Atlanta- July 22, 1864 (May 2021) American Battlefield Trust. On the evening of July 21, 1864, Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood ordered Lt. General William J. Hardee's corps to make 15-mile night march and assault the Union left flank, commanded by Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee. McPherson anticipated the move and held his XVI Mahasiswa/Alumni Universitas Singaperbangsa Karawang30 Desember 2021 1608Halo, Mawar. Kakak bantu jawab, ya. Jawaban yang tepat untuk soal di atas adalah A. was completely burned. Jawaban tersebut didapat karena kalimat rumpang pada soal secara keseluruhan memiliki arti "pada bulan November tahun 1863, kota Atlanta sepenuhnya terbakar di waktu terkenalnya March to the Sea Sherman" jika dicocokkan dengan pilihan jawaban dari A sampai D. Dilihat dari artinya secara keseluruhan, kalimat rumpang di soal ini bisa kita tentukan sebagai kalimat pasif yang memakai "Simple Past Tense" karena adanya keterangan waktu di masa lampau, yaitu "bulan November tahun 1863" in November of 1863. Untuk mengisi bagian hilang pada kalimatnya, perhatikan rumus "Simple Past Tense" untuk kalimat pasif sebagai berikut + S + was/were + V3 + .... Karena S Subject pada kalimat rumpang adalah "the city of Atlanta" kota Atlanta yang bisa diganti dengan "it", kata selanjutnya yang harus ditulis adalah "was". Kemudian, kata kerja bentuk ketiga V3 yang digunakan adalah "burned" terbakar. Namun, sebelum menulis kata kerja bentuk ketiga V3, diketahui bahwa terdapat kata keterangan adverb "completely" di tiap pilihan jawaban. Dalam kalimat pasif di soal ini, "adverb" diletakkan di tengah antara "was" dan kata kerja "burned". Secara lengkap, kalimatnya menjadi sebagai berikut In November of 1863, the city of Atlanta was completely burned during Sherman's famous "March to the Sea". Jadi, jawaban yang benar adalah A. was completely burned.

InNovember of 1863, the city of Atlanta during Sherman's famous "March to the Sea" Soal dan Pembahasan Passive Voice . Pada pelajaran bahasa Inggris terdapat materi mengenai passive voice yang soalnya Pembahasan:. Kalimat pada soal di atas merupakan bentuk pola kalimat passive untuk simple

Overview The Battle of Atlanta figures prominently in the Union's conquest of the Confederacy in the final year of the Civil War and in Abraham Lincoln's re-election to the US presidency. "The Battle of Atlanta History and Remembrance" chronicles this engagement while considering the war's larger meaning and legacy. This extensive essay combines a narrative of battlefield events, photographs, postcard views, images from the Atlanta cyclorama, original maps, and other visual and textual artifacts with a web-based mobile application that enables virtual touring of battlefield sites. Well-preserved Civil War battle sites are among the most popular historical destinations in the United States, but they comprise a small fraction of the battlefields that can be explored. In the aftermath of the war, the Atlanta battlefield also served as a major site for commemorating the four-year conflict and expressing particular versions of the war's history. Urban development has largely altered the landscape on which the Battle of Atlanta was fought, yet, 150 years after the fierce fighting east of the city on July 22, 1864, many remnants of the battlefield remain visible and provide a rewarding encounter with the past. Introduction to the Battle of Atlanta Project The fall of Atlanta was a major turning point in the Civil War, and this essay begins with a summary of the city's importance to both sides, their struggle for its control during the spring and summer of 1864, and the Federal military campaign across Georgia that began shortly thereafter. The essay then covers, tour stop by tour stop, the major battlefield sites and events of July 22, 1864. For the most part, the tour stops are sequenced in chronological order of the battlefield events, beginning with the prelude to the battle, followed by stops where the first fighting occurred, proceeding to the site where the clash was most intense, and concluding with the locations of the final and most famous combat action of the day. The mobile application includes condensed descriptions of each tour stop and provides recommendations for the tour route and parking. It is designed for use en route passengers only and at each destination drivers and passengers. The essay includes more detailed explanations of military maneuvers and battlefield events, lengthier profiles of the opposing army commanders, and a more extensive account of the battle's aftermath. It explores in greater depth the commemorative monuments, veterans' reunions, and various other ways that a single, bloody contest continued to be remembered long after the fighting stopped."The Battle of Atlanta History and Remembrance" delves into the recorded past of a particularly fierce engagement between the United States and the Confederate States on July 22, 1864. The fighting that day was one of the biggest battles of the final ten months of the Civil War, and the Yankee victory east of the city was followed by daily bombardment of Atlanta and the Union's capture of the "Gate City of the South" on September 2, 1864. The famous Atlanta cyclorama painting depicts a Federal counter offensive launched at approximately 430 on the day of the battle against Confederate infantry that forced a long line of Yankees to retreat earlier in the afternoon. "The Battle of Atlanta History and Remembrance" combines a narrative of battlefield events, photographs, postcard views, images from the cyclorama, maps, and other visual and textual artifacts with a web-based mobile application designed to inform trips to battlefield sites by car or bus. The mobile guide combined with this essay can be used to learn about the Battle of Atlanta without a visit to what remains of the battlefield and without additional background reading. "The Battle of Atlanta History and Remembrance" presupposes no specialized knowledge of Atlanta or the Civil War, and it is intended for a variety of users and audiences. Northern Civil War commanders made the capture of Confederate cities—specifically Atlanta and Richmond—and the crippling or destroying of the armies defending them, the major objectives in the Georgia and Virginia military campaigns that they launched in early May 1864. The Yankee military leaders had agreed on a coordinated, two-theater strategy for exhausting their foes by maneuver and attrition, and they achieved their goal—Confederate defeat—within twelve Hagerman, "Union Generalship, Political Leadership, and Total War Strategy," in On the Road to Total War The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871, eds. Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1997, 168. Atlanta became a target because of its unique political, economic, and psychological importance to the Confederacy. It was a principal railroad hub, a vital source of material support for the war effort, and a bastion of hope for the South as its military fortunes waned. The demolition and burning of the city in November 1864 and the battles and bombardment that preceded its ruin are indelible in Civil War history and lore. The events in and around Atlanta are part of a violent past that over time, and in a variety of ways, have triggered a cultural struggle over the war's meaning. Public and private forms of expression, each with their own history, offer different versions of remembrance that—because memory often exerts a greater impact—deserve as much attention as battle facts. Gone with the Wind, for instance, as a bestselling novel and blockbuster movie has shaped popular perception of the Civil War more than the combined works of all professional historians. The evocative power of Atlanta and the Civil War endures, evident in iconic images and texts, commemorative rituals, monuments, and other forms of remembrance. The Battle of Atlanta pitted Confederate and Yankee forces against one another in a large combat zone that extended over areas now known as East Atlanta, Kirkwood, Edgewood, Reynoldstown, Little Five Points, Inman Park, and Poncey-Highland. Busy highways, streets, and urban neighborhoods have long since transformed the battlefield terrain, but today's visitors can tour many topographic features, historic monuments and landmarks, as well as remnants of a Civil War fort and rifle pit. A visit to the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama painting on display in Grant Park is an excellent accompaniment to the tour. The enormous artwork in the round, completed in 1885–86 using firsthand accounts of the fighting, illustrates the lay of land on July 22, 1864, and depicts the clash between Federal and Confederate troops in a particularly dramatic turning point, at about 430 in the afternoon. While some visitors prefer touring the Atlanta cyclorama before going to the battlefield sites, reversing that sequence and beginning with Civil War landmarks provides guidance to the sweeping troop movements, lines of attack, and contested terrain portrayed in the sprawling panorama. The absence of a historically preserved battlefield means that visitors seeking firsthand knowledge about the places and events that figured prominently in the Battle of Atlanta must go beyond the almost effortless engagement with history available at well-preserved Civil War sites, such as Kennesaw Mountain, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. Visits to the Atlanta battlefield, even via virtual tour, require greater self-reliance and a more active process of combining historical accounts, maps, and images with present-day visual evidence to ferret out what happened, where, and why. The rewards are great. By juxtaposing information from then and now, visitors traveling through contemporary Atlanta gain a new and powerful perspective on the city, its neighborhoods, and their place in history. Exploring seemingly ordinary sites is a way to gain a new awareness of history, even if the sites are often encountered during our everyday routines. Landscape historian John R. Stilgoe encourages us to scrutinize those places, put them in spatial context, and arrange them in time. "Enjoy the best kept secret around," Stilgoe writes, "the ordinary everyday landscape that rewards any explorer, that touches any explorer with magic."2John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places New York Walker and Company, 1998, 2. Physical traces of the Battle of Atlanta evoke insights and exchanges that touch on broader questions about the Civil War, its causes and consequences, and the historical memory of major battles and the armies that fought them The fact that African American slaves were bought and sold in Atlanta and were used to build earthen fortifications that encircled the city in an effort to fend off an invading Union force invites questions about slavery's role in causing, perpetuating, and ending the implications of the fight for Atlanta occurring amid a US presidential election campaign highlights the connection between war and politics and the ways in which the outcome of a single, hard-fought battle can exert effects well beyond the immediate military contest to sectional and national arduous, fifteen-mile night march by a Confederate army corps just prior to the Battle of Atlanta focuses attention on the motivation and morale of the rebel soldiers and, more broadly, the factors that propelled warriors on both sides to repeatedly head into combat despite the extraordinary dangers and hardships they Yankee armies' eventual capture of Atlanta, expulsion of its civilian population, and burning of the city prompts consideration of whether the Civil War ushered in the total wars of the twentieth century or was fought within the prevailing nineteenth-century constraints on military action against noncombatants. Placing the battle in the context of a larger landscape and longer timeline makes the fighting between the Yankee and Confederate armies on July 22, 1864, more meaningful than focusing exclusively on the details of the single military contest. A three-hour Battle of Atlanta tour is an opportunity to gain new knowledge about tactics, topography, and combat action and to contemplate the broader context and significance of a specific clash. "The Battle of Atlanta History and Remembrance" is a guide for both explorations; it is designed for use before, during, or after a battlefield tour. The Atlanta Campaign and the March to the Sea The Battle of Atlanta was the bloodiest and single most important clash in the Atlanta Campaign of the Civil War. It was the campaign's climactic fight but not its E. Woodworth, Nothing But Victory The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865 New York Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, 567. The four-month campaign was a series of maneuvers, battles, engagements, and skirmishes between advancing Federal and retreating Confederate forces that culminated in the Federal capture of Atlanta on September 2, 1864. The fall of the "Gate City of the South" was a turning point in the Civil War, virtually assuring Abraham Lincoln's bid for a second term as president at a time when his political prospects were dimming and the outcome of his 1864 election campaign against Democratic opponent George B. McClellan was uncertain. Other Union successes influenced the northern electorate, specifically Admiral David Farragut's closure of the Confederate port of Mobile, Alabama, in early August and General Philip Sheridan's victories in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in September and October. However, the Yankee capture of Atlanta electrified the North, and, more than any other event on or off the battlefield, it turned around Lincoln's political M. McPherson, "Two Strategies of Victory William T. Sherman in the Civil War," Atlanta History 33, no. 4 Winter 1989–1990, 10. McClellan, who had served as general-in-chief of the armies of the United States from November 1861 to November 1862, was gaining popularity among northern voters as a peacemaker who could restrain warring sectional leaders, Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, from irretrievably tearing apart the Union. The main plank of the Democratic platform called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, and McClellan personally singled out reunion, but not emancipation, as his one condition for peace. War weariness and McClellan's increasing popularity in the North gave hope to Confederate military and political leaders in the summer of 1864. Even though the Confederates had lost ground in their war effort, a favorable outcome in the northern presidential election could reverse their fortunes and lead to a peace settlement on favorable terms. Conversely, loss of either Richmond or Atlanta to the invading Yankee armies would spell disaster for the Confederates because either outcome would likely propel Lincoln to electoral victory, which in turn meant that the Union would continue to prosecute the war and emancipation would remain a principal war aim. Much depended on how Confederate armies fared in Virginia and Georgia. Because the Confederate and Union forces in Virginia were bogged down in trench warfare near Petersburg beginning in mid-June, the stakes mounted in the more mobile Atlanta Campaign. In northwest Georgia, the three Federal armies under the overall command of Major General William T. Sherman fought and maneuvered their way southward toward Atlanta. Sherman was optimistic from the outset, writing to his wife Ellen on May 22, 1864 "I think I have the best army in the country, and if I cant [sic] take Atlanta and Stir up Georgia considerably I am mistaken."5Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin, eds., Sherman's Civil War Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865 Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1999, 639. Despite several battlefield setbacks, most severely at Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, the Union armies gained ground and forced the outnumbered Confederate Army of Tennessee, led by General Joseph E. Johnston, to fall back repeatedly to new defensive positions. When the Yankees circumvented Johnston's fortified position along the Chattahoochee River and began crossing the river on July 8, 1864, the Confederates retreated to an outer line of trenches defending Atlanta. By July 17, 1864, all three Union armies had reached the south bank of the Chattahoochee River, a half-day's march from the city. That same day, Confederate President Davis relieved Johnston of his army command and replaced him with General John Bell Hood. Davis was dissatisfied with Johnston's failure to halt Sherman's advance toward Atlanta. Hood offered the promise of more aggressive action against the Yankees, and as expected he soon went on the attack. In each of the final four battles of the Atlanta Campaign, with Hood in command, the Confederate forces assaulted advancing or maneuvering Federal troops at Peachtree Creek on July 20, east of Atlanta on July 22, at Ezra Church west of the city on July 28, and finally to the south at Jonesboro on August 31. In each instance, the Confederates were defeated with heavy losses. While the fighting raged at Jonesboro on August 31, a contingent of Federal infantry reached the Macon and Western Railroad several miles to the north and seized control of this last Confederate supply line into Atlanta. The next day, Union troops routed the remaining Confederate forces at Jonesboro, and that night Hood began a general withdrawal from Atlanta. Sherman allowed Hood's army to escape without pursuit, but Hood's aggressive fight for Atlanta had left him with fewer than forty thousand troops. On September 2, long lines of Federal soldiers began marching into the city that they would occupy for nearly eleven weeks. Newspapers throughout the North reported their triumph on September 3, and President Lincoln offered national thanks to Major General Sherman and the officers and soldiers under his command. Harper's Weekly declared, "There is not man who did not feel that McClellan's chances were diminished by the glad tidings from Atlanta."6Anonymous, "The effect of the news from Sherman," Harper's Weekly, September 17, 1864, 594. Entering Atlanta, Sherman shifted his attention away from Hood's army to the work of transforming the city into a military base that could be held by a small garrison rather than a large force. On September 7, Sherman issued orders evicting the city's remaining residents, an action that he said was "not designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for the future struggles."7Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin, eds., Sherman's Civil War Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865 Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1999, 707. When Hood's battered army regrouped and threatened the Union's railroad supply line between Chattanooga and Atlanta in early October, Sherman headed to north Georgia in pursuit. After several weeks of maneuvering and inconclusive fighting, both sides withdrew and moved in opposite directions. The Confederate army marched to north Alabama, and the Union troops returned to Atlanta. Sherman recognized that he could not continue to occupy an inland city deep in enemy territory without again risking the loss of his vital supply line. Instead he won approval from his superiors for a new campaign. He would abandon Atlanta and lead an army of sixty-five thousand in a march across the Georgia heartland toward the sea. Sherman would shift his base of operations to a coastal location that could be supplied by the navy and en route his soldiers would lay waste to anything in their path that could support the Confederate war effort. The true issue, George P. McClellan, former Union major general and Democratic Party candidate for president in 1864, separates leaders of the Union and Confederacy. Lithograph print by Currier & Ives, ca. 1864. On November 11, in preparation for the new campaign, Yankee engineers in Atlanta began demolishing the railroad depot and numerous other structures in the city that could have military value to the Confederates. On the final nights of the Federal occupation, November 15–16, Union soldiers set fire to unoccupied buildings, and the uncontrolled flames spread, threatening the entire city. By morning, much of the downtown was in ashes, and the city was still smoldering when the last of the Union troops departed on their March to the Sea. Sherman's soldiers trekked southeastward through virtually undefended, rich plantation country, fanning out across a sixty-mile-wide swath of territory from Atlanta to Savannah. Along the way, they foraged liberally, confiscated farm animals and crops, and wrecked railroads, farm buildings, cotton gins, and grist mills. When the campaign ended with the fall of Savannah on December 21, all that remained of the eastern Confederacy was Virginia, the Carolinas, and northeast Georgia. Atlanta in 1864 When the Union occupation of Atlanta began in early September 1864, fewer than three thousand civilian inhabitants lived in the city, a sharp drop from the war-time high of nearly twenty-two thousand and less than half of the population in B. Singer, "Confederate Atlanta" PhD diss., University of Georgia, 1973, 235, 253. The Civil War provided Atlanta with a windfall opportunity to enlarge its role as a railroad hub and manufacturing center. Located at the terminating point of four major railroads and far from the conflict's opening fronts, the city flourished during the first years of the war as the Confederate demand surged for rails, cannons, cartridges, shells, and clothing. As the war progressed, the city increasingly served as a hospital and convalescent center and attracted thousands of new residents to work in skilled trades, transportation and communications, wholesale and retail businesses, and the service sector. During the antebellum years, Atlanta had emerged as the center of a regional railroad network that by 1864 linked all that remained of the Confederacy east of the Mississippi. Atlanta was the distribution center for troops, munitions, food, and supplies of all kinds for the army. The city's vital importance to the Confederate war effort made it a primary target for the Federal forces invading Georgia in May 1864. As the war grew nearer during the spring and summer, Atlantans left on every available outbound train, and morale and productivity plummeted among the residents who remained. Well before the city fell on September 2 it had ceased to be of practical service to the Confederacy, but it remained a prize they could ill afford to lose because of its important bearing on the northern presidential contest and the morale of southern whites. Whitehall Street, Atlanta's central business district, 1864. Wet plate negative by George Barnard. Courtesy of Library of Congress. Railroad depot, Atlanta, Georgia, 1864. Wet plate negative by George Barnard. Courtesy of Library of Congress. Atlanta's slave population, enumerated at 2,523 by the city tax collector in November 1863, was relatively small compared to coastal cities, but enslaved labor contributed substantially to the city's economy and the Confederate war effort. Slaves in Atlanta carried out non-agricultural tasks, including iron forging, cabinet making, carpentry, brick masonry, blacksmithing, and—most frequently—unskilled labor such as domestic service. As the number of Confederate military hospitals increased, slaves replaced civilians and soldiers initially assigned to routine hospital labor. By the first half of 1864 most of the hospital attendants at several Atlanta hospitals were slaves. African American slaves also worked on Atlanta's inner ring of fortifications, the construction of which began after Federal forces advanced into central and eastern Tennessee in the summer of 1863 and Confederate armies were defeated at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July J. Fryman, "Fortifying the landscape An archeological study of military engineering and the Atlanta Campaign," in Archeological Perspectives on the American Civil War, eds. Clarence R. Geier and Stephen R. Potter Gainesville University Press of Florida, 2000, 49. The War Department assigned Captain Lemuel P. Grant of the Confederate Corps of Engineers the task of designing and building the defensive fortifications. Grant, by offering owners $25 a month, employed enough slaves to bring the work force to the level needed to tear down homes and barns, clear woods, move earth, and build the fortifications at a brisk pace. By April 1864 an elaborate earthwork cordon encircled Atlanta, consisting of elevated artillery positions "forts" connected to each other and fronted by infantry trenches, rifle pits, and closely-packed, sharpened obstacles designed to deter enemy 51. Atlanta bordered a heavily forested, mineral-rich area to the north and the cotton belt to the south. Although some farmers cultivated land in Atlanta's immediate environs, the city stood a hundred miles north of the region in which large landholders with three hundred or more acres were relatively common. "Plantation" homes near Atlanta were much smaller and less impressive than Hollywood's Tara Hall of Gone with the Wind. The terrain surrounding Atlanta was predominantly rolling wooded hills, interspersed with clearings for small farms, homes, and mills, loosely connected by narrow wagon roads, trails, or streams. The invading and defending armies were vulnerable to this lay of the land, mainly wilderness and not well known by either side. Too sizeable to advance quickly on the available country roads or through densely wooded areas, both sides carried out large troop movements quickly and effectively on rails or alongside railroad lines. The predominant east-to-west flows of the Chattahoochee River and Peachtree Creek, the largest bodies of water north of Atlanta, offered natural—albeit unsuccessful—lines of defense for the Confederate forces in July 1864. The Battle of Atlanta—Overview The three Federal armies commanded by Sherman, the Army of the Cumberland, Army of the Tennessee, and Army of the Ohio, together numbered approximately one hundred thousand troops as they approached the city, but only about twenty-seven thousand of them fought in the Battle of Nothing But Victory, 568. Sherman held the remainder in reserve. Hood's Army of Tennessee was fifty thousand strong, a decided numerical disadvantage for the Confederacy, but Hood moved about thirty-five thousand troops into attack against the smaller number of Union soldiers on the Castel, Decision in the West The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 Lawrence University of Kansas Press, 1992, 412. The Battle of Atlanta resulted from Hood's attempt to catch Sherman off guard as the Federal left wing, the Army of the Tennessee, marched from the vicinity of Decatur, six miles east of Atlanta, toward the fortified city. Hood gambled that he could overwhelm the advancing Federals with a long flank movement and surprise rear attack coupled with a frontal assault intended to further disrupt the invaders' line. Both Confederate attacks failed to dislodge the Union troops, who prevailed against wave after wave of assaults. General Joseph Wheeler, one of two former Confederate generals commissioned as major generals in the US Army prior to the 1898 war with Spain, 1906. Image by P. J. Plant. Concurrent with the main fighting in the Battle of Atlanta, on the afternoon of July 22, 1864, Confederate General Joseph Wheeler's cavalry achieved short-lived success against a lightly guarded Federal outpost in Decatur. There, approaching the town's public square, Wheeler's horsemen dismounted and attacked a Federal infantry brigade that was protecting a lengthy wagon train of supplies and ordnance. Although Wheeler's troopers forced the Yankees to retreat, the Federals escaped with almost their entire wagon train intact. Before Wheeler could overtake the fleeing Union troops, he was called back to reinforce the Confederate infantry who were meeting stiff resistance in the main battle about four miles west of Decatur. Wheeler's cavalry provided only slight assistance. Years later, Wheeler achieved distinction as one of two former Confederate generals who President William McKinley commissioned as major generals in the US army as the country prepared for the 1898 war with J. A. O'Toole, The Spanish War An American Epic 1898 New York W. W. Norton, 1984, 196. Fitzhugh Lee was the other appointee. Union veteran McKinley recognized that appointments of former Confederates to high rank in a new and popular armed struggle against a foreign foe would help reduce sectional bitterness, still lingering in the North and South over thirty years after the Civil War. Wheeler, just twenty-seven-years old when the Battle of Atlanta was fought, declared his readiness to return to field command "Although I am sixty-one years old I feel as strong and capable as when I was forty, or even much younger, and I desire very much to have another opportunity to serve my country."14John P. Dwyer, From Shiloh to San Juan The Life of "Fighting Joe" Wheeler Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1989, 220. The main combat in the Battle of Atlanta continued until darkness, and by then the Federals had won a major defensive victory. They held their ground and inflicted severe losses. Southern casualties numbered approximately 5, 412. including the death of a division commander, Major General William H. T. Walker, and the loss of an unusually large number of field officers. Federal losses totaled 3,722 killed, captured, and wounded,16Woodworth, Nothing But Victory, 568. and the dead included Major General James B. McPherson, commander of the Army of the Tennessee and the only Union army commander killed in action during the Civil War. Few Union officers had risen through the ranks more quickly than McPherson and were as popular with their fellow officers and troops. His death was deeply mourned not only by Grant and Sherman but also by the Confederate commander in the Battle of Atlanta, John Bell Hood, who had been McPherson's classmate and close friend at West Point. Hood lamented that "No soldier fell in the enemy's ranks, whose loss caused me equal regret."17John B. Hood, Advance and Retreat New York De Capo Press, 1993, 182. Following the battle, the Federal Army of the Tennessee worked overnight to strengthen its field position in anticipation of a renewed assault by Hood. However, when the fighting ended on July 22, the Confederates abandoned their efforts to crush the advancing Federal left wing. Their concerns turned to defending Atlanta's remaining railroad supply lines from the west and south. With their army severely depleted, the Confederates had limited means to contest the Federal maneuvers against those vital supply lines that began again four days after the Battle of Atlanta. The Federal victory on July 22, 1864, did not precipitate an immediate Confederate withdrawal from the city, but it went a long way toward forcing Atlanta's fall six weeks later. Battle of Atlanta Tour Stops General Sherman's Headquarters during the Battle Union Major General William T. Sherman established his field headquarters just before the Battle of Atlanta on high ground east of the city, where the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library is now located. Sherman surveying the battlefield, in front of the Augustus Hurt House, east of Atlanta, July 22, 1864, Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, Atlanta, Georgia, 1886. Painting by the American Panorama Company. On the morning of July 22, 1864, Federal General William T. Sherman, commander of the three Union armies closing on Atlanta, rode on horseback from his field headquarters, a pitched tent at what is now the