JONESBOROUGH

CAVALRY OPERATIONSJULY-AUGUST 1864

Some Southerners suspected in 1864 what we now know—Sherman had not retreated. Rather, he had concluded that only his infantry could effectively break Hood’s lines of supply and had resolved to move almost all of his force to the southwest of the city. The movement began on August 25. One corps was sent back to the Chattahoochee bridgehead to guard the railroad that connected Sherman with the North. The remaining Federal troops pulled out of their trenches and marched away to the west and south. By noon on the 28th, Howard’s Army of the Tennessee had reached Fairburn, a small station on the Atlanta and West Point Railroad, 13 miles southwest of East Point. Later that afternoon, Thomas’ troops occupied Red Oak, on the railroad 5 miles to the northeast. The Northerners spent the rest of the 28th and the 29th destroying the tracks. The rails were torn up, heated, and twisted so that they were useless. Only one railroad, the Macon and Western, running southeast from East Point to Macon, now remained in Confederate hands. Sherman soon moved to cut it.

By August 29, Hood had learned of the activities of the Federals at Fairburn. It was clear that the railroad to Macon would be Sherman’s next objective and the Southern commander acted to defend that line. However, he badly misjudged the situation and thought that only two corps of Sherman’s army were to the southwest. Late on August 30, Hood ordered Hardee to take two corps of the Southern army, move against the raiding column, and drive it away. Both armies were soon closing in on Jonesborough, 14 miles below East Point on the Macon railroad. By that evening, advance elements of the Union forces had crossed the Flint River and entrenched a position 1 mile west of Jonesborough. During the night, Hardee’s Southerners moved into the town by rail; by morning they were deploying in front of the Federal line.

Hardee had his own corps (temporarily led by Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne) and Lee’s. It took until mid-afternoon to complete preparations for an attack. The Confederates advanced about 3 p.m., their assault falling mostly on an entrenched salient on the east bank of the Flint held by the Army of the Tennessee. The attack was fierce but uncoordinated and failed to drive back the Northerners. When the fighting ceased that night, the relativepositions of the armies were unchanged.

Meanwhile, Schofield’s Army of the Ohio had managed to break the Macon railroad near Rough-and-Ready, a small station between Jonesborough and East Point. This movement led Hood to conclude that Sherman’s main force was attacking Atlanta from the south. The Confederate commander, therefore, ordered Lee’s Corps to leave Hardee at Jonesborough and move toward Atlanta to help defend the city. Lee began this movement at 2 a.m. the next morning.

At dawn on September 1, Sherman with almost all of his troops was south of Atlanta. The Federals were concentrating at Jonesborough where they had encountered the bulk of the Southern army on the preceding day and where it seemed a decisive battle would be fought. The Confederates were widely separated. Hood, with one corps, was in Atlanta; Hardee, with his corps, was at Jonesborough; and Lee, with the remaining corps, was near East Point.

At Jonesborough, Hardee had taken up a defensive position north and west of the town. During the afternoon he was attacked by the overwhelming force of Northerners concentrated there. Although suffering many casualties, especially in prisoners, Hardee’s Corps fought well and held its position until night offered a chance to fall back to Lovejoy’s Station, 7 miles to the south.

By this time Hood had realized what was happening and knew that Atlanta could not be held any longer. During the night of September 1-2, he evacuated the city. Supplies that could not be carried away were burned. Hood’s forces moved far to the east of the city to pass around Jonesborough and join Hardee at Lovejoy’s Station. On September 2, Mayor James M. Calhoun surrendered Atlanta to a party of Federal soldiers.

On the following day, Sherman sent a telegram to the authorities in Washington announcing that “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.” He added that he would not pursue the Confederates, who were then fortified at Lovejoy’s Station, but would return to Atlanta so that his men could enjoy a brief respite from fighting. “Since May 5,” he wrote, “we have been in one constant battle or skirmish, and need rest.”

A few days later another Federal wrote from his camp nearAtlanta: “Here we will rest until further orders.... The campaign that commenced May 2 is now over, and we will rest here to recruit and prepare for a new campaign.”

Some writers have been critical of Sherman’s decision not to press after Hood’s army. They maintain that the enemy force and not the city of Atlanta was the true objective of the Unionists. It may have been that Sherman’s action was determined by the question of supplies or it may have been that his men were too exhausted for immediate operations south of the city. At any rate, the capture of Atlanta delighted and heartened Northerners. News of Sherman’s victory was greeted with ringing bells and cannon fire all over the North.

