Sherman had pushed his armies around the west side of Atlanta.  At first he tried to cut the rail line south at East Point but Hood successfully lengthened his entrenchments about seven miles southwest of the city and halted the probing Union infantry in sometimes heavy skirmishing.  Then Sherman made a bold decision.  He would end the siege, disengage completely from Atlanta, place a strong but token force at key crossings along the Chattahoochee River, while maintaining pressure on East Point with Schofield’s army and General Jefferson Davis’ XIV Corps.

Then he concentrated the rest of the Army of the Cumberland and all of the Army of the Tennessee (a total of about 37,000 troops), about five miles west of East Point.  He ordered this force under Generals Thomas and Howard to swing far to the south of East Point.  It was a risky maneuver, but Sherman was banking that Wheeler’s absence would partially blind and confuse the Army of Tennessee.

Hood had no clue what was happening.  Probes along the north trench line of Atlanta on August 26 revealed the Federal’s were gone.  That day marked the first in weeks that Union siege artillery did not fire upon the city.  At first, he thought Wheeler’s raid had succeeded and that Sherman was withdrawing north of the Chattahoochee.  The next day, Confederate cavalry reported Union infantry marching southwest of the city, but in what direction and in what strength?  Hood strengthened East Point and Rough and Ready, a small town five miles further south along the Macon and Western Railroad.  Two southern brigades were sent as far as Jonesboro – just in case.

Sherman’s infantry took time to destroy 12 miles of the Atlanta and West Point Railroad as they marched south.  That line led back toward Alabama and was scarcely used anyway.  On August 29, Schofield’s Army of the Ohio and Davis’ corps (about 25,000 troops altogether) withdrew from Atlanta as well, swinging further west then south.  Knowing that Sherman seemed to want to cut the rail line somewhere, Hood left only General Samuel French’s division and the Georgia Militia to defend the city.  The rest of his army was scattered all along the Macon and Western Railroad, not knowing exactly where the Union forces would concentrate (and without adequate cavalry to answer that question.)

Sherman now had almost 60,000 troops on the move subsisting entirely from vast wagon trains carrying abundant supplies. Two-thirds of this infantry fanned out west of the Flint River, parallel to the Macon and Western.  The other third was ordered toward Jonesboro. On August 31, the Union advanced all along this front.  By now Hood had shifted the bulk of his forces under Generals Hardee and Lee towards Jonesboro.  Union General Jacob Cox’s division advanced upon Marrow’s Station about four miles north of Jonesboro and met no opposition.  His troops easily struck the Macon and Western and severed the lifeline to Atlanta.
  
Hood finally feared the worst and ordered the ordinance trains in Atlanta to take the rail south.  But these had to return to the city in reverse when they found the rail line cut.  Hardee and Lee were ordered to attack the Union concentration west of Jonesboro in an attempt to save the rail connection.  None of the Confederate commanders knew until too late that the attack was pointless, as communications had already been cut.  The Battle of Jonesboro was a decisive Confederate defeat anyway and a fitting end to the campaign.  The Confederate attack was made in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Hood blew up his ammunition trains and abandoned Atlanta on September 1.  He would cobble together enough of an army at Lovejoy Station to make a stand, but Sherman was not really interested enough to pursue him further.  The North had won a grand prize in time for the November elections.  The Democrats would nominate former Union General George C. McClellan shortly after Atlanta’s fall.  Lincoln easily defeated him a few weeks later as Northern morale rose with Sherman’s victory.

Before the election, Hood switched bases of supply from Lovejoy Station to Palmetto.  He would dare to raid northward with his smaller army, where he had sent Wheeler in August.  An small but intense battle took place as part of this raid at Allatoona Pass.  A couple of weeks later the Army of Tennessee was again at Resaca and Dalton, tearing up the rail road.  But by now Sherman had amassed a huge surplus of logistics in and around Atlanta.  The Yankees had no reason to be too concerned with Hood’s movements, the many fortified Northern rail station garrisons held firm and their cavalry probed Hood every step of the way.  Eventually, Hood would retire to a railroad still under Confederate control in Alabama and plot his failed raid into Tennessee.

As supplies were amassed at Atlanta, Sherman at first decided to give chase to Hood, but soon retired and let the Confederates go.  They were of no consequence to his next plan.  He would fill his wagon trains to capacity and burn anything he couldn’t carry.  The resulting fire got out of control and much of the city burned. Sherman then ordered Atlanta abandoned and marched his entire army toward the Georgia coast, to establish a new base of supply at Savannah via the Union’s enormous naval shipping instead of rail lines.  When the supplies ran out, his command of about 60,000 men subsisted off of whatever they could find, freely confiscating crops and cattle.

Savannah would become a Christmas gift from Sherman to Lincoln.  Meanwhile Hood’s army would be decimated in the pointless battles of Franklin and Nashville.  This effectively ended large scale battles for the western theater of the war. 

Atlanta was an important transportation hub but, moreover, in the summer 1864 it had become a symbol.  Its fall (along with the fall of Mobile Bay) is widely attributed as being highly favorable to Lincoln's reelection.  The counter argument that a perpetual siege of Atlanta might have resulted in close defeat for Lincoln is not implausible.  It is less likely, however, that the North would have sued for peace had McClellan won despite the civil unrest there.  The majority in the North favored peace but only with the Union intact.     

Altogether, almost 70,000 men were killed or wounded from May through August. Though the Confederates won a number of smaller battles (Dug’s Gap, New Hope Church, Pickett’s Mill) the large victory eluded them.  Kennesaw Mountain was their greatest success but it proved inconsequential.  The large Battle of Resaca was a draw.  The Battle of Atlanta, the largest of the campaign, was a Southern defeat. Sherman maneuvered his armies boldly and with great imagination as long as there wasn’t a battle being fought.  Then he seemed impetuous.  While in command, Johnston was practical and cautious though he showed a troublesome lack of strategic understanding in the opening of the campaign.  Hood attacked and attacked and attacked, attempting to hit the Yankees in their flank, failing every time either due to misfortunate or unaffordable Confederate delays.

The Atlanta Campaign compares favorably with other great campaigns of the War Between the States.  In my opinion, the Gettysburg Campaign and the Vicksburg Campaign are two equally important military endeavors of the war, possibly the most important.  And Lee against Grant in the Overland Campaign is also worthy of consideration.  But I would put Atlanta in the company of these others.  To me it was a badly needed win where a stalemate or a loss would have greatly harmed the Union cause.  I have lived in the area of the Atlanta Campaign all my life; a rich and enjoyable lifelong interest of study and debate. I’m lucky in that regard.