intersection of Briarcliff and North Decatur Roads, near the present-day Emory University campus, to temporary headquarters, two and one-quarter miles to the southeast and in closer proximity to the city's center. Sherman established his new command post at Augustus Hurt's two-story, wood-frame home and hill top plantation, located on the present-day site of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. In 1864, Hurt's estate was on cleared land and commanded a sweeping view to the west and south. When Sherman arrived, he ventured beyond the unoccupied home and down a hillside for a closer look at Atlanta. From a vantage point near the western edge of the present-day presidential library campus, Sherman used field glasses to view the city that was a prime objective of his military campaign. He scanned the eastern section of Atlanta's inner fortifications located about one mile away, along present-day Boulevard and Glen Iris Drive, and observed Confederate batteries and soldiers. This provided direct confirmation that the Rebels remained in Atlanta in force, in contrast to Sherman's earlier supposition—already contradicted by Union reconnaissance—that the Confederate army had evacuated the city. Sherman also had a clear view of the rolling terrain just three-quarters of a mile to the southeast, where the late afternoon fighting would reach its peak around the home of Troup Hurt Augustus Hurt's older brother. Sherman was in position to see Confederate troops break through the Union line and capture a four gun Federal battery, which posed a dire threat to the Army of the Tennessee. The proximity of Sherman to this fighting enabled him to direct cannon fire that hindered the Confederate advance. A counterattack by Federal infantry ended the Confederate threat. After the battle, Union troops demolished Augustus Hurt's plantation home and used the wreckage for fire wood. The hill top location of the house, near the eastern edge of the present-day presidential library campus, was effaced during construction of the campus grounds and parkway during the 1980s. Sherman's panoramic view of Atlanta is close to what a present-day visitor can see from the western edge of the Carter Presidential Library campus, just above Freedom Parkway and looking at the city's downtown skyline. Although the tree line south of the presidential library now obscures the sweeping view of the battlefield from Sherman's observation point, his advantageous position can be visualized from the cyclorama painting's depiction of the Union commander on horseback, surveying the combat scene from high ground, and by locating the Augustus Hurt and Troup Hurt houses on a battlefield map. Sherman emerged from the Civil War second only to Ulysses S. Grant in renown as a Union general, and the personal bond that the two generals established earlier in the war enabled them to collaborate effectively as each led campaigns that culminated in US victory. Sherman, after graduating sixth of forty-two in the West Point class of 1840, did not show promise of the strategic innovations, logistical genius, and military triumphs that were to follow. Unlike many of the conflict's other top generals, he did not serve in Mexico during the Mexican War, and his military record in the initial stages of the Civil War was lackluster. Because of his volatile temperament and erratic behavior, Sherman was relieved of his assignment as commander of Union forces in Kentucky in late 1861. Sherman's star started to rise in the winter and spring of 1862 when his military partnership with Grant began in earnest. He contributed to Federal victories in western Tennessee in February 1862, when Grant led combined land and naval assaults against the Confederate strongholds at Forts Henry and Donelson. That April, Grant gave Sherman credit for saving the day at Shiloh when, in one of the bloodiest battles of the war, Union forces came close to disaster but turned the tide on the second day of fighting. The following year, when under Grant's leadership the Federals prevailed at Vicksburg, Mississippi, Sherman's frank advice and skillful field command solidified their relationship. For the remainder of the war, each time Grant was promoted to a new rank and role, Grant moved Sherman into his previously held position first as commander of the Army of the Tennessee, then as commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi, leader of all Union forces in the western theater. Robert E. Lee, commander of the army of North Virginia. Carte de visite, albumen print. Shortly after Lincoln named Grant general-in-chief of the Union armies in March 1864, Grant and Sherman conferred at length on plans for the spring campaigns. Beginning in early May 1864, Grant sought to pressure the Confederates on all fronts. In the east, Grant would attack Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which was defending Richmond; Sherman would invade Georgia and target the Army of Tennessee, initially under the command of Joseph E. Johnston and then John Bell Hood, which was protecting Atlanta. Grant and Sherman agreed on a strategy of simultaneous conquest of the two main Confederate armies and the urban centers they guarded. Keeping the Rebel forces separated would enable the northerners to take advantage of their numerical superiority in each theater. Movements against cities became a major focus of Union commanders who sought total defeat and unconditional surrender of the Kate Nelson, Ruin Nation Destruction and the American Civil War Athens University of Georgia Press, 2012, 10. By mid-July, Sherman's tenacious pursuit of Johnston had covered ninety miles and reached the northern and eastern outskirts of Atlanta. On July 20, Confederate forces, now under the command of Hood, were thwarted in their sweeping attack on the advancing Federal right wing three miles north of the city at the Battle of Peachtree Creek. Sherman, five or six miles southeast of the Peachtree Creek battlefield, was in position to hear the fighting but did not learn the outcome until about midnight, when a dispatch arrived from the victorious Union general, George H. Thomas, commander of the Army of the Cumberland. Sherman, traveling with Major General John M. Schofield's Army of the Ohio on the Federal left wing, had moved his headquarters early on July 20 to what is now the northwest corner of North Decatur and Briarcliff Roads. As the battle raged at Peachtree Creek, Union troops pressed toward the city General James B. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee marching westward from Decatur towards Atlanta along the tracks of the Georgia Railroad and Schofield's Army of the Ohio moving from the northeast, to McPherson's right, reconnoitering the Confederate defenses, cutting roads, and opening communications. The only major action on July 21 occurred when McPherson ordered General Frank P. Blair, leading the Seventeenth Corps of the Army of the Tennessee, to capture Bald Hill, an elevation commanding the eastern approach to the city that the Confederate defenders used to hold McPherson's advancing troops at bay. On the morning of July 21, General Mortimer Leggett's division of Blair's Corps, after a bitter struggle, captured the hill—later re-named Leggett's Hill—from a Confederate division under the command of General Patrick R. Cleburne of Hardee's Corps. Leggett's troops immediately entrenched themselves and placed cannons in position to fire shells into Atlanta. By nightfall, the Federal left wing had advanced to a lengthy front some two-and-a-half miles from the center of Atlanta on what had been the eastern portion of the Confederates' outer defense line. The Confederates abandoned that entire line overnight, withdrawing to the city's inner fortifications, and allowing Sherman to move to his new headquarters at the Augustus Hurt House the following morning, July 22, 1864. Augustus Hurt House, Sherman's headquarters on July 22, 1864, Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, Atlanta, Georgia, 1886. Painting by the American Panorama Company. When Sherman learned before dawn that Hood had abandoned the outer arc of Atlanta's defenses, the Yankee commander mistakenly concluded that the Confederates had evacuated the city. He immediately ordered a massive Union pursuit. However, by the time Sherman arrived at the Augustus Hurt House, Federal reconnaissance had discovered that Hood's infantry still occupied the inner fortifications surrounding Atlanta. Sherman countermanded his pursuit order, and he personally surveyed the fortified Confederate position after arriving at the hillside just west of the Augustus Hurt House. Sherman and his staff moved so far forward toward the city's fortifications that they drew Confederate artillery and rifle fire, forcing their retreat to the Hurt home. Sherman was joined there at about 11 by McPherson, who persuaded Sherman to reconsider another order, which would have sent the Federal Sixteenth Corps on a mission to tear up railroad track back to and beyond Decatur. Sherman was concerned that Confederate reinforcements would arrive by rail from Virginia and had already sent McPherson's cavalry to the rear to tear up E. Woodworth, Sherman New York Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 128. McPherson was worried that sending the Sixteenth Corps infantry on a similar mission would leave the Union's Army of the Tennessee vulnerable to an attack against its thinly defended far left flank. Sherman agreed to postpone his order until 1 If the Confederates did not attack by then, the Sixteenth Corps infantry would proceed with its wrecking assignment. As events unfolded, Sherman's agreement to reinforce the Union's left flank proved to be a crucial move for the Yankees and a major misfortune for the Confederates as they launched their surprise attack at about noon. General Hood's Observation Post and Oakland Cemetery Confederate General John Bell Hood observed part of the Battle of Atlanta from a vantage point on high ground near the present-day Oakland Cemetery Visitors Center Bell Tower. Confederate Obelisk, dedicated to the memory of "Our Confederate Dead," Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia. Postcard made in Germany, ca. 1910. Established in 1850, when its original six acres were purchased east of the city for use as a municipal burial ground, Oakland Cemetery was first known as Atlanta Cemetery. In 1856, several hundred yards north of the original cemetery, James E. Williams, who would serve as Atlanta's mayor after the Civil War 1866–1868, built a residence on high ground. On the afternoon of July 22, 1864, the second floor of the Williams House served as a vantage point from which General John Bell Hood, commander of the Confederate forces, and his staff observed troop movements and perhaps battlefield action. Hood witnessed two Confederate divisions, Brown's and Clayton's, move from within Atlanta's inner fortifications and march eastward astride the Georgia Railroad tracks now the MARTA commuter rail line and CSX railroad tracks visible from the cemetery to attack the Federal Fifteenth Corps, Army of the Tennessee, in the vicinity of what is now Dekalb and Degress Avenues, one and one-quarter miles from the Williams House. A Georgia Historical Commission marker located in the northern part of Oakland Cemetery, near the Bell Tower visitors center, indicates the site of the Williams House. Hood, who was able to ride a horse despite his debilitating war wounds and leg amputation, also may have used the nearby home of Lucius J. Gartrell for an observation post during the E. Zaworski, The General and the House on the Hill Alpharetta, GA BookLogix, 2001, 39. Gartrell's house was located on high ground north of the railroad tracks, opposite Oakland Cemetery. Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia. Battle of Atlanta map by Michael Page, 2014. John Bell Hood graduated forty-fourth in a class of fifty-two from West Point in 1853 and was the youngest of the eight full generals of the Confederacy. At the military academy he had been in the same class as James B. McPherson, John M. Schofield, and Philip H. Sheridan of the Federal Army, the first two of whom fought against Hood in the Battle of Atlanta. Future Confederate generals also attended West Point at the same time as Hood. J. E. B. Stuart and William D. Pender, both of whom graduated in 1854, would emerge with Hood as outstanding young officers in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during the pinnacle of its success in the summer of 1862. In combat that summer, under Lee's command at Gaines Mill, Second Manassas, and Antietam, Hood saw how bold assaults could turn the tide of battle. Hood performed impressively, if not decisively, in all three battles, reinforcing for him the importance of daring leadership and hard fighting—displayed at Atlanta two years later. Battlefield aggressiveness, not tactical brilliance, distinguished Hood as a brigade and division commander in the Army of Northern Virginia. When promoted to army commander, his skill at independent command was found wanting. Still, he emerged from some of the bloodiest, early battles in the Civil War physically unscathed and with a reputation for combat bravery. His luck ran out as the war went on. At Gettysburg in July 1863, Hood sustained a severe wound to his left arm, after which he recovered only limited use of that extremity. Two months later at Chickamauga, Georgia, a bullet shattered his right thigh bone, and Hood's right leg was amputated just below the hip. As a result of his wounds, Hood could not walk without crutches and required a body servant to get dressed, mount a horse, and complete many other activities of daily living. Hood's leadership at Chickamauga won him a promotion to lieutenant general on February 11, 1864, and later that month he joined the Army of Tennessee in Dalton, Georgia as a corps commander. He served in that role until July 17, 1864, when Confederate President Jefferson Davis lost patience with General Joseph E. Johnston's command of the Army of Tennessee and replaced Johnston with Hood. When asked by Davis, Lee had advised against this change in command. "Hood is a bold fighter," Lee said. "I am doubtful as to other qualities necessary."21Clifford Dowdey, ed., The Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee New York Bramhall House, 1961, 202. When news of the change in Confederate command reached Federal General William T. Sherman, he asked Schofield, Hood's classmate at West Point, about Hood. Schofield replied that Hood was "bold even to rashness" and "courageous in the extreme."22William T. Sherman, Memoirs of William T. Sherman New York The Library of America, 1990, 544. Oakland Cemetery provides a tangible link to Atlanta and the Civil War, both as a site where Hood established an observation post during the Battle of Atlanta and as the most prominent public space in the city used by residents and visitors to commemorate the war dead and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Oakland extended beyond its original boundaries through a series of expansions, and by 1867 it reached its current size of eighty-eight acres. During the Civil War a section immediately east of the original six acres was set aside for war dead. Now known as the Confederate section, this plot of land is the burial site of nearly seven thousand soldiers, including three thousand unknowns. Many of the Confederate dead were reinterred in Oakland Cemetery after members of the Atlanta Ladies Memorial Association and their spouses raised funds in 1867 to remove bodies from the shallow graves on the battlefields near Atlanta. The last row of the Confederate section "C" contains the remains of Federal soldiers who were captured and died in Confederate hospitals. The Federal headstones have shields on them. The Confederate headstones have either "CSA" Confederate States of America or "Confederate" on them. Advertisement for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, sculpted from Tate, Georgia, marble, National Geographic 53, no. 2 February 1928 4. The Ladies Memorial Association also erected two large monuments that mark the space set aside for the war dead a sixty-five-foot-tall obelisk of Stone Mountain granite and a six-foot-high statue of a grieving lion carved from a fifteen-ton piece of Tate, Georgia, marble and modeled after the renowned Lion of Lucerne in Switzerland. The base of the Confederate Obelisk was set in place on October 15, 1870, the day of Robert E. Lee's funeral. The shaft memorializing "Our Confederate Dead" was unveiled on Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1874. The obelisk is the focal point for the entire Confederate section and for decades provided the backdrop for annual Confederate Memorial Day celebrations. At the time of the obelisk's dedication it was the tallest structure in Atlanta, equivalent in height to a three-story building. The Lion of Atlanta, like the much larger Swiss statue, symbolizes the agonizing death struggle of an armed force in defeat, overwhelmed by its opponent but honored for bravery. In Atlanta, the monument commemorates the unknown Confederate dead, whose remains are buried in the surrounding plot; in Lucerne, the carving that Mark Twain called "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world"23Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad New York Oxford University Press, 1996, 259. is dedicated to the approximately 600 Swiss Guards who died while unsuccessfully defending the French royal family in August 1792, during the French P. Jordan, The King's Trial The French Revolution vs. Louis XVI Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press, 2004, 38. In each instance, a dying lion, mortally wounded by a lance driven through its back, clutches an emblem of the lost cause for which it fought a Confederate battle flag in Atlanta and the French fleur-de-lis in Lucerne. The Lucerne statue was sculpted in 1820–1821 with the support of Swiss aristocrats seeking the backing of Bourbon monarchs who had been restored to the French Lunn, The Cradle of Switzerland London Hollis & Carter, 1952, 147. Following the instructions of the Ladies Memorial Association, Thomas M. Brady of Canton, Georgia sculpted the Atlanta version, completing the statue in "Atlanta's Monuments to Confederate Dead," Atlanta Constitution, July 23, 1898, 15. It was dedicated on April 26 of that year. Twenty five years later, sculptor Daniel Chester French used white marble quarried in Tate, Georgia, for his colossal Abraham Lincoln Memorial statue in Washington, DC. Thus, marble from the same small town in Pickens County went to sculpt a memorial to thousands of unknown Confederate dead as well as a monument to the war's best known casualty. Commemorating the surrender of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston to Federal General William T. Sherman in 1865, near Durham, North Carolina, April 26 is Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia and in many former states of the Confederacy. Johnston's surrender, following Lee's on April 9 to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, removed the last large Confederate Army from the field. Until 1984 Confederate Memorial Day was a statutory Georgia holiday, marked in Atlanta by a procession of as many as ten thousand people from downtown to Oakland Cemetery for ceremonies and speeches. Fort Walker and Rifle Pit Confederate Colonel Lemuel P. Grant designed over ten and half miles of earthwork fortifications and connecting trenches that encircled Atlanta and included Fort Walker, the sole remnant of the city’s inner defensive works. Fort Walker, Grant Park, Atlanta, Georgia, ca. 1910. Vintage postcard. Fort Walker, located in present-day Grant Park, Atlanta, Georgia, with Union troops encamped north of the fort, October, 1864. Photograph by George H. Barnard. Courtesy of US Military Academy Special Collections. Fittingly, the Fort Walker site in Grant Park is the sole remnant of the earthen works constructed under Lemuel Grant's supervision. Other remnants of Atlanta's defensive works were evident into the twentieth century, only to be obliterated in the post–World War II era by urban 52. Fort Walker remains a notable Atlanta Civil War site, protected by its location in a municipal park but vulnerable to natural erosion and effacement by human visitors. It was first restored in the 1880s,28Gail Anne D'Avino, "Atlanta Municipal Parks, 1882–1917, Urban Boosterism, Urban Reform in a New South City" PhD diss., Emory University, 1988, 42. after which it became a popular destination for visitors and a frequent subject of picture postcards. The fort was restored again in the 1930s, when the Works Progress Administration laid flagging stone—still present—to protect the broad area above the earthen wall, where the original Confederate gun battery had been Steedman, "Atlanta Fort Restored," Atlanta Constitution, May 2, 1937, 7. Until they were removed in the 1980s, several Civil War cannons were on display at the Fort Walker site. At the time of the Battle of Atlanta, the city was completely encircled by over ten miles of carefully planned and well-constructed fortifications that stood on average one-and-a-half miles from the city's center. These strong defensive works were completed for the most part by April 1864. Their construction was supervised by Lemuel P. Grant, after whom Atlanta's Grant Park is named. Subsequent extensions of the city's defensive perimeter in the spring and summer of 1864 increased its length. Among the add-ons was Fort Walker, a small bastion located in the southeast corner of Grant Park that was originally constructed as a separate four-gun parapet and subsequently incorporated into the main defensive J. Fryman, "Fortifying the Landscape An Archeological Study of Military Engineering and the Atlanta Campaign," in Archeological Perspectives on the American Civil War, eds. Clarence R. Geier and Stephen R. Potter Gainesville University Press of Florida, 2000, 53. The fort was named for Confederate Major General William H. T. Walker, who was killed in the Battle of Atlanta. The actual look of Atlanta's earthwork fortifications in 1864 is preserved in the visual record created by George N. Barnard, a pioneering nineteenth-century photographer who documented Sherman's campaigns throughout the final year of the Civil War. Barnard also took photographs of the city itself, before, during, and after its wreckage and burning by the Yankees. His images of the city's forts after they fell to the Federals depict rugged earthen structures supported by timber frameworks, located on hilly prominences, and connected by lengthy entrenchments that could be occupied by infantry. The forts were fitted for artillery batteries, which were placed on level platforms behind gun embrasures. The grounds in front of each fort had been cleared of trees and brush for one thousand yards, leaving open lines of fire for the defenders' artillery and rifles. Some forts also were protected by abatis, felled trees with sharpened branches facing toward the enemy, and chevaux-de-frise, rows of criss-crossed, sharpened logs. Lemuel P. Grant, Confederate engineer responsible for the construction of Atlanta's inner fortifications, 1889, Wallace P. Reed, History of Atlanta, Georgia With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Pioneers, vol. 2 Syracuse, New York D. Mason and Company, 1889, 168. Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. Lemuel Grant, a native of Maine who at age twenty-two had moved to Atlanta before the name of the place had been changed from Terminus and Marthasville, was originally trained as a civil engineer and had no military training or experience prior to his commission in 1862 as a captain of engineers in the Confederate army. Lemuel Grant's lack of familiarity with military fortifications and the range of field artillery had consequences. The distance between the fortified line and the city's center was less than the maximum range of the Federal field artillery, and beginning July 20, 1864, the advancing Federal forces were able to cannonade Atlanta without breaching or even testing the city's fortifications. Union commander William T. Sherman decided against a direct infantry assault after reconnoitering the fortifications following the Battle of Atlanta. A visit to the hilltop Fort Walker site and observation of the surrounding topography show why it was a key point in Atlanta's defenses. The location provides a commanding view of the valley below and an advantageous position for a gun battery. At the base of the site is a rifle pit, visible as a shallow, semi-circular trench in front of the fort wall. In 1864, troops would have had sufficient space within the trench to stand without exposing more than their eyes and rifle barrels in a narrow opening covered by a protective timber head-log. Rifled cannons and side arms in the Civil War were nineteenth-century technological innovations that had the potential to add substantial firing range and destructive power to both armies. Yet, gunfire between the opposing battle lines in the Civil War was typically mass volleying of rifled muskets shot at close range from linear ranks. The rifled musket's rate of fire was not fast enough in the Civil War to enable departures from standard battle lines, which resembled tightly packed Napoleonic formations. Artillery served mainly as weapons of support for infantry and cavalry, either in defending positions or bolstering attacks. Long range fire was the specialty of rifled cannons, enabling accurate cannonading at a mile and maximum ranges in excess of two miles. Casualties inflicted by artillery typically accounted for a small proportion of Confederate and Federal losses. The majority of battlefield injuries and fatalities resulted from rifle fire, and protracted shooting at close range, often under a hundred yards, characterized many Civil War battles. Firefights often dragged on until exhaustion set in or nightfall ended the combat for the day, as was the case in the Battle of Atlanta. Casualties mounted because the fighting lasted so long—approximately eight hours on the Atlanta battlefield—and less because of technological advances in weaponry. Prior to the third year of the Civil War, battlefield tactics remained largely unchanged from earlier nineteenth-century conflicts. By 1864, two major military innovations had gained acceptance. First, the principal armies began to engage in continuous campaigning for months rather than sporadic, pitched battles that lasted hours or days. Second, soldiers on both sides had learned to dig systems of trenches and light field fortifications, which strengthened their positions and protected against enemy rifle fire. Throughout the Atlanta Campaign, Confederate military engineers oversaw construction of defensive works, such as the Kennesaw Mountain Line and Chattahoochee River Defense Line, that they prepared before the arrival of the retreating Army of Tennessee. Just prior to the battles for Atlanta, the Confederate Army in retreat toward the city constructed a nine-mile line of entrenchments outside and to the north and east of the much heavier, inner fortifications. The southerners abandoned their outer defensive line on the night of July 21 and withdrew to the city's stronger, inner line. From there they marched into positions to attack the Federals the next day. The inner fortifications were not breached during the Battle of Atlanta, but the heavy earthen works could not thwart the Federal bombardment of the city that intensified after the Yankee victory or block the subsequent military maneuvers that forced the Confederates to surrender their stronghold on September 2. Hardee's Night March Lieutenant General William J. Hardee led a fifteen-mile overnight trek of between seventeen and eighteen thousand Confederate soldiers that culminated in their opening attack in the Battle of Atlanta. During the July 21 fighting at Bald Hill, Hood learned from his cavalry scouts that McPherson's advancing Army of the Tennessee, despite its increasingly strong position, was vulnerable to an attack on its left flank or rear. As the Federal army moved closer to Atlanta, Sherman sent the cavalry division that had been guarding McPherson's left flank eastward toward Covington and the Alcovy River to burn bridges and destroy Georgia Railroad tracks heading to Augusta. Sherman wanted to disrupt enough track to prevent the southerners from using the railroad to move troops and supplies from Virginia. As a result, with the Union cavalry miles away, the left end of McPherson's line presented a weak spot protected by only two brigades. If the Confederates marched south of the city then swung east and north around McPherson's exposed flank they could rout the Yankees in a surprise attack and capture or destroy the large number of Federal supply wagons parked in the Decatur town square. To achieve these goals, and to prevent McPherson from moving south and cutting the railroad between Atlanta and Macon, Hood devised an ambitious plan of attack on July 21 that was reminiscent of a bold flanking maneuver that Stonewall Jackson successfully executed in May 1863 against the right wing of the Federal Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville, Virginia. Hood decided to divide his forces, keeping two corps, commanded by Alexander Stewart and Benjamin Cheatham, behind the city's inner fortifications while sending William Hardee's Corps, accompanied by Joseph Wheeler's cavalry, on a wide circling maneuver south and east of the city. Hardee and Wheeler would move out of Atlanta at nightfall, swing around McPherson's left flank, and then pounce on the Yankee's rear at daybreak, rolling up their line and destroying the supply wagons gathered in Decatur. In conjunction with this attack, Cheatham's Corps would move from behind the fortifications on Atlanta east's side in a direct frontal assault against the center of the Federal line held by McPherson and Schofield's troops. Meanwhile, Stewart's Corps would hold Thomas's Army of the Cumberland in check north of the city, preventing Federal reinforcements of McPherson and Schofield's armies and then engaging Thomas once the battle became general. Hardee's division commanders, Confederate division commanders whose units completed Hardee's Night March, clockwise from upper left, William H. T. Walker, William B. Bate, Patrick R. Cleburne, and George E. Maney. Compilation by Christopher Sawula, 2014. Hardee's Corps, with the exception of Cleburne's division, began its circuitous fifteen-mile march after dark on July 21. Walker's, Bate's, and Maney's divisions marched out the McDonough Road Capitol Avenue and Hank Aaron Drive of today to a point near the present-day state capitol, where they were joined by Cleburne's division. Cleburne's division, withdrawn into Atlanta after fighting all day at Bald Hill, joined the other three infantry divisions and Wheeler's cavalry around midnight. Once assembled, the entire column amounted to between seventeen and eighteen thousand foot and horse soldiers. Moving beyond the city limits, the trek continued in a southeasterly direction for five or six miles on the McDonough Road along present-day McDonough Boulevard, except for the final mile and a half, which is now Moreland Avenue. After reaching its southernmost point, at or near the South River, Hardee's Corps and Wheeler's cavalry turned northeast on Fayetteville Road, then a winding, red dirt track that led to Decatur. Hardee's Corps marched a mile and a quarter on the Fayetteville Road to Cobb's Mill on Intrenchment Creek, three miles below the southern end of McPherson's line. Hardee's troops reached Cobb's Mill at dawn, several hours behind schedule, and Hardee and his division commanders met William Cobb at his house north of the Creek. They