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Sherman soon turned Atlanta into an armed camp. Houses were torn down and the lumber used for fortifications or soldiers’ huts. Civilians could not be fed by the army and were ordered out of the city with the choice of going north or south. In mid-September a truce was declared and the citizens who chose to remain in the Confederacy were transported by the Northerners to Rough-and-Ready, where they were handed over to Hood’s men who conveyed them farther south.

After completion of this unpleasant task, Hood determined to reverse Sherman’s strategy and to move with his whole army around Atlanta to draw Sherman after him into Alabama or Tennessee. In late September the Confederates crossed the Chattahoochee and marched northward over many of the summer’s battlefields. Sherman left a strong garrison in Atlanta and followed Hood northward for several weeks. Unable to bring his opponent to bay, Sherman detached a strong force to deal with the Confederates and returned to Atlanta. Hood’s army was virtually destroyed in several battles fought in Tennessee in November and December. Sherman, meanwhile, reorganized his armies and on November 15 burned Atlanta and marched out of the city on his way to the sea.

The final importance of the Atlanta Campaign may lie more in its psychological impact than in any military results. Essentially, in early September, the Confederate military forces were in the same position relative to the Northern armies that they had held early in the spring. Psychologically, however, there had been a great shift. The news that Atlanta had fallen meant that the average Northerner had at last a tangible military victory that made it possible for him to see the end of the war in the future. There would be more months of marching, fighting, and dying, but Sherman’s capture of Atlanta convinced many that the Confederacy was doomed.

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On September 3, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln telegraphed the commanding officer of the Federal Military Division of the Mississippi: “The national thanks are rendered ... to Major-General W. T. Sherman and the officers and soldiers of his command before Atlanta, for the distinguished ability and perserverence displayed in the campaign in Georgia which, under Divine favor, has resulted in the capture of Atlanta. The marches, battles, sieges and other military operations that have signalized the campaign, must render it famous in the annals of war, and have entitled those who have participated therein to the applause and thanks of the nation.”

The Union soldiers had, in Sherman’s words, “completed the grand task which has been assigned us by our Government.” Atlanta, chief rail hub of the Confederacy and one of the South’s principal distributing, industrial, commercial, and cultural centers, was in Federal hands at last. It was a choice prize.

The city was founded in 1837 as Terminus, so-named because a rail line ended there. It was incorporated as Marthasville in 1845; two years later it was renamed Atlanta. Only a few dozen people lived there in the 1840’s, but by 1861, when the Civil War began, some 10,000 people called it home. By 1864, when Sherman’s armies started south from Chattanooga, Atlanta’s population was double that number. The city boasted factories, foundries, stores, arsenals, government offices, and hospitals, which, as the war progressed and drew closer, were hard pressed to handle the mounting number of casualties needing treatment. So strategic was Atlanta that Confederate President Jefferson Davis proclaimed that “Its fall would open the way for the Federal armies to the Gulf on one hand, and to Charleston on the other, and close up those granaries from which Gen. Robert E. Lee’s armies are supplied. It would give them control of our network of railroads and thus paralyze our efforts.” Now, with Federal soldiers in Atlanta, Davis’ fears would be realized.

Sherman’s troops occupied Atlanta for more than 2 months. The photographs and captions that follow highlight aspects of that occupation.

National ArchivesMaj. Gen. William T. Sherman, conqueror of Atlanta.

Library of CongressConfederate palisades and cheveaux-de-frise around the Potter house northwest of Atlanta. Near here, Mayor James M. Calhoun surrendered the city to Sherman’s forces.

Library of CongressUnion soldiers lounge inside one of the abandoned Confederate field forts defending Atlanta.

Library of CongressAtlanta, October 1864: “solid and business-like, wide streets and many fine houses.”

Atlanta Historical SocietyFederal officers commandeered many of Atlanta’s houses for staff headquarters. Col. Henry A. Barnum and his staff moved into General Hood’s former headquarters, described as the “finest wooden building in the city.”

Library of CongressAfter Sherman turned Atlanta into an armed camp, wagon trains, like this one on Whitehall Street, rumbled through the city day and night.

Atlanta Historical SocietyThe 2d Massachusetts Infantry, the “best officered regiment in the Army,” set up camp in City Hall Square. When this photograph was taken, near the end of the occupation, the soldiers’ tents had been replaced by more substantial wooden huts built from demolished houses.

Library of CongressAtlanta residents, evicted from the city by General Sherman, await the departure of the baggage-laden train that will take them south beyond Union lines.

Library of CongressFederal soldiers pry up the city’s railroad tracks before leaving on their march to the sea.

Library of CongressThe railroad depot after it was blown up by Federal demolition squads.

