Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign

Preface

xiii Preface Six weeks after setting out from Chattanooga in early May, 1864, Major General William T. Sherman hit a massive roadblock while fighting his way toward Atlanta. Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee was heavily fortified along a line that stretched across the Georgia countryside, anchored on the twin peaks of Kennesaw Mountain near Marietta. It was the ninth fortified position Johnston had created thus far in the campaign, and it proved to be the most difficult to bypass. For two weeks, from June 19 to July 3, Sherman tried to find a way to turn Johnston ’s left flank. Both armies were stretched to the breaking point in their extended positions as artillery duels, constant sniping, and a fierce battle or two erupted. As the two sides tested each other, heavy rains descended, and the dirt roads of Georgia became quagmires. Frustrated at the delay, Sherman decided to try a major frontal assault against three points of Johnston’s line on June 27. The Federals who survived that day would remember the attack for the rest of their lives. The assault of June 27 was a significant departure from Sherman’s mode of operations during the Atlanta campaign. He had more often maneuvered parts of his massive force, an army group consisting of available troops from the departments of his Military Division of the Mississippi, in order to turn enemy flanks and force the Confederates out of their trenches. Sherman did mix attacks with his turning strategy at Dalton, Resaca, New Hope Church, and Pickett’s Mill, but most of those assaults had been exploratory efforts to find and develop enemy lines and take advantage of opportunities that occurred. On June 27, the Federals knew what to expect and were hitting a heavily fortified, well-manned position. It was, in a way, an experiment, and Sherman arrived at the decision after many days of deliberation. Sherman threw eight brigades of veteran troops, some fifteen thousand men, at three locations along the heavily fortified Confederate line on June 27.They failed to make a dent in the defenses, losing about three thousand casualties in the process. Only at one location, a small rise of ground xiv : prEfacE that came to be called Cheatham’s Hill, did the Federals stay close to the Confederate works after their attack.They dug new field works within yards of the Rebels. Here they stayed for the remainder of the Kennesaw phase of the Atlanta campaign, sniping, digging a mine with the intention of blowing up an angle in the Confederate works, and cooperating with their enemy in burying the many bodies of Union men killed in the attack. When Sherman resumed his practice of flanking Johnston out of his works, the Confederates evacuated the Kennesaw Line on the night of July 2 and retired a few miles to the next fortified position. The Chattahoochee River, the last natural barrier to Sherman’s approach to Atlanta, lay only a short distance farther south. The purpose of this book is to tell the story of Kennesaw Mountain in the Atlanta campaign. It is based on extensive research in archival collections and published primary sources. The work of previous historians who have written on the campaign is also incorporated for context. Special attention is devoted to the engagements at Kolb’s Farm on June 22 and Sherman ’s assault on June 27.The battlefield itself presented a valuable resource for understanding the action around Kennesaw in late June and early July 1864. Although the area where Sherman’s right wing tried to find and flank Johnston’s left has been developed, the ground within the park is well preserved . The locations of the three attacks on June 27 are in a natural state, even if the site of the battle of Kolb’s Farm is a mix of natural landscape and housing development. The aim of this book is not only to describe the actions along the Kennesaw Line but to explain the significance of the Kennesaw phase of the Atlanta campaign and understand the outcome of operations along the line. By necessity, it is a study of high-command problems, decisions, and triumphs on both sides of no-man’s-land. But it is also a story of common soldiers enduring and adjusting to the special rigors of continuous contact with the enemy, living within holes while spring weather did its worst overhead . The endurance of the Federal rank and file was...