recruited mill owner Cobb and a mill worker named Case Turner to serve as guides. To this point the route had been relatively clear, but Cobb and Turner said the way ahead included a tangled wilderness of forest and undergrowth and Terry's Mill Pond, a wide span of water resulting from the impoundment of Sugar Creek, northwest of where the Fayetteville Road crossed the creek. The wilderness march ahead would be particularly slow going for the Confederate foot soldiers, all of whom had marched all night and many of whom had fought at Peachtree Creek on July 20. The Confederate column continued its advance northward on the Fayetteville Road for a mile and a half beyond Cobb's Mill to a road fork where Hardee's Corps split into two columns. Cleburne's and Maney's divisions took the left fork and marched northwest. When they reached Flat Shoals Road which existed in 1864, they deployed on either side of the road and moved toward the left flank of McPherson's army, which was aligned in an entrenched position in what is now East Atlanta. Walker's and Bate's column took the right fork and moved northeast on the Fayetteville Road, toward their eventual encounter with Union infantry positioned in what is now Atlanta's Kirkwood neighborhood. However, instead of keeping on the road, Walker turned northwest as it crossed Sugar Creek, followed by Bate's column, likely in an effort to keep contact with Cleburne's and Maney's divisions. Wheeler's cavalry continued on the Fayetteville Road towards Decatur and the Federal wagon park. William Cobb's house, where Confederate corp commander William J. Hardee and staff stopped on their night march, July 21–22, 1864. Photo of unknown origin, May 1, 1905. Walker's and Bate's divisions made slow progress along Sugar Creek's densely overgrown banks. The country road had been wide and clear, but maintaining alignment in the heavily wooded terrain bordering the stream contributed to mounting delays. The plodding march through wilderness slowed further when the Confederates encountered Terry's Mill Pond. The mill pond, which no longer exists, was at least a half-mile long, almost equally as wide, and reached depths of ten feet. Veering left around the western side of the mill pond took considerable time and further delayed the Confederate attack, already hours behind schedule. A Georgia historical marker titled "Terry's Mill Pond," locates the north end of the pond on Glenwood Avenue near its I-20 interchange. After marching all night and through the morning, Hardee's Corps arrived late but ready to advance against McPherson's Army of the Tennessee shortly before noon on July 22. Since Hardee did not know where McPherson's left flank terminated, he had sought to align his four divisions abreast, facing northward. Just prior to battle, Hardee's four divisions formed a crescent from left to right Maney on the extreme left, west of Flat Shoals Road; Cleburne deployed to Maney's right, on and east of Flat Shoals Road; Walker in the Sugar Creek Valley, just north of Terry's Mill Pond and south of present-day Memorial Drive; and Bate on the far right, adjacent to present-day Memorial Drive. However, by the time Hardee's Corps was ready to strike McPherson's Army, the Federal left wing had changed its configuration so that the Confederates would assault a well-protected flank rather than the Yankees's rear. At Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson had placed his troops behind the Eleventh Federal Army Corps as he had planned to do, but east of Atlanta, Hardee's Corps completed its long march six hours behind schedule and was not in position to mount the devastating attack on the Union rear that Hood had envisioned. Death of General Walker A Federal soldier mortally wounded Confederate division commander Major General William H. T. Walker while he was scouting the Union infantry’s position just before the Battle of Atlanta. Walker Monument, original placement in 1902, Confederate Veteran, July 1902. After a lengthy, circuitous march, the Confederate corps under Lieutenant General William J. Hardee's command expected to catch the Yankee flank unprotected, as Stonewall Jackson did at Chancellorsville, but instead during the morning of July 22, Federal Major General James B. McPherson had moved his reserve forces into position to protect his army's left flank. The Yankee position resembled a capital "L," with the lower, horizontal portion well placed to intercept the impending Rebel attack, which otherwise would have struck a weak spot at the end of the Federal left wing. As Hardee's Corps prepared to break from its cover and begin its delayed assault, Federal skirmishers were positioned in the field ahead. Confederate Major General William H. T. Walker, while readying his division for attack, rode forward on horseback to reconnoiter the area and likely was killed at that moment, near Sugar Creek, by a Federal Sixteenth Corps infantryman. Case Turner, the civilian guide who accompanied Walker on the final stretch of the night march, and several Confederate veterans of the Battle of Atlanta provided differing accounts of when and where the general was mortally wounded. However, Walker clearly was one of the first casualties of the battle, and with or without him leading the way, his troops were among the first to make contact with Yankees. An upright cannon monument to mark the approximate location of Walker's death was placed on Glenwood Avenue, a short distance west of present-day I-20, and dedicated on July 22, 1902. In 1936, the monument was moved to its present location, a short distance east of I-20 at the intersection of Glenwood and Wilkinson Drive, after research by Colonel Howard Landers of the Army War College indicated that Walker was killed near the newer site. Walker, an Augusta, Georgia, plantation owner and a distinguished veteran of the regular US Army, was physically brave and aggressive and temperamentally argumentative and volatile. His multiple wounds in the Seminole and Mexican wars earned him the nickname "Old Shot Pouch" and compromised his health to such an extent that he could sleep only while sitting up. An ardent defender of slavery and a staunch secessionist, Walker submitted his resignation from the regular US army on December 15, 1860, even before South Carolina left the Union. He was the first officer to give up his commission. Walker spurned the Montgomery government's initial offer to make him a Confederate colonel, holding out for a higher rank. He eventually was appointed a brigadier general, then major general in the Vicksburg Campaign. Walker bitterly opposed Confederate Major General Patrick Cleburne's proposal in January 1864 that the South arm slaves, train them as soldiers, and free those who fought for the Confederacy. At a meeting of Army of Tennessee corps and division commanders convened by Hardee on January 2, 1864—for the sole purpose of hearing Cleburne's arguments for arming and emancipating slaves—Walker exploded in anger and denounced Cleburne as an abolitionist and a traitor. Later that month, Walker assured that an intermediary hand-delivered a copy of Cleburne's memorandum to Jefferson Davis, a calculated maneuver in which Walker bypassed his corps and army commanders and violated military protocol. The Confederate president's response was what Walker sought. Davis ordered General Joseph E. Johnston, then commander of the Army of Tennessee, to suppress the proposal and forbid any further discussion of arming and emancipating slaves. Cleburne's death at the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864, helped enforce the official gag order. No copy of Cleburne's proposal surfaced again until M. Hull, "Concerning the Emancipation of the Slaves," in A Meteor Shining Brightly Essays on Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne, ed. Mauriel P. Joslyn Milledgeville, GA Terrell House Printing, 1998, 169. Walker's heated response to the Confederate emancipation proposal helped solidify his reputation as a firebrand. In life and death, he epitomized the antebellum ideology expressed most fervently by the slaveholding elite and its political leaders about the justness of a society in which masters and slaves purportedly both benefited from the bonds of mutual obligation. The upright cannon dedicated to Walker's memory on July 22, 1902, in East Atlanta became one of many landmarks constructed in the South at the turn of the century that commemorated the heroes and cause of the Confederacy. Because these public monuments typically valorized individual heroism above the causes for which the war was fought, they also served a larger purpose of white, sectional reconciliation. Southern war remembrance at the turn of the century emphasized a resurgent American nationalism that marginalized the problems of slavery, race, and emancipation. As historian David Blight notes "In the half century after the war, as the sections reconciled, by and large, the races divided. Race was so deeply at the root of the war's causes and consequences, and so powerful a source of division in American social psychology that it served as the antithesis of a culture of reconciliation. The memory of slavery, emancipation, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments never fit well into a developing narrative in which the Old and New South were romanticized and welcomed back to a new nationalism, and in which devotion alone made everyone right, and no one truly wrong in the remembered Civil War."32David W. Blight, "Healing and History Battlefields and the Problem of Civil War Memory," in Rally on the High Ground The National Park Service Symposium on the Civil War, ed. Robert K. Sutton Fort Washington, PA Eastern National Press, 2001, 25. The dedication of the Walker monument on the thirty-eighth anniversary of the Battle of Atlanta was a gala celebration that the Atlanta Constitution featured the following day. Among the two thousand attendees were Union veterans, including retired Federal General Oliver Otis Howard, who had a minimal role in the battle but succeeded McPherson as commander of the Army of the Tennessee on July 27, 1864. Howard told the Atlanta Constitution that he had known Walker at West Point and that "Nothing gives me more pleasure than to take part in an affair of this kind."33Anonymous, "General Howard Talks of Battle of Atlanta," Atlanta Constitution, July 22, 1902, 2. Howard's post-war career included a stint as Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, established by Congress in May 1865 to help former slaves make the transition to freedom. Howard also had a pivotal role in launching the university named in his honor in Washington, DC, and served as its president from 1869 to 1873. At the Walker monument's dedication, the event's main speaker was Julius L. Brown, the leading fund raiser for the monument, who lauded Howard's attendance in the rhetoric of North-South reconciliation "What stronger evidence could be given that all sectional strife is ended, and that we are now united as one people, no matter what the demagogues may say?"34Anonymous, "Honor to General W. H. T. Walker," Confederate Veteran 10, no. 9 1902, 402–407. Where the Battle Began Federal infantry and artillery batteries positioned on high ground in the vicinity of the present-day Alonzo Crim High School fended off the opening Confederate attack in the Battle of Atlanta. Shortly after noon on July 22, 1864, two Confederate divisions under the command of Brigadier General Hugh Mercer who replaced the fallen William H. T. Walker and Major General William B. Bate emerged from the heavily wooded, underbrush laden terrain east of Atlanta after an arduous fifteen-mile march and, moving north and northwest respectively, launched the first attack in the Battle of Atlanta. These two divisions, half of the Confederate infantry led by Lieutenant General William J. Hardee on the long march that had begun at nightfall on July 21, expected to move forward unopposed against the rear of Federal Major General James B. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee. Instead, Mercer's and Bate's divisions encountered Union infantry and artillery occupying an advantageous position along high ground in the vicinity of present-day Alonzo Crim High School, at the intersection of Clifton Street and Memorial Drive. Most of the Union troops, elements of the Federal Sixteenth Corps commanded by Major General Grenville M. Dodge, had arrived in their positions late in the morning, and Yankee reinforcements rapidly moved into action when the opening shots were fired. As a result, the Federals had the upper hand in the first clash of the Battle of Atlanta, and they used their advantage to repel the Confederate's surprise attack. When the fighting started, the three Union corps that comprised McPherson's Army of the Tennessee were deployed along a several mile front that resembled a capital "L", with the longer vertical portion extending north–south alongside or near the present-day Moreland Avenue which did not exist in 1864, and the shorter horizontal segment extending east–west, parallel to the present-day Glenwood Avenue and Memorial Drive. The Fifteenth Corps, commanded by Major General John A. Logan, was located near the top of the long part of the "L," facing Atlanta to the west and spread across the Georgia Railroad the tracks of which ran along the railroad bed now used by Metropolitan Area Rapid Transit Authority MARTA and CSX Transportation. Logan's line connected on its right with the left of Major General John M. Schofield's Army of the Ohio's Twenty-Third Corps, which was located in the vicinity of Sherman's temporary headquarters at the Augustus Hurt House near the present-day Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. The Twenty-Third Corps infantry was only lightly engaged in the Battle of Atlanta, but its artillery had a role in the late afternoon fighting near the Troup Hurt House. Logan's left connected with the Seventeenth Corps under Major General Frank P. Blair. Brigadier General Mortimer D. Leggett's division of the Seventeenth Corps was positioned at Bald Hill, the high point of a lengthy ridge that ran in a north–south direction along the course of present-day Moreland Avenue. Bald Hill, which Union troops renamed Leggett's Hill after the battle, was located at the intersection of what is now Moreland Avenue and I-20. Highway construction during the early 1960s leveled the hill. To Leggett's left was Brigadier General Giles Smith's division of the Seventeenth Corps, which held a line that extended southeast from the hill along Flat Shoals Road present-day Flat Shoals Avenue to Glenwood Avenue. Together, the Federal Twenty-Third, Fifteenth, and Seventeenth Corps formed an approximately two-mile entrenched line the vertical portion of the "L" that extended from the grounds of the present-day Carter Presidential Library southward to what is now the intersection of Flat Shoals Road and Glenwood Avenue in East Atlanta. The shorter, horizontal segment of the Federal army's "L"-shaped line was filled by three brigades of Major General Grenville M. Dodge's Sixteenth Corps, two from the division commanded by Brigadier General Thomas W. Sweeny and one from the division of Brigadier General John W. Fuller. Sweeny's and Fuller's divisions had been in reserve before moving into their battlefield positions on the morning of July 22. Sweeny's brigades moved first, marching south from the present-day Candler Park to a position at the far end of the lower part of the "L," near today's Alonzo Crim High School, at Clifton Street and Memorial Drive. The head of Sweeny's column, a brigade commanded by Colonel August Mersy, was aligned along an east–west road present-day Memorial Drive perpendicular to the rest of Sweeny's line, a brigade commanded by Brigadier General Elliott W. Rice, which was behind Mersy's troops and positioned along Clay Road present-day Clay Street. After Sweeny's column arrived, Morrill's brigade of Brigadier General John W. Fuller's division moved southward from where it had been in reserve, behind the Seventeenth Corps line at Leggett's Hill. Fuller's troops were deployed to Sweeny's right and occupied a position extending from present-day Memorial Drive southeastward toward the present site of the McPherson Monument. Together, Sweeny and Fuller's troops formed a line approximately three-fourths of a mile long, Artillery batteries from both divisions were placed on the hill where the high school is now located. These batteries faced south and east, the directions from which the Mercer's and Bate's Confederate divisions soon would sweep forward. The attacking Confederates did not expect to encounter three brigades with cannons aimed at them from high ground. Still, they charged again and again. The advantageous elevation held by the Union troops can be appreciated today from the eastern edge of grounds of the Alonzo Crim High School. Looking eastward along Memorial Drive and across the adjacent terrain provides a view of the lay of the land from the Yankees' vantage point. Their commanding defensive position enabled them to strike a decisive blow against the Confederate column that attacked from the east. However, in a nearby sector of the battlefield the Federal defense was vulnerable. Between the two segments of the "L" formed by the Union Army was a half-mile gap that would cause serious problems for the Yankees. The fighting between Fuller's and Sweeny's units of Dodge's Sixteenth Corps and Bate's and Mercer's divisions of Hardee's Corps was among the few engagements late in the Civil War in which the opposing forces met in the open field, with no earthen works to protect either side. The Federal infantry, supported with artillery fire, beat back the Confederates, but a Rebel column maneuvered into the half-mile gap in the Yankee's line and made threatening progress against Morrill's right flank. Georgia and South Carolina infantry, under the command of Brigadier General States Rights Gist of Mercer's division, caught Morrill's right exposed and opened intense fire. At this critical moment in the battle, Fuller realigned Morrill's brigade, which formed a line on either side of its division commander and charged eastward toward Gist's Brigade. Fuller's action is depicted by in a post-war illustration by James E. Taylor that shows the brigadier general planting the national colors and marking the new battle line for his brigade. Gist attempted to rally his troops, but they were driven back and forced to withdraw. Gist was injured and four months later was one of six Confederate generals killed at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. He is remembered for his battlefield bravery and his unusual first and middle names, inspired by the clash between South Carolina and the Federal government known as the Nullification Crisis of 1828 to 1833. The successful Federal counterattack against Gist's Brigade, spearheaded by Fuller, brought to an end the first phase of the Battle of Atlanta. The Federal Sixteenth Corps had been well positioned to ward off the threat posed by Hardee's Corps to the rear of the Union Army. By repulsing Hardee's two right divisions, the Federal Sixteenth Corps took the sting out of the Confederates' surprise attack. The subsequent assault by Hardee's two left divisions, under Cleburne and Maney, would be a charge against the entrenched Federal flank, far from the Union rear. Still, the initial Confederate exploitation of a gap in the Yankee line, presaged greater gains, albeit temporary, from the ensuing attacks against the Federal Seventeenth and Fifteenth Corps. Death of General McPherson A Confederate infantryman killed Major General James B. McPherson, when the commander of the Federal Army of the Tennessee inadvertently rode behind enemy lines early in the Battle of Atlanta. Federal Major General James B. McPherson, in command of the Army of the Tennessee, feared an impending attack by the Confederate Army of Tennessee on the morning of July 22, 1864. He met briefly with General William T. Sherman, overall commander of the Union armies advancing on Atlanta, at the Augustus Hurt House, Sherman's temporary headquarters. McPherson quickly convinced Sherman to reinforce the Federal left wing rather than send troops to the rear to tear up railroad tracks. When the conversation concluded, McPherson and his staff left on horseback to inspect the line of the Army of the Tennessee. Years later, Sherman recalled this final meeting "McPherson was then in his prime about thirty-four years old, over six feet high, and a very handsome man in every way, was universally liked, and had many noble qualities. He had on his boots outside his pantaloons, gauntlets on his hands, had on his major-general's uniform, and wore a sword belt, but no sword."35Sherman, 550. After completing his inspection, McPherson stopped to confer with two of his corps commanders, Major General John A. Logan and Major General Frank P. Blair, near the Georgia Railroad now the MARTA commuter line and CSX railroad tracks, at the present-day intersection of Dekalb and Whitefoord Avenues. A historic marker at that location, titled "Noon Under the Trees," describes the lunchtime meeting and its sudden conclusion "This pleasant respite of discussion & cigars was broken by volley firing to the The Battle of Atlanta had begun." McPherson quickly mounted his horse and galloped south to the sound of the mounting gunfire, Within minutes he arrived at a hill near the intersection of present-day Memorial Drive and East Side Avenue, where he watched infantry and artillery units of Dodge's Sixteenth Corps fend off the initial Confederate assaults on their positions. The knoll from which McPherson viewed the opening phase of the battle remains visible as high ground on Memorial Drive, where a Georgia Historical Marker near East Side Avenue describes "McPherson's Last Ride." When he was satisfied that Dodge's troops were holding their ground, McPherson turned his attention to the one-half mile gap in the Federal line that separated the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps. By now, the two Confederate divisions on Hardee's left, commanded by Major General Patrick R. Cleburne and Brigadier General George Maney, were poised for attack. Cleburne's division struck first, hitting the seam between the two Union corps, and was later joined by Maney's division, to Cleburne's left, which began applying pressure to front of the Seventeenth Corps. McPherson rode toward this engagement, across the gap in the Federal line, and along a narrow forest road that ran in an east–west direction parallel to present-day McPherson Avenue. The road had been overtaken by Cleburne's advancing infantry, a contingent of which encountered McPherson on horseback, accompanied by a lone aide. Confederate skirmishers called upon McPherson to surrender, but his only response was to tip his hat, turn his horse, and try to escape. He was shot from his saddle by a single bullet and soon died where he had fallen to the ground. When Federal troops temporarily reoccupied the wooded area where McPherson had been killed, they retrieved his body, which was then transported by wagon to Sherman's temporary headquarters at the Augustus Hurt House. An upright cannon monument, erected in 1877 and located at the intersection of Monument and McPherson Avenues in East Atlanta, marks the spot where McPherson was killed. McPherson was the highest ranking Union general killed in combat during the Civil War. His death, at age thirty-five, was deeply mourned by Sherman and Grant, both of whom considered McPherson to be a protégé whose accomplishments would surpass their own. The day after the Battle of Atlanta, Sherman wrote in a letter to the adjutant general of the US Army that "we have lost not only an able military Leader, but a man who had he survived was qualified to heal the National Strife."36Brooks D. Simpson and Jean W. Berlin, eds., Sherman's Civil War Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865 Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1999, 671. McPherson graduated first in his West Point class of 1853, obtained his top choice of post-graduate duty in the Corps of Engineers, and was assigned during the pre-war years to projects in the New York and San Francisco harbors. In San Francisco, he met and became engaged to Emily Hoffman, a member of a socially prominent and staunchly pro-Confederate Baltimore family. The start of the war sealed the Hoffman family's opposition to her engagement, but she and McPherson remained committed to their marriage plans. Once the war began, those plans were put on hold, and McPherson was assigned to service under Grant. McPherson's battlefield achievements in Tennessee in 1862 and at Vicksburg, Mississippi, the following year, coupled with Grant's complete confidence in him, account for his meteoric rise through the ranks. At Grant's behest, McPherson was promoted to brigadier general and then major general. In March 1864, when Grant was promoted to general-in-chief of the Union armies, Sherman took Grant's place as overall commander in the Western theater, and McPherson assumed command of Sherman's old Army of the Tennessee. Before learning of his new role, McPherson planned a twenty-day furlough and embarked on a trip to Baltimore to marry Emily Hoffman. En route, he learned of his promotion and was ordered to travel immediately to Huntsville, Alabama, to help plan the Atlanta campaign. He reluctantly abided by his orders and returned from his furlough. He and Emily Hoffman never saw each other again. McPherson led the Army of the Tennessee throughout the Atlanta campaign, until he was killed on July 22, 1864. On August 5, General Sherman wrote to Emily Hoffman "Why should deaths darts reach the young and brilliant instead of older men who could better have been spared. Nothing that I could record will Elevate him more in your minds Memory, but I could tell you many things that would form a bright halo about his image."37Ibid., 682. In 1877, a group of US Army officers stationed in Atlanta at the tail-end of the military occupation of the South committed themselves to erecting a monument to memorialize McPherson at the exact location in East Atlanta where he had been fatally shot. The officers used their personal funds to purchase the land where the monument still stands. The US War Department provided a large iron cannon, which was mounted in an upright position on a block of Stone Mountain granite bearing the simple inscription "McPherson." Custody of the monument, once erected, was transferred to the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, one of many veterans' groups, North and South, which sought to uphold the memory, reputation, and accomplishments of their specific groups in the post-war years. The Society of the Army of the Tennessee already had honored McPherson with a much grander monument in Washington, DC, an equestrian statue of their former commander, located less than three blocks from the White House in what is now known as McPherson Square. President Grant, members of his cabinet, and General Sherman, who had been promoted to general-in-chief of the US Army, attended the dedication ceremonies on October 19, 1876. The main speaker was John A. Logan, who succeeded McPherson as Commander of the Army of the Tennessee in the Battle of Atlanta and, after the war, served as a national leader of the Grand Army of the Republic GAR, the largest of all the Union veterans groups. Logan delivered a two-hour oration in which he traced McPherson's life and hailed him as a martyr and irreplaceable comrade. The McPherson monument in East Atlanta, the nearby Walker monument, and thousands of other outdoor memorials erected throughout the North and South in the postwar era served as focal points for public remembrance of particular heroes and events. Monuments figured prominently in rituals of remembrance, such as dedication ceremonies, Memorial Day celebrations, and veterans' reunions. Speakers at these events often offered testimonials to the valor and virtue of the commemorated individuals, their military units, or even the entire cohort that fought the Civil War. Their remarks typically ignored or glossed over the sectional differences over slavery that plunged the nation into Civil War and instead emphasized post-war reconciliation between the North and South. For example, when Confederate and Union veterans met in Atlanta for a national Blue-Gray reunion in July 1900, a highlight of the three-day event was a well-orchestrated gathering of veterans at the McPherson monument that included former generals and other high ranking officers from both sides. The Atlanta Constitution, paraphrasing the remarks of Albert Shaw, commander-in-chief of the largest Union veterans' group, the Grand Army of the Republic, editorialized that "there were neither rebels nor traitors in a cause where all answered the call of constituted authority." The Constitution encouraged its readers to leave the "argument as to causes to the historians" and added that "Atlanta, wrecked and burned by war, has arisen as an evangel of reconciliation, equal to the present and the future without surrendering a single iota of the past."38Anonymous, "Blue and Gray Beautifully Intertwined," Atlanta Constitution, July 20, 1900, 6. Leggett's Hill Entrenched Union infantry on Leggett's Hill held off intense attacks by Confederate troops, that attempted to capture the high ground at this location, the most important strategic position in the Battle of Atlanta. Bald Hill—named Leggett's Hill by the Yankees after the struggle for its control on July 22, 1864—was the scene of ferocious fighting in the Battle of Atlanta. Opposing troops fired on each other at murderously close range and at times engaged in hand-to-hand combat, aided by bayonets and clubbed rifles. Some Federal units entrenched on the hill fended off Confederate attacks from the flank, rear, and front, jumping from one side of their earthworks to the other to repel charges from different directions. The southerners suffered severe casualties in their nearly continuous wave of attacks on July 22, but they came close to dislodging the Yankees from the strategic high ground before being checked. Brigadier General Mortimer D. Leggett, whose division of the Union's Seventeenth Corps captured the round-topped eminence on July 21 and successfully defended it the next day, praised the performance of Brigadier General Manning F. Force and his brigade. Leggett noted in a speech to a veteran's group after the war that the hill ought to have been named "Force's Hill," to fairly credit the Federal officer and his troops for their unsurpassed steadiness and gallantry in combat. Wounded in the face during the fighting for the hill on July 22, Force was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor on March 31, 1892. The Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama shows Force in a horse-drawn ambulance being carried to Sherman's temporary headquarters at the Augustus Hurt House. Leggett's Hill was the highest elevation on the north–south ridge line along which present-day Moreland Avenue is located and also the high point between Atlanta and Decatur. As depicted in the cyclorama and described by Wilbur Kurtz, the hill's crest was an open field that stretched from north to south for over a quarter of a mile. The hill's north, south, and east sides rose gently and were largely cleared; the western face was relatively steep and wooded. By securing the summit on July 21, the northerners won a commanding view of the entire battlefield and were in position to train cannon fire on Confederate troops when they mounted counterattacks the next day. The hill also was in artillery range of Atlanta, approximately two miles away, and the Yankees fired cannon shot into the city shortly after seizing