National ArchivesThis desolate scene marks the site where retreating Confederate soldiers blew up their ordnance train early on the morning of September 1, 1864. Sherman’s soldiers left similar scenes of destruction in their wake as they marched across Georgia in the closing months of the war.

The only published book-length study of the Atlanta Campaign is Jacob D. Cox’sAtlanta(New York, 1882; new edition, 1963). More detailed accounts may be found in two doctoral dissertations: Richard M. McMurry, “The Atlanta Campaign, December 23, 1863, to July 18, 1864,” and Errol MacGregor Clauss, “The Atlanta Campaign, 18 July-2 September 1864.” Both were written at Emory University, the former in 1967 and the latter in 1965, and both are available on microfilm from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich. In addition, theGeorgia Historical QuarterlyandCivil War Times Illustratedhave published numerous articles dealing with specialized aspects of the campaign.

Good books by participants include Paul M. Angle, ed.,Three Years in the Army of the Cumberland: The Letters and Diary of Major James A. Connolly(Bloomington, 1959); John B. Hood,Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate Armies(New Orleans, 1880; new edition, Bloomington, 1959); Joseph E. Johnston,Narrative of Military Operations During the Late War Between the States(New York, 1874; new edition, Bloomington, 1959); Albert D. Kirwan, ed.,Johnny Green of the Orphan Brigade: The Journal of a Confederate Soldier(Lexington, Ky., 1956); Milo M. Quaife, ed.,From the Cannon’s Mouth: The Civil War Letters of General Alpheus S. Williams(Detroit, 1959); John M. Schofield,Forty-Six Years in the Army(New York, 1897); William T. Sherman,Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, by Himself(2 vols., New York, 1875; new, 1-vol. edition, Bloomington, 1957); U.S. War Department, comp.,War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies(128 vols., Washington, D.C., 1880-1901), Series 1, vol. 38; Sam R. Watkins, “Co. Aytch,”Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment; or, A Side Show of the Big Show(Chattanooga, 1900; new edition, Jackson, Tenn., 1952); and Charles W. Wills,Army Life of an Illinois Soldier ...(Washington, D.C., 1906).

Listed below are several of the major Civil War sites in Georgia. A good source on other areas is the bookletGeorgia Civil War Historical Markers, published by the Georgia Historical Commission.

ANDERSONVILLE: This is now a national historic site. It was the site of the notorious Civil War prison where, in the summer of 1864, more than 30,000 captured Federals were held. On U.S. 49 at Andersonville, near Americus.

ATLANTA: Goal of the 1864 campaign. Most of the area in which the fighting occurred has been built over, but Grant Park contains the trenches of Fort Walker, the Cyclorama of the Battle of Atlanta, and a museum.

CHICKAMAUGA: On U.S. 278 near Rossville. A national military park where the great battle of September 19-20, 1863, was fought.

COLUMBUS: Site of the raised Confederate gunboatMuscogeeand a naval museum on Fourth Street, west of U.S. 27.

CRAWFORDSVILLE: On U.S. 278 west of Augusta. Liberty Hall, the home of Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, has been restored and is open to the public.

FORT PULASKI: A national monument on U.S. 80 east of Savannah. Site of an engagement in 1862 when Northern forces attacked and captured the fort.

IRWINVILLE: Off Ga. 107 in the south-central portion of the State. Museum at the site where President Jefferson Davis was captured by Federal forces in 1865.

KENNESAW MOUNTAIN: A national battlefield park on U.S. 41 north of Marietta. This park preserves much of the area where fighting occurred in 1864. Museum, slide show, and hiking trails.

MILLEDGEVILLE: On U.S. 441 in east-central Georgia. Capital of Georgia during the war. Occupied by the Federals during the “March to the Sea.” Many old buildings remain.

SAVANNAH: Terminus of the “March to the Sea.” Fort McAllister, east of the city on U.S. 17, was a Confederate defense post. Factors Walk Museum at 222 Factors Walk houses many wartime relics.

Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park is administered by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. A superintendent, whose address is Box 1167, Marietta, GA 30060, is in immediate charge.

As the Nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has basic responsibilities for water, fish, wildlife, mineral, land, park, and recreational resources. Indian and Territorial affairs are other major concerns of America’s “Department of Natural Resources.” The Department works to assure the wisest choice in managing all our resources so each will make its full contribution to a better United States—now and in the future.

Department of the Interior March 1, 1849

United States Department of the InteriorThomas S. Kleppe, Secretary

United States Department of the Interior

Thomas S. Kleppe, Secretary

National Park ServiceGeorge B. Hartzog, Jr., Director

National Park Service

George B. Hartzog, Jr., Director

★ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1976 224-506

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