the high ground on July 21. When the Confederates' counterattacks failed on July 22, they ceded control of the single most important strategic position east of the city. Leggett's Hill remained a battlefield landmark until the early 1960s, when it was leveled during construction of I-20. A Georgia Historical Commission marker is located at the former hill site, on the west side of Moreland Avenue as it passes over the interstate highway. Leggett's Hill, high ground east of Atlanta where Confederate infantry repeatedly attacked entrenched Federal troops, Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, Atlanta, Georgia, 1886. Painting by the American Panorama Company. Major General Patrick R. Cleburne's division of Hardee's Corps took advantage of a gap in the Federal line and launched the fierce Confederate struggle to retake Leggett's Hill on July 22. At the conclusion of Hardee's fifteen-mile night march, the two divisions on the left of Hardee's Corps, commanded by Cleburne and Brigadier General George Maney, had arrived just south of the hill shortly before noon. Cleburne's division was deployed on and east of Old Flat Shoals Road now known as Flat Shoals Avenue and Maney's division was positioned to Cleburne's left, west of the road. Cleburne and Maney's divisions faced the section of the entrenched Federal line held by Brigadier General Giles A. Smith's division that bent southeastward from Leggett's Hill along Old Flat Shoals Road, ending at present-day Glenwood Avenue. This section comprised the right angle in the "L" shaped Federal line that extended north along present-day Moreland Avenue the vertical segment of the "L" and east along present-day Glenwood Avenue and Memorial Drive the horizontal segment of the "L". A half-mile gap between Smith's division of the Federal Seventeenth Corps and the Sixteenth Corps in Sugar Creek Valley to the east—a break in the line between the right angle and the horizontal part of the "L"—provided an opening that Cleburne's division could exploit. Cleburne's troops poured through the gap beginning about one in the afternoon, and, in the process, his skirmishers encountered and killed Federal Major General James B. McPherson. Cleburne's division, later joined by Maney's, pressed forward in a series of costly, brigade-level attacks on entrenched northern positions. During two hours of intense fighting, the southerners captured a short portion of the Union line and established themselves in the gap between the Federal Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps. However, the Confederates failed to dislodge the vulnerable portion of the Seventeenth Corps line defending Leggett's Hill. Only late in the afternoon when the southerners launched a more coordinated attack from multiple directions did they drive Giles A. Smith's division from its entrenchments along Flat Shoals Road to a new position that compressed the Federal forces on Leggett's Hill and threatened a more serious rupture in the Union line. From his observation post near Oakland Cemetery, sometime between 3 and 4 Confederate Army commander General John B. Hood committed Major General Benjamin Franklin Cheatham's Corps to the offensive, sending Cheatham's three divisions from behind Atlanta's fortifications to the battlefield east of the city. These attacks took aim at the long north–south section line of the Federal Army of the Tennessee, along present-day Moreland Avenue. Major General Carter L. Stevenson's Confederate division, on Cheatham's far right, advanced against Leggett's Federal division defending the hill. Stevenson's troops are depicted in the cyclorama charging eastward across the barren hill top toward Leggett's troops entrenched at the edge of woods on the hill's western slope. Shortly after 6 the Rebel assaults came together in a simultaneous attack in which Cleburne and Stevenson's division forced all of Smith's division and part of Leggett's to fall back until the two units were completely intermingled. Despite the confusion, the veteran US troops rallied and, aided by artillery, they repelled the southerners, forcing their final retreat from Leggett's Hill. In a post-war speech to a veteran's group, Leggett summed this up phase of the Battle "The struggle to recover the hill from us was fierce and desperate beyond description. The carnage at this point was terrible and sickening. The ground from close to our works to one hundred yards or more away was literally covered with dead."39Mortimer D. Leggett, The Battle of Atlanta A Paper Read by General M. D. Leggett Before the Society of Army of the Tennessee, October 18th, 1883 at Cleveland Cleveland, OH J. A. Davies Printer, 1883, 22. Confederate Line Two Confederate divisions moved eastward through this sector and aligned themselves for a frontal assault against nearby Federal infantry, an attack that opened the climactic phase of the Battle of Atlanta. The Confederate effort to repel the advancing Federal Army of the Tennessee became a two-pronged attack during the afternoon of July 22, 1864, when the army commander General John Bell Hood ordered Major General Benjamin Franklin Cheatham's Corps forward into battle, joining Major General William J. Hardee's Corps, which had been engaged since shortly after noon. For the first three hours of the Battle of Atlanta, the Confederates mounted attacks against the far left of the Union line, which was positioned south of the Georgia Railroad, in the vicinity of Leggett's Hill and entrenched along its crest. For some of that time, Hood was in position near Oakland Cemetery, looking and listening for signs that Hardee's Corps was making progress against the Federals. Hoping to help Hardee's troops take Leggett's Hill, Hood—between 3 and 4 Cheatham's Corps to attack the Federal Seventeenth Corps, which remained in control of the treeless high ground, and move simultaneously against the Federal Fifteenth Corps, which straddled the Georgia Railroad in an extended, north–south line near present-day Moreland Avenue. Prior to attack, Cheatham's Corps occupied the eastern section of Atlanta's inner fortifications, which was located in the vicinity of present-day Boulevard, between Grant Park and Ponce de Leon Avenue. Cheatham mobilized his three divisions from behind the fortifications, deploying his troops in a battle line that extended for more than a mile. The division on Cheatham's right, commanded by Major General Carter L. Stevenson, attacked first, moving from behind the fortifications located between present-day Grant Park and Oakland Cemetery and charging eastward against the Federal Seventeenth Corps defending Leggett's Hill. Cheatham's other two divisions, led by Brigadier General John C. Brown's in the middle and Major General Henry D. Clayton's on the left, followed Stevenson's division into combat. Brown's and Clayton's troops marched eastward, aligned themselves in battle formation in present-day Inman Park, and from there attacked Union forces entrenched on either side of the Georgia Railroad. A historical marker placed in a small triangular park at Delta Place and Edgewood Avenue describes the frontal assault that Brown and Clayton's divisions launched against the Federal Fifteenth Corps, which was commanded by Brigadier General Morgan L. Smith. This division had been led by Major General John A. Logan until early in the afternoon of July 22, when Logan replaced McPherson as commander of the Federal Army of the Tennessee. Cover page, William Hardee's infantry tactics textbook, 1861. Confederate Imprints, 1861–1865, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. The tactic of attacking or defending in long lines of battle was inherited by Civil War field commanders on both sides from the Napoleonic era, reinforced by US army officer training in the same military schools and further instilled by shared combat successes with traditional linear formations in the Mexican War. When the Civil War began, the standard tactical manual used by the North and South was Hardee's Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics, written by former US Army officer and then Confederate corps commander William J. Hardee. Hardee emphasized the importance of placing the majority of combat forces in closely packed lines. The typical battle line for offensive and defensive purposes aligned troops shoulder to shoulder two or three ranks deep. These formations were difficult to maneuver in the field, and their effectiveness depended on prior drilling and battlefield discipline. However, once deployed, linear formations offered the advantage of a high density of firepower delivered with successive volleys as each rank of infantry alternately fired and reloaded or as one rank relieved another if necessary. In a classic frontal attack, wave after wave of infantry would strike against a short sector of the enemy's line. A succession of attacks was intended to weaken and eventually break the opposition's line at a vulnerable spot, which immediately endangered the remaining segments. On defense, the battle line enabled concentrated volleys of fire against attackers, and, by 1864, both Union and Confederate infantry learned to strengthen their lines of defense with extensive use of protective earthworks. Even if attackers got inside an enemy's position, exploiting that advantage was difficult because of heavy losses during the attack, lack of reinforcements, or a counterattack by the defenders. The result was frequent failure of frontal assaults, particularly in the latter stages of the Civil War. Among these failures were the unsuccessful attacks launched by Cheatham's Corps against the Federal Army of the Tennessee in the climactic phase of the Battle of Atlanta. Still, the Confederate divisions led by Brown and Clayton achieved a notable breakthrough in the Union line before a ferocious counterattack led Major General John A. Logan turned them back. Battlefield Terrain Rolling terrain in present-day Springvale Park is a remnant of the Civil War-era countryside outside Atlanta and the spot from which Confederate troops launched an attack against the nearby, entrenched Federal line on July 22, 1864. A cut in the Georgia Railroad, where Arthur Manigault's brigade spearheaded the Confederate's attack against an entrenched Union line, Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, 1886. Painting by the American Panorama Company. As the fighting for Leggett's Hill grew fiercer during the afternoon of July 22, 1864, the left of Confederate Corps Commander Benjamin Franklin Cheatham's line—Brown and Clayton's divisions—advanced eastward from behind the city's inner fortifications and moved into position for an assault against the Federal Fifteenth Corps, which was astride the Georgia Railroad in an entrenched north–south line west of present-day Moreland Avenue. The movement of a second corps onto the battlefield was part of Confederate Army Commander John Bell Hood's original plan of attack. However, that plan began to fail when Hardee's Corps arrived on the battlefield hours behind schedule and encountered an unexpectedly well defended Federal left flank. Further, when Hardee's Corps was intensely engaged with the Federal left wing during the first three hours of battle, Hood kept Cheatham's Corps out of action instead of supporting Hardee's attack. Still, even though the second prong of the Confederate attack was delayed, it achieved partial success when Brown's division found a weak spot in the Union line, broke through, and threatened to overwhelm the Federal Fifteenth Corps. Brigadier General Arthur M. Manigault's Brigade of Brown's division spearheaded this Confederate attack. They poured through the railroad cut located in the vicinity of the Inman Park MARTA Station, then broke the Union line at the Troup Hurt House and seized the four guns of Captain Francis De Gress's Battery H of the First Illinois Light Artillery. More Confederate units followed Manigault's Brigade in an attack that dislodged the center of the Yankee Fifteenth Corps across a half-mile front on either side of the Georgia Railroad. A Georgia Historical Commission marker and a commemorative monument erected by the Sons of Confederate Veterans are located at the site where Manigault's attack advanced, a ravine in what is now Atlanta's Springvale Park, approximately four hundred yards from the Federal line, which was positioned along present-day Degress Avenue. A remnant of the ravine is still visible and provides a rare, surviving indication of what the battlefield terrain was like a rolling, thickly wooded countryside riven with deep hollows, barren knolls, and widely separated tracts of cleared land on which were built houses, farms, mills, roads, and the single-track Georgia Railroad. Springvale Park historic markers and surrounding park, Southern Confederate Veterans Monument and Georgia Historical Commission marker describing Manigault's brigade and its role in the Battle of Atlanta, Springvale Park, Atlanta, Georgia, 2009. Photograph by Matt Miller. A narrow window of opportunity to preserve more of Atlanta's battlefields was missed when they were omitted from the initial set of national military parks that the US government established in the 1890s Chickamauga-Chattanooga, Antietam, Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. The 1890s were a critical time for preserving Civil War battlefields because many of them remained largely untouched and many veterans with personal knowledge of the battles could recall troop movements, positions, and combat encounters. Further, the post-war reconciliation between white Americans, North and South, was surging, and veterans from both sides joined unified efforts aimed at securing federal support for battlefield preservation. Their yearning to reconnect with the past, memorialize fallen comrades, and leave a tangible legacy of Civil War battles to future generations translated into money to preserve battlefields. However, the veteran generation soon ran into Congressional opposition to further funding for battleground conservation. In 1899, influential veterans and Congressional proponents voiced strong support for adding Atlanta to the list of national military parks, but their campaign fell short. Local journalist Wallace P. Reed bemoaned their failure in his Atlanta Constitution column published in 1900 "We have been criminally careless of our history. For generations to come artists and tourists from every part of the world will come here and they will ask a thousand questions about these famous places. Who will answer them? We have about 125,000 people here and only a few hundred are able now to point out the location of the old battlefields."40Wallace P. Reed, "Our Many Friends; Both Blue and Gray," Atlanta Constitution, July 17, 1900, 6. The next national wave of Civil War battlefield preservation peaked in the 1920s and 1930s, but by then it was too late to properly save Atlanta's battlefields. Atlanta historian and artist Wilbur G. Kurtz noted in 1931 that "Nothing obliterates the aspect of a battlefield so much as the modern steam-shovel and the encroachments of urban building enterprise."41Wilbur G. Kurtz, "Civil War Days in Georgia At the Troup Hurt House A Famous Battlefield Domicile; Its Environs, and Events Associated With It During the Forenoon of July 22, 1864," Atlanta Constitution Sunday Magazine, January 25, 1931, 4. A local campaign in 1937 seeking federal funds to preserve what remained of the city's battlegrounds was unsuccessful, despite renewed enthusiasm for Civil War preservation spurred by the popularity of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. In 1951, the legislature established the Georgia Historical Commission and charged it with preserving, restoring, and marking historic sites. The following year, the commission hired Kurtz to research, write, and place historic markers that pinpoint and explain the notable events of the Atlanta Campaign. Kurtz's historic markers were all erected prior to the Civil War centennial, 1961–1965. The inscriptions he wrote for each plaque continue to serve as the primary roadside guide to Atlanta's battlefields. They provide a means of connecting the historical narrative of the Battle of Atlanta to the ground on which the battle was fought, even though most of the terrain has been irrevocably altered. Troup Hurt House and De Gress Battery The Confederate capture of the Troup Hurt House and the De Gress Battery, followed by a successful Yankee counterattack, were the climactic events in the Battle of Atlanta. The most famous moments in the Battle of Atlanta occurred during a fierce mid-afternoon Confederate assault on the entrenched Federal Fifteenth Corps, followed shortly thereafter by a Union counterattack in the vicinity of the Troup Hurt House, in what is now the city's Inman Park neighborhood. The Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama captures the decisive moment, at approximately 430 when Federal Major General John A. Logan rallied his troops to restore the broken Union line and repel the Confederate infantry of Brigadier General Arthur M. Manigault's brigade of Brown's division, who were firing from behind an improvised barricade of cotton bales in front of the Troup Hurt House. A historical marker on Degress Avenue in Inman Park is located at the site of Troup Hurt's two-story brick home, no longer standing, which was on high ground north of the single track Georgia Railroad now the right of way for the MARTA commuter line and CSX railroad and three-quarters of a mile south of the house of Augustus Hurt, younger brother of Troup Hurt. The Augustus Hurt House served as Federal Major General Willaim T. Sherman's temporary headquarters during the battle. The cyclorama painting depicts Sherman in front of the house, mounted on his horse, surveying the battlefield action. Enlarged detail of the Troup Hurt House and the four-gun De Gress Battery right of the house, which were temporarily captured by Confederate infantry on the afternoon of July 22, 1864, Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, 1886. Painting by the American Panorama Company. Manigault's brigade, advancing eastward, spearheaded the mid-afternoon Confederate assault by penetrating the Federal Fifteenth Corps line at its weakest point, which was a thinly defended railroad cut and a nearby wagon road. Years earlier, when railroad construction engineers laid down track for the Georgia Railroad, they burrowed through a hillside to maintain a shallow gradient in the vicinity of the present-day Inman Park MARTA station. The railroad cut they created is no longer visible, but the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama provides a vivid image of the deep earthen channel, the rolling terrain on either side of it, and Atlanta to the west. On July 22, 1864, Manigault's brigade, after moving from Atlanta's inner fortifications and meeting stiff resistance, broke the Union line near the railroad cut, where the Federal Fifteenth Corps's second division, temporarily commanded by Brigadier General Joseph A. J. Lightburn, was particularly vulnerable to attack. Manigault's South Carolinians and Alabamians, followed by Colonel Jacob H. Sharp's brigade of Brown's Confederate division, poured through the cut and forced the Union defenders to retreat. Manigault's troops fanned out to the north and captured the Troup Hurt House and Captain Francis De Gress's twenty-pound Parrott battery of four guns. A historic marker at the north end of Degress Avenue, before it turns sharply east, indicates the location of the De Gress battery, which the Yankees had placed on high ground facing Atlanta. Sharp's contingent, in close support of Manigault's Brigade, fanned out to the south, striking a Federal brigade positioned just south of the Georgia Railroad. Other elements of Brown's and Clayton's Confederate divisions joined the attack north and south of the railroad. Together, the combined action of these two divisions opened a half-mile gap in the Union line that if further exploited could have turned the tide of the battle against the Federal Army of the Tennessee. However, the Confederate successes were short-lived, and they were soon driven back by a ferocious Yankee counterattack. General Sherman, observing the battlefield action from his position just over one-half mile north of the Troup Hurt House, personally directed cannon fire against the Rebel front and behind it, thwarting further gains and preventing reinforcements. Union Major General John A. Logan, who earlier that afternoon had replaced the fallen Major General James B. McPherson as commander of the Army of the Tennessee, was alerted to the dire threat posed by the breakthrough. Logan gathered reinforcements and galloped on his black stallion Slasher toward the collapsed front of the Federal Fifteenth Army Crops. When Logan arrived on the scene, three Federal division commanders were already preparing a counterattack. "Black Jack" Logan, whose dark complexion and jet-black hair and moustache made him a striking physical presence on the battlefield, was renowned for his combat leadership. He led the advancing Union infantry, supported by artillery fire, in a counterstrike that hurled back the Confederates, recaptured the De Gress Battery, and restored the Fifteenth Corps line across the half-mile front that had been lost less than a half hour earlier. The Federal troops did not pursue their retreating foes, and fighting in the vicinity of the Troup Hurt House came to a close. Combat continued until dark at Leggett's Hill. Logan's combat performance in the Battle of Atlanta added to his reputation, and he emerged from the Civil War a military hero. Historian Albert Castel credits Logan more than any other individual for the Union victory on July 22, 1864, citing "his skillful handling of his troops, his coolness and determination, and above all his inspiring presence."42Albert Castel, "'Black Jack' Logan," Civil War Times Illustrated 15, no. 7 1976, 44. Logan was among the most accomplished of the "political" generals, a group of officers who had pre-war careers that were dominated by political service, had little or no military training or experience prior to appointment to general rank, and typically had limited if any success in combat. Logan was an exception and was praised by Sherman for having "nobly sustained his reputation and that of his veteran army" after succeeding McPherson as commander of the Army of the Tennessee in the Battle of War Department, The War of the Rebellion Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 38, Part I Washington, DC Government Printing Office, 1891, 75. Still, Logan's lack of West Point credentials deterred Sherman from promoting him to permanent command of the Army of the Tennessee, a snub that infuriated Logan. Instead, Sherman appointed West Point graduate Oliver Otis Howard five days after the Battle of Atlanta. Before the war, Logan had served as a highly partisan Democratic member of Congress from southern Illinois, and in 1866 he returned to politics as a Radical Republican, serving either in the House or Senate almost without interruption until his death in 1886. In 1884, he was the unsuccessful nominee for vice president on the Republican ticket headed by James G. Blaine. He also co-founded the largest Union veterans group, the Grand Army of the Republic GAR, and served three times as the GAR's commander-in-chief. On May 5, 1868, shortly after his first term began, Logan issued a general order to all GAR posts that established Decoration Day as the northern counterpart to the previously established Confederate Memorial Days. He designated May 30 for all Union veterans to decorate the graves of comrades "who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion."44George F. Dawson, Life and Services of Gen. John A. Logan as Soldier and Statesman Chicago and New York Belford, Clarke & Company, 1887, 123. On May 30, 1868, commemorative ceremonies were attended by thousands of people in twenty-seven states. During the 1870s, northerners and southerners began to participate together in Memorial Day celebrations, which increasingly served the purpose of sectional reconciliation. The national ritual was known as Decoration Day, and the versions in the South—which were observed on different days in different states—were called Confederate Memorial Day. In the 1880s, the GAR actively campaigned to change the name of Decoration Day to Memorial Day, and gradually every northern state made Memorial Day a public holiday. The Memorial Day service in Chicago on May 30, 1895, was a high point in the national celebrations. On that day, a monument to Confederate dead was dedicated in the city's Oak Woods Cemetery, the burial site of over six thousand Confederate soldiers who had died as prisoners-of-war at nearby Camp Douglas. Some fifty thousand Chicagoans lined the parade route to the cemetery to catch a glimpse of such notables as Confederate general James Longstreet and Union general John Schofield. In the twentieth century, Memorial Day became an occasion to honor all Americans who died in service. In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May. Memorial Day, photomechanical print by Samuel D. Ehrhart. Published by Keppler & Schwarzmann, Puck Building, May 28, 1913. Courtesy of Library of Congress. Popular images produced early in the twentieth century valorized fallen Civil War soldiers who fought on opposing sides and depicted Memorial Day as an occasion for surviving "Blue and Gray" veterans to enjoy leisure time together. Memorial Day observances, along with visits to battlefields, public monuments, and military cemeteries and participation in veterans' reunions, involved millions of Americans in Civil War remembrance. A main event in Memorial Day celebrations throughout the nation was the local parade in which Civil War veterans, some riding in carriages or automobiles and others still spry enough to walk, served as living links to the past. They brought memories of the war to life. However, these historical memories focused mainly on individual service and sacrifice, and they tended to obscure more divisive elements of the Civil War experience, most notably the causes of the nation's deadliest conflict and the war's wrenching aftermath. Historian David Blight writes that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sectional reunion was a victory for a reconciliationist vision of Civil War memory that could not have been achieved without overwhelming a competing emancipationist vision and resubjugating many of the people whom the war had freed from slavery. Blight adds "For Americans broadly, the Civil War has been a defining event upon which we have often imposed unity and continuity; as a culture we have often preferred its music and pathos to its enduring challenges, the theme of reconciled conflict to resurgent, unresolved legacies. The greatest enthusiasts for Civil War history and memory often displace complicated consequences by endlessly focusing on the contest itself."45David Blight, Race and Reunion The Civil War in American Memory Cambridge, MA Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001, 3–4. Grant Park and Cyclorama The Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, an enormous, nineteenth-century panorama painting, depicts combat action and battlefield landmarks in a vivid, true-to-life style. Nineteenth-century cycloramas, enormous circular paintings exhibited in specially designed round or polygonal buildings, achieved great popularity by immersing their audiences in a visual experience designed to make viewers feel transported to another place and time. Like movies and computer-simulated environments later, cycloramas intentionally blurred the lines between image and reality by surrounding the spectators with a sweeping panoramic vista that filled their vision and excluded any sense of their real whereabouts. The panorama itself was painted in a meticulously true-to-life style that captured a spectacular event or scene, such as a famous battlefield incident, stunning natural landscape, or sweeping view of a great city. To heighten the impact of the indoor spectacle and distance visitors from the outside world, the only way to reach the painting was through a dimly lit corridor and up a staircase leading to a centrally located viewing platform. As spectators arrived in the viewing area, they were immediately surrounded by an enormous canvas, typically fifty feet high and four hundred feet in circumference. Viewers' movements were restricted to the elevated viewing platform placed at a distance from the painting. This focused their attention on the pictured story or scene, rather than painterly details, and created the impression that they were surveying a vast spectacle from an aerial vantage point. A canopy concealed the overhead lighting and the upper edge of the canvas, while a railing or three-dimensional landscape in the foreground hid the lower edge of the painting. In the words of panorama historian Bernard Comment, "Everything was arranged so that nothing extraneous could encroach on the display and disturb the spectator's field of vision."46Bernard Current, The Painted Panorama New York Harry Abrams, Inc., 2000, 8. In attempts to heighten the visual experience, cycloramas often added musical accompaniment, sound effects, and authoritative narration to the pictorial spectacle. The Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama in Grant Park enables contemporary audiences to simulate this nineteenth-century viewing experience. As viewers ascend to the central viewing platform they catch their first glimpse of the giant painting, one of two Civil War battle cycloramas still on display in the United States. The other is the Battle of Gettysburg at the Gettysburg National Military Park. After the spectators take their seats at the Atlanta cyclorama, the viewing platform begins a slow, circular rotation in front of the canvas and a recorded narration of the combat action, accompanied by background music, gunshots, and other sound effects, starts to play. In an experience that closely parallels a nineteenth-century visit to the cyclorama displayed or housed in Atlanta since 1892, viewers are suddenly immersed in a climactic battlefield scene. Their vantage point is high above the fighting, as if viewing the action from a platform forty feet off the ground at the present-day intersection of Moreland and Dekalb Avenues. They witness the decisive moment, the Union counterattack led by Major General John A. Logan, launched at approximately 430 on July 22, 1864, and aimed at restoring the Federal line broken by a Confederate assault spearheaded by Brigadier General Arthur M. Manigault's Brigade. The cyclorama presents a panoramic view of the fighting as a complete circle, starting and ending with the intense confrontation at the Troup Hurt House and the nearby De Gress Battery. As segments of the painting are progressively illuminated, the audience sees Federal infantry moving forward to restore their broken line near the Troup Hurt House; Sherman surveying the battlefield from his headquarters at the Augustus Hurt House; Logan galloping to the front to lead the Union counterattack; a distant cloud of gun smoke arising from the fighting in Decatur; Federal infantry moving forward to restore their broken line near the Troup Hurt House; and Confederate Major General Carter L. Stevenson's division charging across the open ground atop Leggett's Hill. The narrator intones dramatically "Only the old muzzle-loading guns, bayonets, and artillery made up the arsenal of weapons during the War Between the States, yet with few such weapons the casualties of these four years was staggering, as they were here at Leggett's Hill, where assault after assault [sic] being repelled and the slopes becoming mounds of the slain." The artists who painted the Atlanta cyclorama in a Milwaukee studio in 1885–1886 were recruited from Germany and Austria by the studio's owner, William Wehner, a German-born, Chicago entrepreneur who sought to capitalize on the American public's renewed interest in the Civil War in the 1880s coupled with the popularity of battlefield panoramas. Several of the artists recruited by Wehner had worked in Munich on a panorama of the Battle of Sedan, a German victory that was decisive in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71. He induced the artists to move to Milwaukee, where, he said, "You German artists will find congenial friends" among the many German-speaking Stover, The Panorama Painters' Days of Glory Milwaukee, WI Milwaukee County Historical Society, 1969, 4. Wehner also recognized that US audiences would insist on historical accuracy in paintings of Civil War battles, and to that end he hired Theodore R. Davis of Asbury Park, New Jersey, as technical advisor to the painters. Davis was on familiar ground in depicting the Battle of Atlanta. As a staff illustrator for Harper's Weekly during the war, Davis created an extensive visual record of combat action, battlefield topography, and local landmarks. Former Union Major General John A. Logan wrote of the artist's wartime experience, "Unquestionably Mr. Davis saw more of the war than any other single person."48Theodore R. Davis, "Grant Under Fire," The Cosmopolitan 14, no. 111 January 1893, 333. Davis accompanied Sherman on the Atlanta Campaign, and he witnessed much of the Battle of Atlanta from Sherman's headquarters at the Augustus Hurt House. In the summer of 1885, Davis and the panorama artists visited Atlanta, where they sketched aerial views of the battlefield terrain from a forty-foot tower that they erected near the present-day intersection of Moreland and Dekalb Avenues. Union and Confederate veterans and local Atlanta residents also provided information about the battle site and events. Wehner reported that "The Federal and Confederate officers who have contributed their aid, embrace nearly every principal commander now living who took part in the scene."49William Wehner, "Battle of Atlanta The Picture and the Painters," in "Atlanta," Battle of July 22, 1864 Detroit, MI Kerby Printing Company, 1887, 2. Wehner's artists returned from their Atlanta site visit to Milwaukee to complete the painting, which was first publicly exhibited in Minneapolis in June 1886, remained on display there until March 1888, and was shown in Indianapolis and Chattanooga before its Atlanta opening in February "The City The Panorama Was Viewed by Select Invited Audience," Minneapolis Tribune, June 29, 1886, 5; Anonymous, "The Battle of Atlanta Is Here," Atlanta Constitution, February 12, 1892, 7. In Atlanta, the painting was displayed in a specially constructed cyclorama rotunda near the city's downtown, on Edgewood Avenue, between Courtland Street and Piedmont Avenue. A second Battle of Atlanta panorama painting, also completed in Wehner's Milwaukee studio, made its debut in Detroit in February "A Great Historical Painting Formal Opening of the Detroit Cyclorama Company's Battle of Atlanta," Detroit Free Press, February 28, 1887, 5. Wehner instructed his corps of painters to produce both battle panoramas at the same time after he recognized that the artists could not all work on the same canvas "A Battle on Canvas," St. Paul Daily Globe, April 15, 1886, 4. What became of the version shown in Detroit and whether it survives are not known. A story persists that the Battle of Atlanta panorama was commissioned by John A. Logan to boost his candidacy for the vice-presidency on the Republican ticket headed by James G. Blaine in 1884. This account seems dubious because work on the painting began in 1885, after the presidential election. A more likely explanation of the painting's origins is that William Wehner sought to profit from the revival of interest in the Civil War during the Gilded Age, which coincided in the United States with a vogue for cyclorama experiences. Cycloramas were produced to earn money, and they were bought and sold frequently as investors sought to cash in. The Battle of Atlanta painting changed ownership several times before George V. Gress, a civic-minded Atlanta merchant, purchased it in 1893. Gress moved the panorama to Grant Park in 1894 and donated it to the city in 1898. Gress already had made a major donation to the city in 1889, when he purchased a menagerie from a bankrupt circus and gave the animals to the city, along with housing and cages, to establish a zoo in Grant Park. After Gress deeded the cyclorama painting to the city, Atlanta's park commissioners committed funds to restore the panorama and repair the circular wooden building in Grant Park where it was exhibited. The refurbished attraction was re-opened just in time for a Confederate reunion in Atlanta on July 22–23, 1898, the thirty-fourth anniversary of the Battle of Atlanta. The cyclorama painting remained on display in the fragile wooden structure, near the Auburn Avenue entrance to Grant Park, until 1921, when the panorama was moved to a new marble building—its present home—close to the center of the park and adjacent to the Atlanta Zoo. The Texas Imperial, the Texas locomotive that overtook the Andrews Raiders in 1862, on display in Grant Park in the early twentieth century. Postcard, ca. 1910. Grant Park is named for Lemuel P. Grant, who oversaw construction of Atlanta's fortifications in 1863–1864 and served the city in many official roles after the war. Grant made a fortune in railroad construction and real estate development, and in 1882 he donated a hundred acres on the southeast edge of the city for the public park that eventually would bear his name. As Grant Park took shape, Civil War attractions were added to park amenities that included shaded walkways, flower gardens, a lake for boat rides, and the city's zoo. In addition to the cyclorama, Grant Park's war-related points of interest were the reconstructed Fort Walker, complete with mounted cannons placed above the remnants of Confederate earthworks; a nearby walkway named in honor of James B. McPherson, the federal general killed in the Battle of Atlanta; and the locomotive Texas, which overtook the train that the Andrews Raiders had commandeered on April 12, 1862, in their failed effort to disrupt the Confederate's railroad supply line between Atlanta and Chattanooga. Grant Park became a common destination for Civil War veterans who gathered there for reunions and civilian visitors who combined trips to the cyclorama with stops at the park's other war-related sites. In 1907, a local hotelier offered a prize for the best description of "How to Spend Four Days Sight-Seeing in Atlanta." The Atlanta Constitution published two essays submitted in the contest, and each one included Grant Park in the recommended itinerary. One essayist elaborated on the park's appeal "A beautiful afternoon may be spent at Grant park, enjoying the wonderful beauties of the place, viewing the cyclorama, where one learns more of battles in ten minutes than in ten months of reading. A walk through the park to Fort Walker will be an inspiration, both for the magnificent view seen from the eminence, and the inspection of the old fortifications that make this a historic spot."53Anonymous, "How to Spend Four Days Sight-Seeing in Atlanta," Atlanta Constitution, February 25, 1907, 3. The Atlanta Constitution did not report whether this contest entry won the $5 prize. Some scholarly critics, writing in recent years, contend that the apparent mastery of battlefield details in late nineteenth-century cycloramas and the mass appeal of the paintings have reinforced a nationalistically inspired view of Civil War history that is entertaining but narrowly Miller, "The Panorama, the Cinema, and the Emergence of the Spectacular," Wide Angle 18, no. 2 April 1996, 56. The panoramas depict fierce and close combat between Confederate and Union troops and convey the extraordinary courage of soldiers on both sides, emphasizing their common valor and sacrifice. However, critics argue, what these dramatic visual narratives largely omit are the deep divisions and bitterness that tore a nation apart and threw it into four years of bloody conflict. "America is defined in populist terms," notes one scholar in her analysis of the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama. "The cultural identity articulated by the painting is that Americans of the North and South are white, male, working class, and united by a rebellious spirit."55Shelly Jarenski, "'Delighted and Instructed' African American Challenges to Panoramic Aesthetics in J. P. Ball, Kara Walker, and Frederick Douglas," American Quarterly 65, no. 1 March 2013, 128. Literally embodying sectional reconciliation among whites is the severely wounded Confederate soldier depicted in the arms of a Federal infantryman, aiding his foe in the heat of battle. They are brothers who enlisted on opposite sides and had not seen each other for three years. Also notable but not easily seen are the single African American and single female figures in the painting. They are included in the whirl of rear-line action, well behind the lines of rifled infantryman, galloping officers, exploding shells, and waving battle flags. Aftermath Losing the Battle of Atlanta was a major blow to the Confederacy. The flank attack attempted by Hardee's Corps and frontal assault launched by Cheatham's Corps amounted to a major opportunity, perhaps the final one, for the Confederate Army of Tennessee to crush at least one of the advancing Federal armies and turn the tide of the Atlanta Campaign. Instead, after eight hours of fighting on July 22, 1864, John Bell Hood's army had lost more than 10 percent of its fighting force to death, injury, or capture, and the carnage on the Atlanta battlefield was shocking to see, even for battle-hardened veterans. A Union surgeon, A. W. Reese, who visited the scene the day after the battle, recalled in vivid clinical detail Immediately in front of our lines the ground was, literally, piled with dead bodies of rebel soldiers—they laid, actually, in win[d]rows and piles. Their bodies were mangled, torn, and battered by balls in every conceivable manner and shape. Many of them were shot through the head and laid in a ghastly puddle of their own brains which had oozed from their shattered W. Reese, Personal Recollections of the Late Civil War in the United States. With Scenes, Incidents, and Memoirs of Earlier Times,1870, 532 Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Columbia, MO. Bombproof shelter, interior of a bombproof garden in Atlanta, Georgia, ca. 1864. Print courtesy of the Atlanta History Center. Although Sherman's armies had inflicted heavy losses, the Confederates defending Atlanta still held a well-fortified city and kept open two vital railroad supply lines that approached from the southwest and south. Four days after the Battle of Atlanta, Sherman turned his attention to severing those railway lifelines. As his artillery bombarded the city, he moved the Army of the Tennessee from its position east of the city to a new position to the west, where it would be in striking distance of the railroads as they entered on the same right-of-way. In Atlanta, Hood watched the Federal movement, and, in an effort to thwart it, he sent four divisions from behind the fortifications to attack the Union troops. The resulting Battle of Ezra Church on July 28, was another stinging defeat for Hood's army, the third loss in eight days. By one estimate, the Army of Tennessee sustained more than twelve thousand casualties in its failed attempts to win a decisive victory against the invading L. Connelly, Autumn of Glory The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865 Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1971, 455. However, the Confederates maintained possession of the two railways and overwhelmed two Union cavalry divisions Sherman had sent on raids south of the city. Aftermath of September 2, 1864, Confederate destruction of ammunition-laden railcars, near present-day Fulton Cotton Mill lofts, Atlanta, Georgia. Gelatin silver print by George Barnard. Courtesy of Library of Congress. Sherman increased the volume and pace of the shelling of Atlanta that his gunners had started on July 20. On August 9, the bombardment intensified to its highest level, and the artillery pounding continued for two weeks as the remaining civilians in the city huddled in "bombproof" shelters. The cannon fire damaged or destroyed numerous buildings and occasionally injured or killed civilians, perhaps causing twenty Davis, "How Many Civilians Died in Sherman's Bombardment of Atlanta?" Atlanta History 45, no. 4 2003, 19. Incessant shelling did not force Hood's army to evacuate, and it continued to receive supplies. Sherman called an abrupt halt to the bombardment on August 25, and the following night he moved the bulk of his three armies from their trenches north and west of Atlanta on a sweeping march to the south and then east. On August 28, the Federal infantry reached the Atlanta & West Point Railroad, the western-most of the two open rail lines, and they destroyed miles of track. Union troops continued eastward toward their main objective, the Macon and Western Railroad, the more important of the two Confederate supply lines. "Old Tecumseh," Union Major General William T. Sherman at Confederate Fort, Atlanta, Georgia, October 1864. Stereograph by George Barnard. Courtesy of Library of Congress. As the Federals approached the last open rail line at Jonesboro, a railroad town eighteen miles south of Atlanta, Hood sent two of his army corps to meet them. In an effort to counter the Union threat, Hood's troops launched a poorly executed assault on August 31. At approximately the same time that the Confederates first attacked the Yankee infantry outside Jonesoboro, other Union forces reached the railway north of the town and severed it. The next day, September 1, the Yankees attacked and broke the Confederate line at Jonesboro, forcing the Rebels to retreat southward toward Lovejoy's Station. When a courier brought Hood news that Jonesboro had fallen and the railroad was cut, he issued orders for the evacuation of Atlanta. Beginning late in the afternoon of September 1, Hood and the remainder of his army still in the city began marching out, southeastward along McDonough Road. In the early hours of September 2, a rear guard of Confederate cavalry set fire to five locomotives and eighty-one boxcars twenty-eight of which were filled with ammunition, that lay idle along the Georgia Railroad tracks in an evacuated area near Oakland Cemetery and the Atlanta Rolling Mill present-day Fulton Cotton Mill lofts on Boulevard. The exploding boxcars left a path of devastation a half-mile wide, leveled the Rolling Mill, and ignited a blaze that burned until dawn. Early on September 2, shortly after the last Confederate cavalry unit vacated Atlanta, a civilian contingent led by Mayor James M. Calhoun surrendered the city to an advance party of Sherman's army. By noon, Union soldiers were marching into Atlanta, and the two-and-a-half month Federal occupation of the city began. Sherman, who was near Lovejoy's Station when Atlanta was captured, received dispatches on the morning of September 3 notifying him of Hood's evacuation and the city's surrender. Later that day Sherman telegraphed US Army Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck "So Atlanta is ours and fairly won."59Simpson and Berlin, eds., 696. Four days later, on September 7, Sherman rode into the city. The Atlanta Campaign was over, and Sherman soon would make plans for a fall push, his March to the Sea. To secure Atlanta as a base of Union military operations, Sherman decided that Atlanta's remaining residents would have to leave. He issued an expulsion order in the first week of September, which was met with popular outcry and vehement protests from Confederate General John Bell Hood. Atlantans had endured the battles around the city, the bombardment of their homes and businesses, and now faced forced evacuation. Sherman justified the expulsion order on military and public safety grounds. In early October, Hood led his army northward in an effort to cut Sherman's supply line, the railroad from Chattanooga, and force the Federals out of Atlanta. Sherman chased after Hood, and the opposing armies engaged in sporadic and inconclusive fighting for a month. Hood's elusive army eventually moved to northern Alabama, at which time Sherman gave up his pursuit and returned to Atlanta. Sherman made plans and secured approval from his superiors Grant and Halleck for a sweeping march across the central Georgia countryside in the direction of Savannah on the Atlantic coast. Sherman then ordered the destruction of all remaining structures in Atlanta's business and industrial areas that had military value. The wrecking of Atlanta began on November 11 and continued for four days and nights. Union engineers were instructed to preferentially knock down structures rather than burn them, but Yankee soldiers who were not part of the demolition squads began to set fire to private buildings, especially homes. On the final night of the Union occupation, November 15–16, troops set much of the downtown ablaze. When Sherman and his rear guard moved eastward the following morning, the last fires were smoldering and much of the city was in ruins. Pausing on the outskirts, Sherman later recalled "We stood upon the very ground whereon was fought the bloody battle of July 22, and could see the copse of wood where McPherson fell."60Sherman, 655. Union photographer George N. Barnard photographed Atlanta before, during, and after the damage wrought by Sherman's armies. Arriving in mid-September, Barnard produced well-known views of Atlanta's battlefields, fortifications, and businesses. One of the first scenes he photographed was the site of McPherson's death, a spot marked by an inscribed wooden placard nailed to a thin tree. Barnard revisited the site in November 1864 or May 1865, when he took a second set of photographs. In late September 1864, Barnard also devoted attention to General Sherman, who posed for portraits with his staff at a former Confederate fort west of the city. Barnard was particularly busy in October and early November 1864 when he created many of his best known images of the Atlanta and the fortifications surrounding it. He photographed homes that served as headquarters for Union officers, storefront businesses including a slave market on Whitehall Street now Peachtree Street,61Michael Rose, Remembering Atlanta Nashville Turner Publishing Company, 2010, 17. the centrally located rail car shed, both before and after it was demolished, and teams of Yankee soldiers tearing up and twisting railroad track. Barnard's images provide an enduring impression of Civil War Atlanta and a stark record of the wreckage. About the Author Daniel A. Pollock, MD, is a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC in Atlanta, Georgia, where he leads a unit responsible for national surveillance of healthcare-associated infections. Since arriving in Atlanta in 1984, he has pursued an independent scholarly interest in the city's Civil War history, and he has conducted over 150 tours of Battle of Atlanta sites. Acknowledgements "The Battle of Atlanta History and Remembrance" is a collaborative project of the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship ECDS and Robert W. Woodruff Library. Project co-directors Daniel A. Pollock and Allen Tullos Principal researcher and author Daniel A. Pollock Project coordinator and digital strategist Brian Croxall Principal web app software developer Jay Varner Photograph and historical collections researcher Christopher Sawula Project librarian Erica Bruchko Cartographer Michael C. Page Web app interface designer Kevin Glover Principal videographer and video editor Steve Bransford Assistant videographer and video editor Dina Warnock Assistant videographer Raymond McCrea Jones Southern Spaces managing editor Jesse P. Karlsberg Southern Spaces assistant managing editor Sarah V. Melton Southern Spaces staff Meredith Doster layout, Alan Pike videography and development, Clinton Fluker images, Emma Lirette text linking, Katie Rawson early development, and Eric Solomon text linking Copyediting and proofreading Marlo Starr Production assistance Franky Abbott, Matt Miller Initial software developer Kyle W. Bock ECDS co-director Wayne Morse Emory Library and Information Technology Services LITS Software Engineering Team Software team manager Mike Mitchell Project manager Tonia Edwards LITS Library Tech Services Jonathan Bodnar, Bethany Nash LITS Scholarly Communications Lisa Macklin, Melanie Kowalski Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum Monica Prothro, Yakingma Robinson Content review Steve Davis, Charlie Crawford, and Dave Buckhout Thanks to Carol Anderson, Julie Braun, Holly Crenshaw, Ginger Cain, Kathryn Dixson, and John Klingler Proposal consultant Deb Watts The responsibility for the final essay text ultimately resides with the author. Recommended Resources Text Anonymous. Atlanta in 1890 "The Gate City." Macon, GA Mercer University Press, 1986. Anonymous. "The Meaning of Memorial Day." Saturday Evening Post, June 2, 1962. Anonymous. "Monument to General Walker Is Unveiled Before Thousands." Atlanta Constitution, July 23, 1902. Barnard, George N. Photographic Views of Sherman's Campaign. New York Dover Publications, 1977. Bishir, Catherine W. "Landmarks of Power Building a Southern Past, 1885–1915." In Where These Memories Grow History, Memory, and Southern Identity, edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage. Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Bohannon, Keith S. "'A Bold Fighter' Promoted beyond His Abilities General John Bell Hood." In Leaders of the Lost Cause New Perspectives on the Confederate High Command, edited by Gary W. Gallagher and Joseph T. Glatthaar. Mechanicsburg, PA Stackpole Books, 2004. Bonds, Russell S. War Like a Thunderbolt The Battle and Burning of Atlanta. Yardley, PA Westholme Publishing, 2009. Brown, Barry L., and Elwell, Gordon R. Crossroads of Conflict A Guide to Civil War Sites in Georgia. Athens University of Georgia Press, 2010. Brown, Russell K. To the Manner Born The Life of General William H. T. Walker. Athens University of Georgia Press, 1994. Brown, Thomas J. The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration A Brief History with Documents. Boston Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. Castel, Albert. Decision in the West The Atlanta Campaign of 1864. Lawrence University of Kansas Press, 1992. Cecchini, Bridget T. "The Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama 1885-1886 as Narrative Indicator of a National Perspective on the Civil War." Master's thesis, Rice University, 1998. Clauss, Errol M. "The Atlanta Campaign 18 July–2 September 1864." PhD diss., Emory University, 1965. Connelly, Thomas L. Autumn of Glory The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1971. Davis, Keith F. George N. Barnard Photographer of Sherman's Campaign. Kansas City, MO Hallmark Cards, Inc., 1990. Davis, Ren, and Davis, Helen. Atlanta's Oakland Cemetery An Illustrated History and Guide. Athens University of Georgia Press, 2012. Davis, Stephen. Atlanta Will Fall Sherman, Joe Johnston, and the Yankee Heavy Battalions. Wilmington, DE SR Books, 2001. Davis, Stephen. "Confederate Memorial Day in Atlanta Old times here are nearly forgotten." Atlanta Historical Journal, 27, no. 1 1983 71–86. Davis, Stephen. What the Yankees Did to Us Sherman's Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta. Macon, GA Mercer University Press, 2012. Ecelbarger, Gary. The Day Dixie Died The Battle of Atlanta. New York Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2010. Faust, Drew Gilpin. The Creation of Confederate Nationalism Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South. Baton Rouge Louisiana University Press, 1988. Garrett, Franklin M. Atlanta and Environs A Chronicle of Its People and Events. Vol. 1. Athens University of Georgia Press, 1954. Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1985. Glatthaar, Joseph T. Partners in Command The Relationship Between Leaders in the Civil War. New York Free Press, 1994. Griffith, Paddy. Battle Tactics of the Civil War. New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 1989. Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1995. Harwell, Richard B. "Our Confederate Dead." Atlanta Historical Bulletin, 20, no. 2 1976 97–109. Hassler, William W. "James Birdseye McPherson—A Profile." Civil War Times Illustrated, 6, no. 7 1967 36–44. Hattaway, Herman. Reflections of a Civil War Historian Essays on Leadership, Society, and the Art of War. Columbia University of Missouri Press, 2004. Haughton, Andrew. Training, Tactics, and Leadership in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. London and New York Routledge, 2000. Herbert, Sidney. "The Monument to McPherson." Army and Navy Journal, 15, no. 6 1877 139. Hess, Earl J. "Tactics, Trenches, and Men in the Civil War." In On the Road to Total War The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871, edited by Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1997. Hinde, Paul. "The Great Night March of Hardee's Corps." Inn Dixie May 1937 5, 6, 17, 19, 20. Hughes, Nathaniel C. General William J. Hardee Old Reliable. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1965. Inscoe, John C., ed. The Civil War in Georgia. Athens University of Georgia Press, 2011. Jacob, Kathryn A. Testament to Union Civil War Monuments in Washington, Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Janney, Caroline E. Remembering the Civil War Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation. Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Jones, James P. John A. Logan and Southern Illinois in the Civil War Era. Carbondale Southern Illinois University Press, 1995. Julien, Allen P. "Atlanta's Defenses." Civil War Times Illustrated, 2 1964 23–24. Kaemmerlen, Cathy J. The Historic Oakland Cemetery of Atlanta Speaking Stones. Charleston, SC History Press, 2007. Kennett, Lee. Marching through Georgia The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman's Campaign. New York HarperCollins, 1995. Kennett, Lee B. Sherman A Soldier's Life. New York HarperCollins, 2001. Kurtz, Wilbur G. The Atlanta Cyclorama The Story of the Famed Battle of Atlanta. Atlanta The City of Atlanta, 1954. Kurtz, Wilbur G. "Atlanta in the Summer of 1864." Inn Dixie January 1936 5, 6, 10,12, 17–21. Kurtz, Wilbur G. "The Battles around Atlanta—Hood vs. Sherman." Civil War Times Illustrated, 2 1964 8–17. Kurtz, Wilbur G. "Civil War Days in Georgia At the Troup Hurt House A Famous Battlefield Domicile; Its Environs, and Events Associated with It During the Forenoon of July 22, 1864." Atlanta Constitution Sunday Magazine, January 25, 1931. Kurtz, Wilbur G. "Civil War Days in Georgia The Broken Line and the De Gress Battery." Atlanta Constitution Sunday Magazine, February 8, 1931. Kurtz, Wilbur G. "Civil War Days in Georgia No. 7—McPherson's Last Ride The Route Taken by the Commander of the Army of the Tennessee, When He Kept His Rendezvous with Death; July 22, 1864." Atlanta Constitution Sunday Magazine, June 29, 1930. Kurtz, Wilbur G. "The Death of Major General Walker, July 22, 1864." Civil War History, 6, no. 2 1960 174–179. Levine, Bruce. Confederate Emancipation Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the War. New York Oxford University Press, 2006. Litwicki, Ellen M. America's Public Holidays. Washington, DC, and London Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000. Long, David E. The Jewel of Liberty Abraham Lincoln's Re-Election and the End of Slavery. Mechanicsburg, PA Stackpole Books, 1994. Losson, Christopher. Tennessee's Forgotten Warriors Frank Cheatham and His Confederate Division. Knoxville University of Tennessee Press, 1989. Marszalek, John F. Sherman A Soldier's Passion for Order. New York Free Press, 1993. Marszalek, John F. Sherman's March to the Sea. Abilene, TX McWhiney Foundation Press, 2005. McCarley, J. Britt. The Atlanta Campaign A Civil War Driving Tour of Atlanta-Area Battlefields. Marietta, GA Cherokee Publishing, 1984. McConnell, Stuart. Glorious Contentment The Grand Army of the Republic. Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1992. McDonald, Sharon S., and Beckman, W. Robert. "Tactics." In Vol. 4 of Encyclopedia of the American Civil War A Political, Social, and Military History, edited by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler. Santa Barbara, CA ABC-CLIO, 2000. McFeeley, William S. Yankee Stepfather General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen. New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 1968. McMurry, Richard M. Atlanta 1864 Last Chance for the Confederacy. Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 2000. McMurry, Richard M. John Bell Hood and the Southern War for Independence. Lexington University of Kentucky Press, 1982. Merrill, Peter C. "What Happened to the Panorama Painters?" In German Academic Painters in Wisconsin. West Bend, WI West Bend Gallery of Fine Arts, 1989. Miles, Jim. Fields of Glory A History and Tour Guide of the War in the West, the Atlanta Campaign, 1864. Nashville, TN Cumberland House Publishing, 2002. Mohr, Clarence L. "The Atlanta Campaign and the African American Experience in Civil War Georgia." In Inside the Confederate Nation Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas, edited by Lesley J. Gordon and John C. Inscoe. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Nelson, Larry E. Bullets, Ballots, and Rhetoric Confederate Policy for the United States Presidential Contest. Tuscaloosa University of Alabama Press, 1980. Ohl, Joseph. "Strong Support Promised the National Park Bill by Men of the Very Strongest Influence." Atlanta Constitution, December 17, 1899. Reed, Wallace P. "Our Many Friends; Both Blue and Gray." Atlanta Constitution, July 17, 1900. Purdue, Howell, and Elizabeth Purdue. Pat Cleburne Confederate General. Hillsboro, TX Hill Jr. College Press, 1973. Russell, James M. Atlanta 1847–1890 City Building in the Old South and the New. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Scaife, William R. The Campaign for Atlanta. Cartersville, GA Civil War Publications, 1993. Smith, Tamara A. "Grant and James B. McPherson," In Grant's Lieutenants From Cairo to Vicksburg, edited by Steven E. Woodworth. Lawrence University of Kansas Press, 2001. Smith, Timothy B. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America's First Five Military Parks. Knoxville University of Tennessee Press, 2008. Taliaferro, Tevi. Historic Oakland Cemetery. Charleston, SC Arcadia Publishing, 2001. Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy. New York McMillan, 1973. Welcher, Frank A. Organization and Operations, the Western Theater. Vol. 2 of The Union Army 1861–1865. Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1993. Whaley, Elizabeth J. Forgotten Hero General James B. McPherson. New York Exposition Press, 1955. Williams, Gladstone. "3 War Parks Sought for City." Atlanta Constitution, October 29, 1937. Woodworth, Steven E. Nothing but Victory The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865. New York Alfred P. Knopf, 2005. Web "Atlanta." Civil War Trust. 2017. Davis, Stephen. "Atlanta Campaign." New Georgia Encyclopedia. June 10, 2005. "MAPPING THE PAST WITH THE PRESENT." The Atlanta History Center and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Accessed June 12, 2017. Moore, Fletcher. "The MANY BATTLES of ATLANTA." The BITTER SOUTHERNER. 2017. Turner, Kimberly. "Where to Remember the Battle of Atlanta, 150 Years Later." CURBED Atlanta. July 22, 2014. Similar Publications All rights reserved.
InNovember of 1863, Atlanta _____ during Sherman's famous "March to the Sea." 1.completely was burned, 2.completely burned it, burned, 4.were completely burned, 5.it was burned completely
The South, like the rest of the country, was forever altered by the dramatic events of the Civil War 1861-65. Few states, however, were more central to the outcome of the conflict than Georgia, which provided an estimated 120,000 soldiers for the Confederacy. In addition, several hundred white and 3,500 Black Georgians enlisted for the Union cause. Battle of ChickamaugaCourtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division Georgia’s agricultural output was critical to the Confederate war effort, and because Georgia was a transportation and industrial center for the Confederacy, both sides struggled for control of the state. Some of the most important battles of the war were fought on Georgia soil, including Chickamauga, Resaca, and Kennesaw Mountain, while the battles of Peachtree Creek, Bald Hill Atlanta, Ezra Church, and Jonesboro were significant turning points during the Atlanta campaign of 1864. Perhaps most important, one can argue that the Civil War’s outcome was decided in Georgia with the Atlanta campaign and president Abraham Lincoln’s subsequent reelection. Georgians’ Road to War When Lincoln’s election to the presidency triggered the secession crisis in the winter of 1860-61, most Georgians initially hoped for yet another sectional compromise. The Georgia legislature, however, following a directive from Governor Joseph E. Brown, appropriated $1 million for military expenses and called for the election of delegates to a state convention to discuss secession. The majority of Georgia’s political leaders at this point, including Francis S. Bartow, Henry L. Benning, Governor Brown, Howell Cobb, Thomas R. R. Cobb, Wilson Lumpkin, Eugenius A. Nisbet, and Robert Toombs, advocated secession. Their efforts focused on exciting white southerners’ fears of slave insurrection and abolition, which could potentially lead to Black equality and intermarriage. Despite the best efforts of such antisecessionists as Alexander Stephens and Benjamin Hill, the die was cast. The secession convention vote on January 19, 1861, took Georgia out of the Union as expected, though by a closer vote than many had anticipated. Infantry regiments were authorized, and the convention appointed Bartow, the Cobb brothers, Nisbet, Toombs, Stephens, and four others as delegates to a convention of other seceded states to meet in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4. At Montgomery, the delegates organized the Confederate States of America, and Georgians played an important role in creating the provisional Confederate government. Howell Cobb served as president of the convention, and Thomas R. R. Cobb was the main architect of the Confederate Constitution. Toombs and Stephens were prominent in the proceedings, but to their disappointment the presidency of the new nation fell to Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Still, Stephens won the vice presidency, and Toombs accepted the office of secretary of state. The War Begins After secession, most Georgians hoped to avoid war and peacefully leave the Union, but the firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, made conflict inevitable. Governor Brown’s call for volunteers on April 18 brought an enthusiastic response, and by October 1861 around 25,000 Georgians had enlisted in Confederate service. At first, Georgians experienced the war on far-off battlefields in Virginia and Tennessee. Fort PulaskiPhotograph by Brooke Novak Soon, however, the war came to Georgia by sea in the form of Union general Winfield Scott’s “Anaconda Plan,” a strategy to weaken the Confederacy by blocking southern coasts and by dividing the Confederacy in two through attempts at occupying the Mississippi River. A Union naval force under Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, established a base of operations on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in the fall of 1861, to launch attacks along the south Atlantic coast and to disrupt international Confederate trade. Alarmed, President Davis sent General Robert E. Lee to Savannah to organize the defense of Georgia and upper Florida. Lee lacked the resources to do much, however, and before long Union forces began capturing key points along Georgia’s coast. By March 1862 Union troops had seized all of Georgia’s coastal islands, and on April 10, 1862, Union batteries on Tybee Island wrecked Fort Pulaski, leading to the fort’s surrender and the closure of Savannah as a functioning port. Despite the blockade, the Confederacy hoped that European demand for cotton would also bring support for the southern cause. These hopes were unfounded, however, as anti-slavery sentiment in England kept the British navy from becoming involved. By the war’s second year, the Union also targeted Georgia’s railroads. In April 1862 Union spy James J. Andrews led twenty saboteurs in a daring raid. In Big Shanty present-day Kennesaw, in Cobb County they seized the General locomotive and steamed northward. Western and Atlantic Railroad officials pursued them and, after a nearly ninety-mile chase, caught the Andrews gang near Ringgold before they could significantly damage the rail line. Confederate soldiers captured most of the saboteurs, and Andrews and seven of his raiders were hanged as spies in Atlanta. A year later, a Union cavalry force under Colonel Abel D. Streight attempted to cut the Western and Atlantic rail line near Rome, but Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest captured the Union force before it could do any real damage. Georgians Battling Richmond Meanwhile, the hardships and realities of war began to wear on Georgians. In April 1862 the Confederate government in Richmond initiated conscription to replenish depleted ranks. This was the first national draft in American history. Governor Brown argued that the draft was unconstitutional and despotic. He fought it and tried to maintain control of the state militia and other state troops. As the age limits of the draft were expanded, Brown protested anew. He relentlessly labored to field some viable separate state force and further circumvented conscription by recruiting militia members, who became known as “Joe Brown’s Pets.” Despite attacks from pro-Davis nationalists, Brown remained popular and won a fourth straight term as governor in 1863. But Brown was not the only Georgia statesman battling the Davis administration. Vice President Stephens spent much of his time at his home in Georgia denouncing Davis’s despotism. Toombs had quickly become bored as secretary of state and left to command a military brigade in Virginia, but he soon resigned and spent the rest of the war also denouncing the Davis administration. Even moderate Herschel V. Johnson joined the critics of the Richmond government. These men did much to hinder Confederate efforts and inflame anti-Davis sentiment. Home Front Mobilization While Brown struggled with the centralization policies of the Confederate government, he also worked to increase the state’s wartime production, especially with the manufacture of military supplies and equipment. Georgia quickly became a vital production center for the Confederate war effort. Atlanta, the state’s rail center, emerged as a home front, and the city contained one of the South’s few rolling mills, a quartermaster’s depot, and several major military hospitals. Additionally, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, and Savannah were vital industrial centers. Augusta was home to the Confederate Powder Works, the largest gunpowder factory in the Confederacy; one of the largest textile mills in the South; and an arsenal. Columbus had the Confederate Naval Iron Works, Columbus Naval Yard, cotton and woolen mills, and the South’s largest shoe factory. An arsenal in Savannah produced munitions until 1862, when operations were moved to Macon after the fall of Fort Pulaski. Macon also boasted a laboratory for bullet design and testing and was a depository for Confederate gold. The industrial village of Griswoldville, near Macon, manufactured weaponry before being destroyed by Union troops. Confederate CurrencyPhotograph by Wikimedia Financing the war was another struggle for the Brown administration. Like the rest of the Confederacy, Georgia tried to pay for the war with bonds and treasury notes instead of taxes. This led to massive inflation as paper money poured into the economy and the price of necessities soared beyond the reach of the masses. By early 1864 in Atlanta, for example, firewood sold for $80 a cord, corn for $10 a bushel, and flour for $120 a barrel; by contrast a Confederate private received $11 a month. Governor Brown worked tirelessly to aid common whites and made sure that needy soldiers and their families received money and salt to preserve foodstuffs. Yet the hardships of war touched the lives of every citizen, male and female, white and Black. Georgia soldiers saw action in every major campaign of the Civil War, and although Georgia units were engaged in the battles of the western theater, most served in the eastern theater in the Army of Northern Virginia. These men faced chronic shortages of food, clothing, and medicine as the ravages of combat and sickness relentlessly depleted their ranks. At home, white women faced the dilemma of managing farms and providing food for themselves and the war effort without adequate labor. Indeed, Georgia women had to step into multiple roles, providing support to soldier aid societies, working in hospitals or factories, and caring for their families. Social and Military Upheavals The war also challenged slavery and the plight of African Americans. Slavery broke down during the war, with enslaved workers using the absence of white males to secure better working and living conditions. While most enslaved Georgians remained on farms and plantations, many served the war effort of both sides as cooks, teamsters, servants, and laborers. Moreover, as Union forces penetrated the state, many bondsmen ran away to seek their freedom with the advancing Northern troops. Overwhelmed by the influx of freedpeople, Union forces set up “contraband” camps to provide food and shelter. In 1862 Union authorities began to authorize Black enlistment, and many Black recruits emerged on the coast and in northwest Georgia. While both Confederate and Union forces sought ways to use Black labor, freedpeople continually looked for ways to assert their own desire for freedom, dignity, and economic stability. Crucial to maintaining and enhancing their physical freedom was ownership of land. In Savannah, Union general William T. Sherman issued his controversial Special Field Order No. 15, giving freed people control of abandoned lands in the Sea Islands and signaling a new era of Black independence throughout the South. While radical elements of the Republican Party applauded this measure, the idea of taking property from whites, even Confederates, and giving it to African Americans proved far too drastic for the majority of white Americans, North and South. Therefore, the order was rescinded following the war. African American “Contrabands”Photograph by Wikimedia Adding to the chaos of the home front was the growing presence of Confederate deserters who, after 1863, hid in remote areas of the state, from the mountains in the north to the swamps and piney woods in the southeast. Equally harsh, Confederate and Unionist guerrillas of north Georgia made a hellish existence for many civilians. Georgia’s Appalachian counties had long been a stronghold for Unionists, and as the war continued to turn against the Confederacy, these areas became ever more hostile toward the Confederate government. War weariness led to other forms of dissent from Georgia civilians, who by late in the war joined with more ideologically committed Unionists to resist government-imposed conscription, impressment, and taxes-in-kind. Union Military Incursion The first full-scale military operations in Georgia took place in the late summer of 1863. In September a Union army under Major General William S. Rosecrans captured Chattanooga, Tennessee, and swept into Georgia. Later that month, Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg defeated Rosecrans at the Battle of Chickamauga and followed the retreating Union troops back to Chattanooga. The situation eventually led Lincoln to remove Rosecrans and appoint Ulysses S. Grant as commander of all Union forces in the western theater. Using reinforcements, Grant shattered Bragg’s forces at Missionary Ridge, sending them fleeing to Dalton in north Georgia. Confederate EarthworksFrom Photographic Views of Sherman's Campaign, by G. N. Barnard In May 1864, the beginning of the Atlanta campaign, the Union launched simultaneous advances in Virginia and Georgia designed to crush the last remaining Southern resistance. General Sherman began the invasion of Georgia with more than 110,000 men. His objective was to capture Atlanta and destroy the Confederate Army of Tennessee under the command of Bragg’s replacement, General Joseph E. Johnston. Using his superior numbers to outflank the Confederate defenses of Dalton, Sherman began a long series of flanking maneuvers designed to bypass Johnston’s fortified positions. Only once, at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, did the Union troops attempt a large-scale frontal assault. Its failure led to a return to the war of maneuver. By July Sherman had pushed Johnston to Peachtree Creek at the outskirts of Atlanta. An anxious President Davis replaced Johnston with General John B. Hood. An aggressive commander, Hood attacked Sherman repeatedly during the battles of Peachtree Creek, Bald Hill Atlanta, and Ezra Church. Although the attacks failed to destroy the Union troops, they did stymie Sherman’s advance. Meanwhile, in August, the Confederates managed to defeat two Union cavalry raids headed for Macon and Andersonville. By the end of the month, however, Sherman broke the last Confederate rail line supplying Atlanta at Jonesboro, forcing the Confederates to abandon the city. The fall of Atlanta helped to ensure the reelection of Lincoln, thus making the Atlanta campaign arguably the most important of the war in terms of political consequences. Union SoldiersCourtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division After evacuating Atlanta, Hood’s army marched north into Tennessee, hoping to disrupt Sherman’s supply lines and draw him away from Georgia. Sherman briefly followed but then swung back to Atlanta after sending Major General George H. Thomas northward with sufficient forces to crush Hood’s army near Nashville, Tennessee, by the end of the year. Meanwhile, in mid-November, Sherman launched his March to the Sea. Having destroyed Atlanta’s capacity as a rail and industrial center, Sherman and 60,000 men marched southeastward against token opposition, cutting a sixty-mile-wide swath through Georgia to Savannah. Along the way, rail lines, bridges, factories, mills, and other wartime resources were annihilated. Despite orders, private property was also looted and destroyed. The Union soldiers foraged liberally off the land, although instances of murder and rape were rare. On December 21, 1864, Union forces finally reached Savannah. Triumphantly, Sherman telegraphed Lincoln “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.” In February 1865 Sherman moved northward out of the state to crush resistance in the Carolinas. The War’s End Capture of Jefferson DavisPhotograph from Wikimedia The last significant military action in Georgia came from Alabama, with Union major general James Harrison Wilson’s cavalry force capturing Columbus on April 16, wrecking its industrial center, and moving on to Macon. Wilson’s Raid occurred one week after the surrender of the Confederacy at Appomattox. By early May, Governor Brown formally surrendered the state’s remaining military forces. Union forces quickly arrested Brown, Stephens, and Cobb, but Toombs escaped to Europe. Also captured was Captain Henry Wirz, the commandant at Andersonville Prison, which had the highest mortality rate of any Civil War prison; Wirz was the only person to be executed for war crimes committed during the Civil War. Jefferson Davis held the last meeting of the shadow government at Washington in Wilkes County. On May 10 Wilson’s forces captured him at Irwinville. The long war had finally ended, and emancipation was completed in 1865. Although Georgians realized that the nation would remain united and that slavery had ended, other questions remained to be answered as they sought during Reconstruction to build a new Georgia from the rubble of the old.
7 In November of 1863, the city of Atlanta _____ during Sherman's famous "March to the Sea". A. Was completely burned B. Completely was burned C. It was burned completely D. Completely burned it
Local News June 8, 2023 / 926 AM / CW69 Atlanta Stop Cop City organizers launch referendum push to place measure on November ballot Stop Cop City organizers launch referendum push to place measure on November ballot 0155 ATLANTA WUPA – Stop Cop City organizers have announced the filing of a referendum that could put the fate of the controversial Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in the hands of voters this activists and organizations attended a press conference at Atlanta City Hall on Wednesday to release the details of the referendum, which would repeal the lease of the property to the Atlanta Police Foundation."Today we are here to let the people decide. The people need to have a voice in whether or not there is a Cop City," said Kamau Franklin, an organizer and the founder of Community Movement Builders. "Every poll that we've taken, it has shown that a majority of Atlantans are against Cop City." WUPA The move comes after an 11-4 vote by the Atlanta City Council early Tuesday morning to allocate $67 million dollars to fund the project. This includes an annual $ million lease-back payment to the Atlanta Police Foundation. Protestors and a number of members of the community have long opposed the plans for the training facility. "Around Atlanta, we have millions of properties that need fixing, and they want to take our tax dollars and put it into a facility that we didn't ask for," said one resident of the community, Tomorra resident Eloise Mitchell also took issue with the outcome of the city council's vote. "If the people are showing up, and the people are saying they don't want this, for City Council just to ignore all the people, that's problematic," she referendum must first receive legal approval. In addition, the measure must have a petition with 70,000 signatures to be filed prior to it being placed on the November ballot."It doesn't need to be trick words," Mitchell said. "It needs to be straightforward on the ballot, so people know what they're voting for, so they can understand what people really want."Franklin and other organizers have accused members of the city council of going against the will of the people they have been elected to represent. "What they want is what the corporations want. What they want is what the developers want," Franklin said. "What they want is what the Atlanta Police Foundation wants."Police and fire officials have said they need better facilities to train and recruit more first responders. They say their supporters are behind them 100%. Opponents of the project say a new training facility is all about the militarization of the police. "We will not be intimidated, and so we're going to take our fight to the ballot box, and we believe we will win," said Legal Defense Fund attorney Gary said they are currently making plans to mobilize voters ahead of the referendum's approval. In Police Reform Atlanta Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue
TheUnion victory in the largest battle of the Atlanta Campaign led to the capture of that critical Confederate city and opened the door for Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's most famous operation—the March to the Sea and the capture of Savannah. How it ended. Union victory.
In the summer of 1864, during the Civil War 1861-65, Union General William T. Sherman faced off against Confederate generals Joseph E. Johnston and John B. Hood in a series of battles in northern Georgia. Sherman’s goal was to destroy the Army of the Tennessee, capture Atlanta and cut off vital Confederate supply lines. While Sherman failed to destroy his enemy, he was able to force the surrender of Atlanta in September 1864,boosting Northern morale and greatly improving President Abraham Lincoln’s re-election bid. With Atlantaunder Union control, Sherman embarked on his March to the Sea, which laid waste to the countryside and hastened the Confederacy’s T. Sherman and Atlanta Campaign Background William Tecumseh Sherman 1820-91 was an Ohio native who attended West Point and served in the Army before becoming a banker and then president of a military school in Louisiana. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Sherman joined the Union Army and eventually commanded large numbers of troops, under General Ulysses S. Grant 1822-85, at the battles of Shiloh 1862, Vicksburg 1863 and Chattanooga 1863. In the spring of 1864, Sherman became supreme commander of the armies in the West and was ordered by Grant to take the city of Atlanta, then a key military supply center and railroad hub for the you know? Today, the city of Atlanta’s motto is “Resurgens,” Latin for “rising again.” The city also adopted the phoenix, a mythical bird that is reborn from its own ashes, as a Atlanta campaign began in early May 1864, and in the first few months his troops engaged in several fierce battles with Confederate soldiers on the outskirts of the city, including the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, which the Union forces lost. However, on September 1, Confederate forces under John Hood 1831-79 pulled out of Atlanta and the city, a symbol of Confederate pride and strength, was surrendered the next day. Sherman’s men continued to defend it through he set off on his famous March to the Sea on November 15, Sherman ordered that Atlanta’s military resources, including munitions factories, clothing mills and railway yards, be burned. The fire got out of control and left Atlanta in to the Sea After leaving Atlanta, Sherman and some 60,000 of his soldiers headed toward Savannah, Georgia. The purpose of this March to the Sea was to frighten Georgia’s civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause. Sherman’s troops did not destroy any of the towns in their path, but they stole food and livestock and burned the houses and barns of people who tried to fight troops arrived in Savannah on December 21, 1864. The city was undefended when they got there. The 10,000 Confederates who were supposed to be guarding it had already fled. Sherman presented the city of Savannah to President Abraham Lincoln 1809-65 as a Christmas in 1865, Sherman and his men left Savannah and pillaged and burned their way through the Carolinas. The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, when the Confederate commander in chief, Robert E. Lee 1807-70, surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, After the Civil War After the war, Sherman succeeded Grant as commander in chief of the Army, serving from 1869 to 1883. Sherman, who is credited with the phrase “war is hell,” died in 1891 at age 71, in New York City. The city of Atlanta swiftly recovered from the war and became the capital of Georgia in 1868, first on a temporary basis and then permanently by popular vote in 1877.
Anedition of The code of the city of Atlanta (1863) The code of the city of Atlanta containing all the acts of the Legislature of the state of Georgia incorporating the same and all of the ordinances now of force in said city
Atlanta, Battle of 1864.Throughout May, June, and early July 1864, the Union army of Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman advanced through northern Georgia toward Atlanta while the Confederate army of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, to the increasing alarm of the Richmond authorities, retreated in front of it. Finally, on 17 July, President Jefferson Davis acted, replacing Johnston with the aggressive Gen. John Bell this time the Confederate army was backed into the very outskirts of Atlanta, and Hood had no choice but to fight or abandon the city. On 20 July, he attacked Federal troops under Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas near Peachtree Creek the Battle of Peachtree Creek. Hood's plan went awry and the result was a bloody days later, Hood struck again, in what is called the Battle of Atlanta. His target this time was a Federal force under Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson. Hood's plan was a good one, a flanking maneuver of his own, and this time it was tolerably well executed. Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee led his Confederate force on a long, tiring night march to gain the Federal rear. While he attacked from that direction, Confederates under Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham were to attack the Union front. Hood, who was hampered by a crippled arm and a missing leg, was not personally present on the battlefield, and afterward he complained that Hardee had not positioned his troops as directed. Hardee, who resented being passed over in favor of Hood, was sometimes uncooperative. Still, Confederates struck hard at McPherson's Federals in a fierce day‐long battle. The result went against the Southerners. Two Union divisions of Maj. Gen. Grenville Dodge's corps had, the night before, taken up a position that allowed them to blunt Hardee's attack. That, along with exceptionally hard fighting on the part of McPherson's men, produced Hood's defeat, but not before McPherson himself had been killed and John A. Logan had taken his place. On the Confederate side, Maj. Gen. William H. T. Walker was killed. Just over 30,000 Federals were engaged against nearly 40,000 Confederates. Federal casualties were 3,722; Confederate losses are harder to pinpoint, but the best estimate is 7, days later, Sherman tried yet another turning maneuver, and Hood responded again, attacking the Federals at the Battle of Ezra Church and again suffering a bloody repulse. After that, operations settled down to a quasi‐siege of Atlanta. Hood's three sorties had cost him heavily in casualties and failed to gain battlefield success. Nevertheless, they had prevented Sherman from taking the city that month and forced the Union commander to show more caution in his future operations. Though Atlanta fell to Sherman on 2 September 1864, it is likely that Hood's installation as commander had delayed that event six weeks beyond the time it would have happened had Johnston remained in command.[See also Civil War Military and Diplomatic Course.]Bibliography Richard M. McMurry , John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence, 1982. Albert Castel , Decision in the West The Atlanta Campaign of 1864, 1992. Steven E. Woodworth
J. The Battle of Atlanta becomes a Union victory. 34,863 Union troops under Generals Sherman and McPherson face-off against the Army of Tennessee and its 40,438 troops led by General Hood and Hardee. Losses are 3,641 against 5,500, respectively. August 31, 1864.
"God help my country!" So wrote Mary Chesnut of South Carolina in her diary on New Year's Day 1864 She expressed the feeling of the vast majority of her fellow Southerners. Their expectation of victory, so high at the beginning of 1863, had by the end of that year been transformed into a dread of impending doom by the disastrous defeats at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Powerful Northern armies now dominated vast areas of the South and stood poised to overrun still more against badly depleted Confederate forces. The South's economy was close to collapse, thousands of its people were homeless refugees, its ramshackle rail system barely functioned, the Northern blockade was growing evermore effective, and any chance that Britain would recognize and aid the Confederacy had disappeared with the Emancipation Proclamation and the failure of Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North at Gettysburg. MARY CHESNUT NA Yet, in spite of all of this, the South retained, as 1864 got under way, one last hope of victory. Paradoxically, this hope came from the North. There the Democratic party contended that the nation never could be reunited by war but only through peace, a peace to be achieved by giving the seceded states an opportunity to return to the Union with the same rights—among them the right of slavery—that they had held when they left it. Accordingly, the Democrats based their strategy, which they made no attempt to conceal, for the North's 1864 presidential election on two assumptions 1 that notwithstanding their 1863 setbacks the Confederates would be able to defy all efforts to subdue them through the spring, summer, and fall of 1864; 2 that as a consequence war-weary Northern voters, realizing the futility of trying to suppress the rebellion by military means, would repudiate the pro-war and antislavery policies of the Republicans by replacing Abraham Lincoln in the White House with a Democrat pledged to a suspension of hostilities and the negotiation of a voluntary restoration of the Union. WALTER TABER ILLUSTRATION OF CONFEDERATE GUNNERS DURING THE BATTLE OF ATLANTA. COURTESY OF AMERICAN HERITAGE PRINT COLLECTION The assumptions of the Democrats gave Southerners their hope of victory in 1864. They believed that if they could hold out long and well enough against the Yankee armies they would break the will of the North to go on with the war and so open the way for the Democrats to take power in Washington, an event that would lead—not to the South returning to the Union, for it had fought too hard and suffered too much to do that—but rather to Northern acceptance of Southern independence once the North stopped the war it would be impossible for it to resume it. BY 1864, THE UNION HAD FOUR TIMES AS MANY SOLDIERS AS THE SOUTH. THESE MEN OF THE 125TH OHIO FOUGHT GALLANTLY DURING THE ATLANTA USAMHI What brought hope to Southerners inspired fear among Republicans. They too realized that should the Federal armies be bogged down in stalemate come election time, the North indeed might turn to the Democrats with their specious but seductive promise of Union through peace. To prevent this from happening it would be necessary either to defeat the Confederacy before the voters went to the polls in the fall or else to score such military successes as to convince the majority of those voters that victory was on the way. That was why on February 1, 1864, Lincoln issued a call for 200,000 more troops in addition to the 300,000 he had summoned to the colors in October these 500,000 new soldiers would be twice the number the Confederacy could muster altogether. It also was why Lincoln on March 9, 1864, appointed Ulysses S. Grant to the newly created rank of lieutenant general and placed him in command of all Union armies. If Grant, who had captured whole Rebel armies at Fort Donelson and Vicksburg and routed another at Chattanooga, could not lead the North to victory in 1864, who could? Such, then, were the grand strategies of North and South as the war entered its fourth year. In the case of the South, it sought to win by not losing, in the hope that the North, finding itself unable to win, would lose its will to continue the war. As for the North, Lincoln and the Republicans needed and therefore would endeavor to win by winning, thus maintaining the support of the Northern people for the war and for themselves. Which strategy prevailed and which failed would be decided on the battlefields. GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON USAMHI If the South was to win by not losing, there were two places where it was absolutely essential to deny the North victory Virginia and Georgia. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was confident that Lee could hold the Yankees at bay in Virginia, preventing them from taking Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy and the symbol of its independence. He lacked the same confidence in General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee in north Georgia. He considered Johnston to be vain and selfish as a man and as a general more inclined to retreat than to fight, to defend rather than to attack, and so recalcitrant in implementing the wishes of the government with regard to military operations as to border on the insubordinate. Therefore, he had appointed Johnston to command the Army of Tennessee, following its debacle at Chattanooga in November 1863, most reluctantly and solely because no other general of the requisite rank was available who could be depended on to do better or even as well. He could only hope that Johnston, now that the fate of the Confederacy hung in the balance, would be more cooperative, more aggressive, and above all more successful than he hitherto had been. It would be a vain hope. Johnston's dislike and distrust of Davis matched, indeed exceeded, the president's dislike and distrust of the general. Johnston knew, too, that Davis had named him to head the Army of Tennessee out of necessity, not preference, and suspected that Davis would not be altogether unhappy should he fail in that post. Accordingly, although he would do his best, by his lights, to defend Georgia, as always he would take care while doing so to preserve his public reputation for high military skill, a reputation that literally was more precious to him than life itself. How difficult it was for Davis and Johnston to work in harmony became evident from the start. Soon after Johnston took command of the Army of Tennessee at Dalton, Georgia, on December 27, 1863, he received a letter from the president urging him to attack and defeat the Federal army at Chattanooga, thereby forestalling an invasion of Georgia by delivering what in effect would be a pre-emptive strike. In theory it was a good plan but in fact utterly impracticable. As Johnston promptly and correctly pointed out in reply, the Army of Tennessee lacked the strength, supplies, and transport to conduct a successful offensive. The only way it could reasonably hope to do so, Johnston argued, was to repel the Federals when they attacked, then launch a counterattack. To that end he asked that he be reinforced by Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk's army in Mississippi and Alabama. Davis, who had received contrary information from other sources, refused to believe Johnston's assessment of the Army of Tennessee's offensive capability. To him it seemed that Johnston was being his usual uncooperative and unaggressive self. Hence for the next four months he endeavored to persuade Johnston to go after the Yankees before the Yankees came after him. Just as persistently Johnston refused to do anything of the kind. Since Davis, for political reasons, dared not remove Johnston or order him to attack, by default Johnston's strategy for meeting and defeating the Union invasion of Georgia became the Confederate strategy. GENESIS IN STEEL RAILROADS BUILD A CITY More than any other Southern city that flourished before the Civil War, Atlanta was a creation of the railroad. It lay perfectly uninhabited in 1840, when survey crews began marking the location of three rail lines that would connect there. The Georgia Railroad extended from Augusta to the east, while the Macon & Western worked its way up from the south. These lines led into the wilderness from the more populated coast, but a third railroad, the Western & Atlantic, snaked its way south through the mountains from Chattanooga, on the Tennessee border. Engineers opted to join these roads a few miles south of the Chattahoochee River, and they named this arbitrary junction "Terminus." Colonel Stephen Long, the chief engineer of the Western & Atlantic, reportedly refused a chance to buy 200 acres in Terminus because he doubted the place would ever amount to anything. In 1843 the site was incorporated under the name of Marthasvllle. Two years later its name was changed again, to Atlanta. Colonel Long's disdained 200 acres formed the center of the city, which blossomed rapidly. By 1860 Atlanta could boast a population of more than 10,000, and it was still growing. The city was recognized early in the war as a vital link in Confederate communications. The Western & Atlantic Railroad, in particular, served as an umbilical between the Upper South and the Deep South, connecting with the equally important rail center at Chattanooga, about 140 miles to the north. As early as April of 1862 Union authorities had attached enough significance to the Western & Atlantic that Federal soldiers infiltrated northern Georgia in civilian clothing and stole a locomotive with the intention of cutting the line. That incursion ended in disaster, as did Union Colonel Abel Streight's cavalry raid in the spring of 1863, which culminated in the capture of Streight's command by Confederate cavalry under General Nathan Bedford Forrest. TRAIN SHED IN ATLANTA. LC The Western & Atlantic proved even more crucial as a supply line as Federal armies pushed the Confederate Army of Tennessee eastward in the summer of 1863. When Union troops occupied Chattanooga and Knoxville that fall, however, they interrupted all rail traffic north of Dalton, Georgia. The Western & Atlantic thereafter ceased to hold its former strategic value for the South as 1864 opened, the only major rail link between the two major Confederate armies was the overburdened coastal route. Atlanta itself remained vital to the Confederacy, despite the diminished importance of the Western & Atlantic. The city still served as a terminus for three rail lines that led to the unoccupied portions of the besieged nation, and it rivaled Richmond in its industrial importance to the South. Its railroad heritage had spawned machine shops, mills, and foundries that supplied demands from Mississippi to the Carolinas, and if it were lost those demands would be thrown upon the distant Richmond factories that were already falling behind in production, from which goods would have to be transported hundreds of additional miles over railroads that were already too taxed. As William Sherman's troops prepared to move south in the spring of 1864, Atlanta had doubled in population as its industrial base expanded to support the machinery of war. Warehouses bulged with materiel for the Army of Tennessee, while trains steamed hourly out of the city to the east, west, and south with military or mechanical provisions and equipment. Meanwhile—just in case—Confederate engineers were putting the finishing touches on a series of artillery redoubts and rifle pits that partially surrounded the city. —William Marvel While Johnston and Davis wrangled, Grant formulated a plan for winning the war for the North. While Johnston and Davis wrangled. Grant formulated a plan for winning the war for the North. Basically it called for Grant, who had decided to take personal charge of operations in Virginia, to smash Lee and/or take Richmond, and for the Union forces at Chattanooga to crush Johnston and/or take Atlanta, a vital railroad and manufacturing center with a strategic and symbolic importance second only to that of Richmond. Should either city fall, then it would merely be a matter of time before the Confederacy itself fell—and both Northerners and Southerners realized this. To conduct the campaign against Johnston and Atlanta, Grant chose Major General William Tecumseh Sherman. His choice was based on friendship, not on Sherman's generalship. So far that had not been impressive. Early in the war, while commanding in Kentucky and Missouri, Sherman has so greatly exaggerated the strength of and danger from the enemy that he had suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be relieved. Returned to duty, he went to the opposite extreme by denying that the Confederates posed any threat at all, with the result that he was primarily to blame for the surprise and near destruction of Grant's army at Shiloh. In December 1862 his assault at Chickasaw Bluffs in Mississippi failed terribly, and during the subsequent Vicksburg campaign, although he ably did all that Grant told him to do, in truth he did not have to do very much. Assigned by Grant the starring role in the Battle of Chattanooga, his performance was so inept that only an impromptu attack by the troops of Major General George H. Thomas's Army of the Cumberland saved Grant from defeat and gave him victory. TWO BRIGADES OF THE FEDERAL IV CORPS TRAIN NEAR CHATTANOOGA. USAMHI Yet, despite this lackluster record, Grant deemed Sherman to be the best man to command in the West while he himself commanded in the East. He admired Sherman's brilliant intellect, boundless energy, and persistent enter rise. Above all he knew that Sherman was totally devoted to him personally and so could be trusted to make every effort to assist him in defeating the Confederacy in 1864. On April 4,1864, Grant sent Sherman his instructions. He was to "move against Johnston's army, to break it up, and get into the interior of the enemy's country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources." The specific method by which Sherman accomplished this assignment, Grant added, he left to him, but he did ask Sherman to submit a broad "plan of operations." This Sherman did on April 10. After defining his mission as being to "knock Jos. Johnston, and to do as much damage to the resources of the enemy as possible," Sherman stated that he would compel Johnston to retreat to Atlanta, whereupon he would use his cavalry to cut the railroad between that city and Montgomery, Alabama, then "feign to the right, but pass to the left and act against Atlanta or its eastern communications, according to developed facts." MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN LC MAJOR GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS BL Superficially Sherman's plan seemed to comply with Grant's instructions. Actually it did not. Contrary to the clear implication of those instructions, Sherman proposed to make the capture of Atlanta and not the destruction of Johnston's army his prime objective. Several reasons, among them Sherman's personal distaste for battles with all of their uncertainties, explain this reversal of priorities, but the main one was that Sherman assumed that it would not be necessary for him to defeat Johnston because Grant soon would win the war by defeating Lee. Consequently, Sherman conceived his main task to be that of assuring Grant's success by preventing Johnston from sending reinforcements to Lee. Grant took the same view of the matter. When he replied on April 19 to Sherman's April 10 letter he emphasized the need to forestall Johnston from aiding Lee. "If the enemy on your front," he cautioned Sherman, "shows signs of joining Lee, follow him up to the full extent of your ability." To "knock Jos. Johnston" Sherman assembled at and near Chattanooga about 110,000 troops. By far the largest portion of them, nearly 65,000 infantry and artillerists, belonged to Major General George H. Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, which consisted of three corps the IV, XIV, and XX, headed respectively by Major Generals Oliver Otis Howard, John M. Palmer, and "Fighting Joe" Hooker, who as commander of the Army of the Potomac in Virginia had come to grief against Lee at Chancellorsville in May of 1863. Thomas, because of his massive build, gave some the impression of being slow, and he was called the "Rock of Chickamauga" because of his stalwart defensive stand at that battle; yet his mind moved with lightning speed and at Nashville in December of 1864 he would deliver the most devastating attack of the entire war. On the basis of both record and talent he, not Sherman, deserved to command the campaign in Georgia, but he lacked what Sherman so amply possessed the friendship and trust of Grant. MAJOR GENERAL GRENVILLE M. DODGE LC The next largest part of Sherman's host was Major General James B. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee the Federals usually named their armies after rivers, hence the Army of the Tennessee, whereas Confederate practice was to name armies after states or portions thereof, thus the Army of Tennessee, about 23,000 soldiers organized into Major General John A. "Black Jack" Logan's XV Corps and the two-division XVI Corps and the two-division XVI Corps of Major General Grenville M. Dodge. It was Sherman's favorite army, for until recently he had commanded it, as had Grant before him. McPherson, its new commander, was intelligent and conscientious but, as events would reveal, deficient in initiative and enterprise. Least among the major components of Sherman's invasion force was the so-called Army of the Ohio. Although Major General George Stoneman's cavalry division nominally formed part of it, for all practical purposes it consisted merely of the 11,000-man XXIII Corps, and its commander, Major General John M. Schofield, hitherto had seen little field service. But he was capable as well as ambitious, and during the campaign his small corps would accomplish much. Sherman's artillery numbered 254 cannons, his cavalry about 11,000 troopers. The former was superior to its Confederate counterpart in all except the valor of its gun crews, having more rifled pieces and better ammunition. The latter, on the other hand, suffered from the poor leadership of its four division commanders, a situation made worse by the fact that the sole central control over its operations came from Sherman himself, and he lacked a realistic understanding of the limitations and potentialities of the mounted arm. Sherman's chief concern was supplying his army as it marched and fought its way through northern Georgia. To do so he had to depend mainly on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. When he assumed command in March it was delivering enough supplies to maintain the forces around Chattanooga but not enough to sustain an offensive. Therefore, he issued orders designed to remedy this situation. By the end of April an average of 135 freight cars a day were coming into Chattanooga—more than the minimum required. Sherman also collected 5,000 wagons and 32,000 mules to haul what the trains delivered, giving himself the means to operate away from the railroad whenever that proved necessary or desirable. LIEUTENANT GENERAL WILLIAM J. HARDEE LC BEFORE THE MARCH ON ATLANTA, SHERMAN'S ARMIES GUARDED SUPPLY LINES AT PLACES LIKE WAUHATCHIE BRIDGE. USAMHI To meet and, he hoped, defeat Sherman when he advanced, Johnston by the end of April had about 55,000 troops present for duty, backed by 144 cannons. The infantry and most of the artillery were organized into two corps, those of Lieutenant Generals William J. Hardee and John Bell Hood, and the cavalry, which numbered approximately 8,500 and was commanded by Major General Joseph Wheeler. Known as "Old Reliable," Hardee was a veteran of virtually all of the Army of Tennnessee's battles. Known as "Old Reliable," Hardee was a veteran of virtually all of the Army of Tennessee's battles. Following that army's humiliating rout at Chattanooga, he had become its acting commander, but when President Davis offered him the post on a regular basis he had declined it. Hood, who was only thirty-two, had compiled a brilliant combat record as a brigade and division commander in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and at Chickamauga his de facto corps's exploitation of a gap in the Union front produced the Confederate victory. His military success, however, had come at a high personal cost at Gettysburg shrapnel paralyzed his left arm, at Chickamauga a bullet shattered his right thigh bone, necessitating amputation near the hip. As a result, he could not, despite an artificial leg, walk without the aid of crutches, and to ride he had to be strapped to his horse. Even so, his fighting spirit remained intact, and Johnston sought and welcomed his assignment to a corps command in the Army of Tennessee, calling it "my greatest comfort." He did not know that Hood had written Davis on April 13 deploring Johnston's failure to take the offensive "When we are to be in a better condition to drive the enemy from our country I am not able to comprehend." Wheeler had headed the Army of Tennessee's cavalry since the fall of 1862 and was energetic, aggressive, and resourceful. Unfortunately, he also like most Civil War cavalry leaders was unable to exercise effective control over units not under his personal supervision and had a penchant for exaggerating his successes and minimizing or concealing his failures. Nevertheless he gave Johnston's army what Sherman's lacked—a capable, experienced commander for its horsemen, who throughout the campaign would more than hold their own against the Union troopers. Under the Confederate conscription laws, all able bodied males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were subject to military service except an assortment of exempted classes. Among those who were exempt were civil officials and officers in the state militia organizations. In Georgia, so many men of military age had gained exemption through state or county offices that they came to be called "Joe Brown's pets," after the controversial wartime governor. Howell Cobb, a political rival of Brown's, complained of districts that had gone without justices of the peace for years before the war that were served by several once hostilities began, and county courts suddenly saw flocks of clerks and deputy sheriffs although the war had virtually suspended all court business, These men were all fit for duty, Cobb said, as were the 2,726 militia officers who had only themselves to command, their enlisted members having all gone into the army. Once Sherman invaded Georgia, Brown called out the civil servants and militia officers, directing their formation into companies and regiments. He ordered them to report to Atlanta, where they were organized into two brigades of three regiments apiece and a battalion of artillery more than 3,000 men, altogether. Those militia officers who were not elected for commissions in this new organization took up arms as enlisted men. GENERAL GUSTAVUS SMITH USAMHI Major General Gustavus W. Smith took command of them in June, when they were assigned to guard the crossings of the Chattahoochee River, When Johnston anchored his army on Kennesaw Mountain, he ordered the militia north of the Chattahoochee to support the cavalry on his left. Under Smith the militia twice found itself within skirmishing distance of Federal forces, and it was among the last troops to fall back across the river. Johnston assigned the little division, which was now reduced to about 2,000 muskets, to the trenches east of Atlanta, along the Georgia Railroad. In the Battle of Atlanta on July 22 the militia occupied works opposite the apex of the folded Union line and advanced against the XVII Corps when it retreated from Hardee's attack. The militia division was not heavily engaged, however, and only lost about fifty men in that engagement. Early in August, as Sherman tightened the noose around Atlanta, Governor Brown called out the "reserve militia"—men between forty-six and fifty-five and boys aged sixteen or seventeen. Eventually some 2,000 such reserves reached General Smith, who noted that his division never exceeded 5,000 men. The militia suffered from a lack of both training and equipment. The first regiments of military and civil officers were armed from surplus army muskets, but most of the old men and boys came with their own flintlocks, hunting rifles, and shotguns. More than two-thirds were never issued cartridge boxes, according to Smith. THE MILITIA OCCUPIED WORKS LIKE THIS IN THE DEFENSE OF ATLANTA. USAMHI In the final month of the siege the militia held the defenses west of the road to Marietta, and when the army retreated from Atlanta Smith's men acted as rear guard to Hood's reserve artillery train. The original regiments of civil and military officers had spent about a hundred days under arms by the time Atlanta fell, and for half that time they had been under fire. Smith and Hood both praised the militia men for their performance during the campaign, but straggling on the retreat caused Smith to observe the imprudence of putting men over the age of fifty in the field. When the army had reassembled outside the city, Smith recommended a thirty-day furlough for his entire command, which was granted. In October the militia reassembled to contest Sherman's March to the Sea. —William Marvel The vast majority of the soldiers of both armies were battle-hardened veterans. This meant that they knew how to fight—and also when it was best not to fight. In particular, they took a dim view of charging a fortified enemy "It don't pay." Owing to the almost total tactical dominance that the rifled musket gave the defense over the offense during the Civil War, rarely did frontal assaults succeed, and when they did the price usually was excessive, as witness Chickamauga, where the Confederates lost one-third of their total number in what proved to be a strategically barren victory. The reluctance of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb at this stage of the war to attack except when the foe was thought to be weak, or in the open, or to have an exposed flank would have a lot to do with what happened and did not happen once the campaign for Atlanta got under way.
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Home World History Wars, Battles & Armed Conflicts Battle of Atlanta Battle of Atlanta summary Learn about the Battle of Atlanta, a Civil War engagement that was part of the Union’s summer 1864 Atlanta Campaign Written and fact-checked by Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Battle of Atlanta. Battle of Atlanta, July 22, 1864 American Civil War engagement that was part of the Union’s summer Atlanta Campaign. Union Major Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and James B. McPherson successfully defended against a Confederate offensive from Lieut. Gen. John Bell Hood on the eastern outskirts of Atlanta, Ga. The Union victory inflicted heavy casualties on Hood’s army, but the city would not fall to Sherman until September. Of the 34,863 Union troops engaged at the Battle of Atlanta, 3,722 were killed, wounded, captured, or reported missing. Confederate forces suffered an estimated 5,500 casualties of the 40,438 engaged. The battle had special significance for Abraham Lincoln, who was seeking a second term as president. The war had been dragging on longer than either the Union or the Confederacy expected, and war dissatisfaction was already threatening Lincoln’s chances of reelection. Related Article Summaries
Twoyears later its name was changed again, to Atlanta. Colonel Long's disdained 200 acres formed the center of the city, which blossomed rapidly. By 1860 Atlanta could boast a population of more than 10,000, and it was still growing. The city was recognized early in the war as a vital link in Confederate communications.
On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln offered “a few appropriate” remarks at the dedication of a cemetery to fallen Federal troops at Gettysburg. In his brief and eloquent “Gettysburg Address,” Lincoln articulated the purpose of the war and looked beyond it to a time when the nation would once again be made whole. Yet even greater sacrifice lay ahead. In spring 1864, the Union and the Confederacy plunged into bloody campaigns that inaugurated a fourth year of fighting, prolonging and increasing the horrors of war. Casualty lists had grown to the hundreds of thousands. Civilians on both sides strained to help their governments cope with never-ending waves of the sick and wounded, as well as white and black refugees fleeing before armies or following in their wake. Throughout the year, the Union pursued a “hard war” policy, aimed at destroying all resources that could aid the Rebellion. But the South continued to fight; the end was not yet in sight. The year 1865 opened with Union victories in the East that closed Lee’s most vital supply line. Further south, General William T. Sherman’s army stormed out of Georgia and through South Carolina, where Charleston fell in mid-February. By April, Sherman was pursuing Confederates under Joseph Johnston in North Carolina. Lee, unable to hold Petersburg or Richmond, evacuated those cities and was forced to surrender on April 9, 1865. With final victory in sight, Union luminaries gathered on April 14 for a special ceremony at Fort Sumter to again raise the Federal flag. Later that evening actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, A View of Camp Life During the Civil War, cameras were not technologically capable of capturing action on the battlefield, but they excelled at documenting posed scenes. Photographers made portraits of soldiers and captured life in the camps, as well as the grim aftermath of battles. This carefully composed photograph taken in Petersburg, Virginia, shows Union officers playing cards, smoking pipes, and drinking Hadden’s Old Tom Cocktail, as their well-dressed African American servants stand nearby. Bookmark this item // “Home Sweet Home” Popularized in the 1820s, “Home Sweet Home” was the single hit from the otherwise forgettable opera Clari, or The Maid of Milan, based on the play by John Howard Payne with music by Henry R. Bishop. It remained a popular parlor song throughout the nineteenth century and was a favorite of regimental bands during the Civil War. The tune evoked such powerful nostalgia for home and better times that some bands were forbidden from playing it, out of fear it might dampen morale and encourage desertion. Henry R. Bishop 1786–1855, composer. “Home Sweet Home.” Philadelphia Lee & Walker, ca. 1850s. Music Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0136] Bookmark this item // Spiritual Revivals The Confederate army continually lacked a sufficient number of chaplains to serve in the field. Southern churches countered this problem by distributing religious literature to the troops in the form of newspapers, pamphlets, and tracts, despite wartime paper shortages. In the North, the United States Christian Commission was actively involved in overseeing the spiritual welfare of the Union army. These efforts doubtlessly played a part in spurring the massive evangelical revivals that swept through the ranks of both armies beginning in 1863. Diocesan Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia. The Army and Navy Prayer Book. Richmond Chas. H. Wynne, 1865. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0131] Bookmark this item // Army Life Chronicled Chaplain Alexander M. Stewart, who served with the 13th Pennsylvania Volunteers re-designated the 102nd after its first three-month tour of duty, sent almost weekly “sketches” of life in the Union army to home-front newspapers. On April 15, 1863, the Reverend Stewart wrote “My opinion is, that just now, with the enemy directly ahead of us, there is no eligible route for us into Richmond. . . . Hence our prime object is the enemies’ army in front of us, . . . we should continually harass and menace him, so that he shall have no leisure, nor safety in sending away detachments. If he weakens himself, then pitch into him.” Reverend A. M. Stewart 1814–1875. Camp March and Battle-field or Three Years and a Half with the Army of the Potomac. Philadelphia Jas. B. Rogers, 1865. General Collections, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0132] Bookmark this item // Mail Call Communication with home has been a lifeline for military personnel throughout the centuries. Civil War soldiers and sailors looked forward to getting letters at mail call and often commented in their own letters whether or not they received precious messages. The subjects discussed ran from mundane to monumental, horrific to humorous, but writing kept alive the connection with home. Soldier artist Charles Wellington Reed, of the 9th Massachusetts Battery, often illustrated his letters home with scenes from camp, sometimes sketching himself writing letters in challenging conditions. Bookmark this item // The Southern “Flag” Song Book Collections of song lyrics intended to be sung to popular tunes of the day proliferated in the nineteenth century. Known as songsters, they were usually published in small format for ease of portability and were often organized around a central theme. Publishing was primarily a Northern industry at the start of the Civil War, making The Southern “Flag” Song Book a rare example of a Confederate songster. The firm of H. C. Clarke saw a market for songsters in the military. The fact that in 1861 this was already a “new edition” attests to the success of the publication. The Southern [Flag] Song Book, Containing All the New and Choice Southern Songs & Melodies, with the Popular Ballads, Comic and Sentimental. Vicksburg and Natchez Mississippi H. C. Clarke, ca. 1861. Music Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0137] Bookmark this item // Back to Top “Books for the Campfires” The beginning of the Civil War coincided with the rise of dime novel publishing. These cheaply produced paper-bound series books with their sensationalized frontier tales were hugely popular with the troops of both armies. Boston publisher and abolitionist James Redpath initiated his own dime novel series entitled “Books for the Camp Fires.” Redpath’s goal was to expose his readers to works with a greater literary merit than the “blood and thunder” tales of his competitors. An early publication in the series was Clotelle, a strong anti-slavery novel by the African American writer William Wells Brown, originally written in 1853 and published in London. Bookmark this item // Passing the Time in Camp Much of a Civil War soldier’s life was spent in camp, searching for entertainment. Soldiers read books and newspapers, wrote letters, played cards and sports, sang songs, attended religious services, and perhaps found less wholesome activities as well. They also put on amateur theatrical performances. In his diary, topographical engineer Gilbert Thompson included production notes and programs, as well as sketches of the theater at Brandy Station, Virginia, and photographs of some male cast members assuming all male and female roles. On the first of these pages, Thompson also wistfully notes that he has turned twenty-five while in the army. Bookmark this item // Grant Loving Husband and Father The appalling casualty rates of the Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign made some in the North fear that Grant was a callous “butcher,” more insensitive to the value of his soldiers’ lives than Lee whose losses were equally high. Had the public been privy to the letters Grant wrote to his family, however, it would have seen a thoughtful, caring man, who remembered to send his wife a requested lock of hair and routinely sent kisses to his wife and children. Bookmark this item // A Few Appropriate Remarks at Gettysburg Included in the official party at the dedication of what would become Gettysburg National Cemetery, Commissioner of Public Buildings Benjamin B. French contributed a hymn to the program. French’s diary entry describing the day linked the past with the present as he recalled that former President John Quincy Adams’s efforts against slavery had come to fruition with President Abraham Lincoln’s promise of “a new birth of freedom” for the nation. In his diary, French recorded the approval of the crowd to Lincoln’s short but appropriate remarks, which history would enshrine as one of the greatest American speeches of all time. Bookmark this item // The Gettysburg Address This document represents the earliest known of the five drafts of the speech President Abraham Lincoln delivered in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at the dedication of a military cemetery on November 19, 1863—now known as “The Gettysburg Address.” Drawing inspiration from his favorite historical document, the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln equated the catastrophic suffering caused by the Civil War with the efforts of the American people to live up to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” This document is presumed to be the only working, or pre-delivery, draft and is commonly identified as the “Nicolay Copy” because it was once owned by John George Nicolay, Lincoln’s private secretary. The Library has two copies of the Address written in Lincoln’s hand, which will be on view in the spring and fall of 2013. Bookmark this item // Lincoln Finds a General Lincoln’s long struggle to find a commanding officer whose promises of success were supported by action ended with Ulysses S. Grant, whose victories in the West led to his appointment as general-in-chief of the Union army in March 1864. Grant coordinated offensives with Union commanders in other theaters of war, before taking to the field himself during the Overland Campaign in Virginia May–June 1864. Although casualties were high on both sides, Grant refused to follow precedent and withdraw to rest his army. He instead pressed forward with flanking maneuvers against Lee, vowing to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to continue the fight all summer if necessary. Ulysses S. Grant 1822–1885 to Edwin M. Stanton 1814–1869, May 11, 1864. Ulysses S. Grant Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0144] Read the transcript Bookmark this item // Battle of the Wilderness To offset partially a two-to-one numerical superiority, Lee allowed Grant to cross the Rapidian River in Virginia and set the stage for the Battle of the Wilderness May 5–7, 1864. It was here, near the old battlefield of Chancellorsville, that a nightmarish battle of the war was fought in tangled underbrush and trees that made vision difficult and cavalry and artillery useless. When the brush caught fire, many wounded were trapped in the flames. Alfred Waud’s drawing of the division under brigadier general James S. Wadsworth 1807–1864, who was mortally wounded while rallying his men, was reproduced in Harper’s Weekly the next month. Bookmark this item // Back to Top Messenger of Death Notification of a soldier’s death could come in a variety of ways, including personal letters from comrades and commanding officers, as well as impersonal newspaper casualty lists and telegrams. This telegram delivered the sad news of Brigadier General James S. Wadsworth’s death at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864. M. Ritchie to Fitzhugh & Jenkins. Telegram announcing death of General James Wadsworth 1807–1864, May 9, 1864. James Wadsworth Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0143] Bookmark this item // Petersburg Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign’s movement toward Richmond, Virginia, stalled in mid-June when Federal forces failed to take the important railroad city of Petersburg, south of the Confederate capital. Union troops laid siege to Petersburg from June 1864 to April 1865, with both sides digging in for a protracted period of trench warfare, punctuated by occasional offenses near the city and an ill-fated attempt by Pennsylvania miners to dig under Confederate lines. Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood of the 4th United States Colored Troops, a Medal of Honor recipient in 1865, recorded his impressions of the initial assault on Petersburg. Bookmark this item // Ladies’ Aid Issued as a broadside, this is a pattern for making slippers for Union soldiers. In the first six months of 1862, the Ladies’Aid Society of Philadelphia distributed more than 1,000 pairs of slippers, as well as thousands of boxes of other clothing, bedding, food, medicines, and books. Strapped by meager supplies and time-consuming military red tape, army hospital physicians and field commanders relied heavily on the efforts of voluntary aid groups. Throughout the war-torn country, women made clothing, grew food crops, raised funds, and managed distribution of supplies. Bookmark this item // Andersonville No Civil War prison was more notorious than Confederate Camp Sumter near the town of Andersonville in southwestern Georgia. Designed to accommodate 10,000 prisoners, “Andersonville” as the prison became known, held nearly 33,000 in August 1864—the largest number held at any one time during the prison’s fourteen-month existence. Lack of adequate shelter, food, and sanitary facilities ensured that diseases ran rampant. Thirty percent of the inmates died. Prisoner Samuel J. Gibson, a corporal in the 103rd Pennsylvania Infantry, reassured his wife in a letter dated June 12, 1864, that the conditions could be worse, but his August diary entry revealed the depths of his despair. A later lithograph based on Maine infantryman Thomas O’Dea’s recollection of his own incarceration, reminded the public of the emaciated and diseased state of those prisoners in the horrific summer of 1864. T. J. S. Landis after Thomas O’Dea, Co. E. 16th Maine Inf. Vols. Andersonville Prison, Camp Sumter, Ga., As It appeared August 1st 1864, When It Contained 35,000 Prisoners of War. Lithograph. New York Henry Seibert & Bro. Art Litho., ca. 1885. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID LC-DIG-ppmsca-10762] Samuel J. Gibson to Rachel A. Gibson, June 12, 1864, and diary entries of August 7–18, 1864. S. J. Gibson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0156] Read the transcript More about Samuel J. Gibson Samuel J. Gibson to Rachel A. Gibson, June 12, 1864, and diary entries of August 7–18, 1864. S. J. Gibson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0157] Read the transcript More about Samuel J. Gibson Bookmark this item // Memento Soldiers with free time in camp or in prison wrote letters home and made small handcrafted items from found objects. Both Confederate and Union prisoners often sent various items, including prison-made jewelry, to civilians who wrote to them or supplied such comfort commodities as tobacco and baked goods. Carved wood and bone rings were popular items, but this one is particularly unusual since it includes a tintype portrait of two children. Bookmark this item // Activist Union Women The first woman in America to become a physician, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell launched the Woman’s Central Association of Relief in April 1861 to “organize the whole benevolence of all the women of the country into a general and central association.” Blackwell’s goals were to systematize women’s relief work by staying informed of the changing needs of the army and soliciting the necessary supplies from its affiliated soldiers’ aid societies. The early work of the association inspired the creation of the United States Sanitary Commission later that year. Through the efforts of these organizations, millions of dollars worth of food, medicine, and clothing were sent to the Union forces in the field. Bookmark this item // Prisoners of War The Federal prison at Rock Island, Illinois, a small strip of land in the Mississippi River, held between 5,000 and 8,000 Confederate prisoners. This sketch of the prison was found in a letter written by Confederate soldier James W. Duke to his cousin in Georgetown, Kentucky. The drawing, by a soldier identified only as H. Junius, is apparently the item described in Duke’s letter as “the picture of our row of Barracks.” This idyllic scene of men strolling peacefully on the grounds or performing routine chores among the neatly maintained barracks probably reveals more about the restrictions placed on outgoing mail than on actual conditions within the prison. Bookmark this item // Back to Top “Sanitary Fair Grand March” Ambitious in scope, often grand in presentation, sanitary fairs became a prime method of raising funds to assist Union soldiers. Fundraising efforts during the 1864 Great Central Fair in Logan Square, Philadelphia, included concerts held at the Philadelphia Academy of Music and in private homes. These musical events were organized by the Ladies Central Committee of Musical Entertainments, which was affiliated with the Philadelphia Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission. Edward Mack, a prolific composer with a song for every occasion, virtually guaranteed performance of his “Sanitary Fair Grand March” by dedicating it to Mrs. Elizabeth B. Biddle, chairwoman of the committee. Edward Mack 1826–1882. “The Sanitary Fair Grand March.” Philadelphia, 1864. Music Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0153] Bookmark this item // Drum-Taps Poet and Civil War nurse, Walt Whitman assembled lists of expressions for grief, suffering, and compassion to help formulate his poems of the Civil War. His Drum-Taps, the most important book of poetry to emerge from the war period, included accounts of calls to arms and of the personal heroism and comradeship of battlefields and encampments. At the book’s core was “The Wound-Dresser,” Whitman’s somber testament to the terrible afflictions of men in army hospitals and the quiet courage of those who cared for them. In his elegiac “Ashes of Soldiers,” the notes for which are shown in Whitman’s hand, the poet mourned the dead from all regions of the country and captured the high cost in sorrow paid to preserve unity. Walt Whitman 1819–1892. List of synonyms and notes for “Ashes of Heroes” [first published as “Hymn of Dead Soldiers”]. Holograph notes. Page 2. Feinberg-Whitman Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0148p1, cw0148] Read the transcript More about Walt Whitman Walt Whitman. Drum-Taps first issue. New York, 1865. Page 2. Walt Whitman Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0149, cw0149p1] Bookmark this item // Sheridan’s Command After Confederate general Jubal Early brought thousands of Southern troops to the gates of Washington, General Ulysses S. Grant formed the Union Army of the Shenandoah in August 1864, placing Major General Philip Sheridan in command. The army’s objectives were to destroy Early’s army and wreak havoc on the fertile lands of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, which was deemed the “Breadbasket of the Confederacy.” Grant ordered Sheridan to “take all provisions, forage and stock wanted for the use of your command. Such as cannot be consumed, destroy,” leaving the area so deprived that “crows flying over it . . . will have to carry their provender with them.” Alexander Gardner 1821–1882, photographer. Sheridan and His Generals [pictured from left to right Generals Wesley Merritt 1834–1910; Philip Henry Sheridan 1831–1888; George Crook 1828–1890; James W. Forsyth 1835[?]–1906; and George A. Custer 1839–1876 around a table examining a document, January 2, 1865. Albumen silver print, printed later by Moses P. Rice. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID LC-DIG-ppmsca-24021] Bookmark this item // New Roles for Women Following her thirtieth birthday on November 29, 1862, Louisa May Alcott decided to volunteer as a Union army nurse in Washington, The letters she wrote to her family about her experiences formed the basis for Hospital Sketches, the first critical and popular success achieved by the future author of Little Women. The first popular wartime account of wartime hospital conditions, the book exposed the poor management of military hospitals and the callous attitude of many doctors and sparked a movement for reform. Paid forty dollars for the book, Alcott insisted that five cents from each copy sold be donated to the growing population of Union war orphans. Bookmark this item // Burying the Dead Since most families could not afford the expense of recovering their soldiers’ bodies for burial at home, the hundreds of thousands of Civil War dead overwhelmed existing cemeteries, requiring the creation of new burial grounds. Arlington National Cemetery, now one of the most famous American cemeteries, was located purposely on General Lee’s family estate by Union Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs in 1864. In his diary Meigs wrote on June 10 “To Cemetery Soldiers Home. This is filled & being trimmed & decorated. Neatly laid out graves grassed with [indecipherable] white head boards & a gate lodge it is a very pleasant Cnty cemetery about 6000 soldiers are buried at it. Now all burials from Wash are made at Arlington.” Thousands of burials did take place in Arlington during the war, and Meigs joined their ranks in 1892. Montgomery C. Meigs 1816–1892. Diary entries, June 8–11, 1864. Page 2. Montgomery C. Meigs Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0154, cw0154p1] Bookmark this item // Destruction in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley was the scene of Stonewall Jackson’s brilliant 1862 Valley campaign. It was also the breadbasket of Lee’s army. As part of his combined strategy in 1864, Grant consolidated his forces and put General Philip H. Sheridan in command of the valley, with orders to defeat Confederate general Jubal Early and lay waste to this important rebel resource. According to Confederate Richard W. Habersham of Company C, Manning Guard, from South Carolina, Sheridan was very thorough in carrying out Grant’s orders. Bookmark this item // The Campaign of 1864 In early June 1864, the National Union Party, a temporary coalition of Republicans and War Democrats who had split from the anti-war Democratic Party met in convention at Baltimore and nominated Abraham Lincoln for a second term as president and Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and military governor of Tennessee, for the vice presidency. The 1860 invention of the economical tintype photographic process opened the door for candidates’ images to appear on campaign buttons for the first time. The other button on display promoted Lincoln’s opponent, George B. McClellan, who ran on the Democratic Party’s “peace party platform.” The African American soldier seated with his family on the left wears an 1864 Lincoln campaign button on the lapel of his jacket. It would be another six years before the Fifteenth Amendment gave African American males the right to vote. Unattributed. [Unidentified African American soldier in Union uniform with wife and two daughters]. Quarter-plate ambrotype, between 1863 and 1865. Liljenquist Family Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID LC-DIG-ppmsca-36454] Mathew B. Brady ca. 1823–1896, photographer. For President Abraham Lincoln—For Vice President Andrew Johnson. Tintypes with metal casing, 1864. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID LC-DIG-ppmsca-19442, LC-DIG-ppmsca-19443] Unattributed. [Gen. George McClellan campaign button for 1864 presidential election], 1864. Tintype with metal casing. Promised gift of the Liljenquist family, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress Bookmark this item // Back to Top The Destruction of Atlanta On September 2, 1864, Union troops under Major General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta. As this photograph attests, Union soldiers went well beyond their orders to destroy everything militarily useful and wrecked and burned much more. In 1866, photographer George N. Barnard published Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign, which contains sixty-one of his albumen prints of Civil War sites in Nashville, the Chattanooga Valley, Atlanta, and Savannah, as well as other locations associated with General Sherman’s command. Bookmark this item // Voting in the Field Artist William Waud followed his brother Alfred Waud onto the battlefields as a sketch artist. Trained as an architect in his native England, William Waud recorded the activities of the Army of the James. The grid on the sheet guided the composition of the image for the wood engravers in New York. Before the election, nineteen states enacted legislation allowing soldiers to vote in the field—the first time the nation had confronted the question of absentee voting. Soldiers from those states in the Army of the James were thus able to vote in the presidential election near Richmond, Virginia. Harper’s Weekly reported “Our soldiers do not by fighting our battles cease to be citizens, but are even more interested than others in the maintenance of the civil institutions for which they are ready to give up their lives. There can be no doubt as to the loyalty and sincerity of these men.” The soldiers vote would help carry Lincoln to victory in the 1864 election. Bookmark this item // Children and the War This photograph was taken by Charles R. Rees, who operated a thriving studio in Richmond, Virginia, at the beginning of the war. Rees was one of the era’s few photographers who signed his images directly on the glass plate. The barefoot young boy holds a photographic portrait of a soldier, suggesting that perhaps his father or another close relative had gone off to war, as was the case for so many other American children during the war. Children could also experience the war vicariously by staging battles with lead toy soldiers, like this boxed set sold as the “Campaign in Virginia.” Campaign in Virginia, 1864. Painted lead figures. Marian S. Carson Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0170b] Charles R. Rees, photographer. [Unidentified young boy holding a photograph of a soldier], between 1861 and 1865. Sixth-plate ambrotype. Promised gift of the Liljenquist family, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID LC-DIG-ppmsca-32461] Bookmark this item // Dixie Education The sectional tensions in the1850s inspired among Southerners a drive to produce their own textbooks to counter the North’s total dominance of the publishing industry. The Southern Commercial Convention of 1856 stated “The books rapidly coming into use in our schools and colleges at the South are not only polluted with opinions and arguments adverse to our institutions, and hostile to our constitutional views, but are inferior . . . to those which might be produced among ourselves.” Washington Baird, a Presbyterian minister from Georgia, wrote The Confederate Spelling Book as part of this effort, one of about eighty school texts produced within the Confederate States. Bookmark this item // LeRoy Wiley Gresham LeRoy Gresham had just turned seventeen when Major General William T. Sherman’s Union forces left Atlanta for their “March to the Sea,” and his diary entries reflect the anxiety felt by many Georgians who feared their homes would be in Sherman’s path. A longtime invalid, Gresham kept diaries that faithfully recorded the news, his Confederate sympathies, and perceptive details about life on the home front. He began a final entry on June 9, 1865, and died nine days later. LeRoy Wiley Gresham 1847–1865. Diary entries, November 16–November 20, 1864. Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4. Lewis H. Machen Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0173, cw0173p1, cw0173p2, cw0173p3] Read the transcript More about LeRoy Wiley Gresham Leroy Wiley Gresham. Sixth-plate hand-colored ambrotype, ca. 1856. Lewis H. Machen Family Papers, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID LC-DIG-ppmsca-33535] Bookmark this item // Women's Work Many women put their own lives on hold during the war to devote themselves to nursing or charitable activities. An agent for the United States Sanitary Commission, Mary Ann Bickerdyke worked within and outside of official channels to procure supplies for wounded soldiers and ensure sanitary conditions in military hospitals. “Mother Bickerdyke” left her own sons in the North to tend to Union boys in the field, which included those in Major General William T. Sherman’s army in Georgia in 1864. Bookmark this item // The Atlanta Campaign After boosting Union morale by occupying the vital Confederate railroad center of Atlanta, Georgia, Major General William T. Sherman, who had assumed command of the western armies after Grant’s promotion to general-in-chief, proposed a daring operation to which Grant and Lincoln somewhat hesitantly agreed. Leading 62,000 troops divided into two main columns, Sherman embarked on a “March to the Sea.” He intended to make the Confederates “howl” by having his men confiscate or destroy all materials useful to the Southern war effort as they marched across nearly 300 miles of hostile Georgia toward the port city of Savannah. This detailed map of the southeastern portion of the country shows fortifications and the lines of march of the 4th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 20th Army corps and cavalry. Bookmark this item // Back to Top “Sherman’s March to the Sea” In 1864, Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers III, of the 5th Volunteer Iowa Infantry was imprisoned in Columbia, South Carolina. When Byers learned of Sherman’s decisive military operation and the fall of Atlanta, he was inspired to write a five-stanza poem. In his autobiography, Byers would claim that the poem was smuggled out of the prison camp by an exchanged prisoner named Tower, who “carried the song in this wooden limb [artificial leg] through the lines to our soldiers in the North, where it was sung everywhere and with demonstration.” Set to music by J. O. Rockwell, the song was issued as sheet music and remained popular for decades after its first publication in 1865. Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers III 1838–1933. “Sherman’s March to the Sea.” Manuscript poem. Page 2. Music Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0175, cw0175p1] Read the transcript J. O. Rockwell, music. “Sherman’s March to the Sea.” Boston Oliver Ditson Company, 1882. Music Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0174] Bookmark this item // Savannah Falls Out of touch with the North and living largely off the land, Major General Sherman and his Union forces kept President Lincoln in suspense regarding the success of this operation for thirty-two days. On December 22, 1864, Sherman relieved the president’s anxiety, as this diary records, and sparked renewed celebrations in the North with the telegraph message that Savannah had fallen. The diary was kept by David Homer Bates, one of the operators in the War Department's Telegraph Office during the Civil War. The entry Bates recorded for December 26, shows the jubilation in Washington, that greeted Sherman’s news. David Homer Bates 1843–1926. November 1863–June 1865 diary, entries for December 19–27, 1864. Page 2 - Page 3. Alfred Whital Stern Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0177, cw0177p1, cw0177p2] Read the transcript More about David Homer Bates Unattributed. The Original Four Operators of the United States Military Telegraph Corps standing Samuel M. Brown d. 1877; front row, left to right David Strouse 1838–1861, David Homer Bates, and Richard O’Brien 1839–1923, between 1861 and 1866. Quarter-plate ambrotype. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID LC-DIG-ppmsca-34371] Bookmark this item // The Thirteenth Amendment Forever Free President Lincoln understood that the Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime measure that would not ensure freedom after the war. He also knew that the slave states that remained loyal to the Union were not included in the proclamation. The only way to truly eliminate the institution of slavery was an amendment to the United States Constitution, which Lincoln successfully lobbied the Congress to adopt. Witnessed by jubilant African Americans seated in the galleries, the Thirteenth Amendment was passed by the House of Representatives by a vote of 119 to 56 on January 31, 1865. Secretary of State William H. Seward issued a statement verifying the ratification of the amendment by the states on December 18, 1865. Thirty-eighth Congress of the United States. Ceremonial copy of the Thirteenth Amendment [signed by Abraham Lincoln and members of Congress], February 1, 1865. Abraham Lincoln Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID at0100] Thirty-eighth Congress of the United States. Ceremonial copy of the Thirteenth Amendment, February 1, 1865. John Hay Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0180_01] Bookmark this item // Healing Wounds, Rather than Causing Them Despite the wide path of destruction Major General Sherman’s army left behind on its marches through Georgia and South Carolina, Sherman professed no hatred for the Southern people. His object in making “Georgia howl” was not revenge, but rather to crush the Confederate will to continue fighting. The quicker the conflict ended, the faster the nation could begin rebuilding what the war had destroyed, physically and emotionally. Bookmark this item // Sherman’s Special Order No. 15 As Sherman’s troops swept through Georgia and the Carolinas, many freed slaves attached themselves to his army. Concerned about their welfare and their effect on the army’s progress, the general and Secretary of War Stanton conferred with black church officials in Savannah, who asserted that freed people needed access to land to sustain themselves. Thus, Sherman issued an order in January 1865 granting former slaves forty-acre plots of coastline property from Charleston, South Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida, and the right to oversee their own affairs subject to military and congressional authority. President Andrew Johnson would restore most of the confiscated land to its original owners after the war. William T. Sherman. Special Order No. 15, January 16, 1865. Page 2. William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0178, cw0178p1] Bookmark this item // A Supreme Court First The day after the House of Representatives passed the Thirteenth Amendment, another barrier was broken, this time in the judicial branch. Lawyer John S. Rock became the first African American admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court. Although Lincoln had been at odds politically with his former Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, he appointed him chief justice in light of Chase’s longstanding commitment to the rights of African Americans, which Rock also recognized. Bookmark this item // Burning Columbia, South Carolina William Waud’s dramatic image of Union soldiers looting and destroying Columbia, South Carolina, created a celebratory image for Harper’s Weekly readership, designed to rally support for the war, now in its fourth year. Fires set by departing Confederate soldiers and those set by some of General Sherman’s least disciplined troops, combined with the aid of high winds, consumed much of Columbia on February 17, 1865. In the days that followed, Sherman’s troops destroyed the city’s railroad facilities, supply depots, and other infrastructure deemed militarily useful to the enemy. Bookmark this item // Back to Top Desperate Measures “It is now becoming daily more evident to all reflecting persons that we are reduced to choosing whether the negroes should fight for us or against us,” wrote President Jefferson Davis to a friend in February 1865. Despite continuing opposition, the Confederate Congress passed a bill authorizing the enlistment of slaves as soldiers. The law did not guarantee emancipation for slaves who served under the Confederacy; their freedom would be at the discretion of their owners and the laws of their state of residence. The legislation was enacted too late to have any impact on the Confederate war effort. [ Senate Bill No. 190. “A Bill to Provide for Raising Two Hundred Thousand Negro Troops,” February 10, 1865. Confederate States of America Collection, Law Library, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0184] Bookmark this item // Unconditional Surrender While celebrated for their colored lithographic prints of bucolic scenes from American life, the firm of Currier & Ives also issued a number of black-and-white political cartoons supporting of the Union cause. This print depicts Union generals Sheridan, Grant, and Sherman, and vice admiral Farragut only willing to entertain a complete military victory over the South, which is represented by Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. Aimed not only at the Confederate leadership but also at the antiwar Copperheads in the North’s Democratic Party, the cartoon alludes to false Confederate peace overtures and to the 1864 Democratic platform, which called for “a cessation of hostilities with a view to an ultimate convention of the states, or other peaceable means” to restore the Union. A joint resolution issued by the Confederate States of America, shown here, advocates for peace but separation from the Union as late as February 20, 1865. The True Peace Commissioners. New York Currier & Ives, 1864. Alfred Whital Stern Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cph-3b38537] [ House of Representatives. Joint Resolutions Expressing the Sense of Congress on the Subject of the Late Peace Commission, February 20, 1865. Confederate States of America Collection, Law Library, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0185] Bookmark this item // The Desperate Finale After evacuating Richmond, President Jefferson Davis and key Confederate officials arrived in Danville, Virginia, on April 3, 1865. With no communication from the Confederate armies still in the field, the situation was dire. Nevertheless, in his last official proclamation as president on April 4, Davis issued this handbill reassuring the citizens that “nothing is now needed to render our triumph certain but the exhibition of our own unquestionable resolve.” As Davis would later admit, when the proclamation was “viewed by the light of subsequent events, it may fairly be said it was over-sanguine.” Jefferson Davis 1808–1889. Address of the President. To the People of the Confederate States of America. Danville, Virginia, 1865. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0191] Bookmark this item // Petersburg The campaign of the Union’s Army of the Potomac to dislodge Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia from Petersburg and Richmond lasted almost a year June 1864–April 3, 1865 with heavy use of trench warfare and near constant artillery fire. This photograph taken during the siege of Petersburg by David Knox for Alexander Gardner’s studio shows a mammoth Union mortar, aptly named the “Dictator.” The nearly nine-ton, thirteen-inch mortar was transported by rail and when fired would rain heavy fragments of iron shell down on the enemy soldiers. Eventually time and dwindling Confederate resources proved to be the most decisive weapon against Lee, who found it increasingly difficult to repulse Grant’s flanking maneuvers during the long siege of Petersburg. When continuing to hold the city appeared futile, Lee abandoned Petersburg and recommended the evacuation of Richmond. Bookmark this item // President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address In 1864, Lincoln was reelected, carrying fifty-four percent of the popular vote and all but three northern states—New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky. The president delivered his Second Inaugural Address from the east portico of the Capitol, under the building’s newly completed iron dome, on March 4, 1865. The power of the address is deepened by its conciseness and brevity, particularly when it is read in counterpoint with Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address. This typeset version of the address with a few annotations in Lincoln’s hand was the president’s reading copy on inauguration day. The spacing of each cut-and-pasted passage gives the viewer a sense of how he delivered the speech. Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865. Inaugural Address, March 1865. Pasted-up typeset reading copy. Abraham Lincoln Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID al0206_05] Bookmark this item // Appomattox Court House This schematic map records the historic moment when General Lee and his Confederate forces surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House in central Virginia on April 9, 1865. The most important sites are noted on the map in a key at the bottom of the drawing “A. [McLean] House at which Gen’l. Lee received Gen’l. Sheridan afterwards Grant,—where agreement was signed; B. Appomattox C. H.; C. Custar’s [sic] 3rd Cav. Div., R. Reserve Cavalry Brigade—In advance on extreme right, L. Lee’s army massed, and W. Wagon’s retiring.” The formal surrender occurred on April 12, exactly four years after the war began. Bookmark this item // “I Bid You an Affectionate Farewell” On the rainy morning of April 10, 1865, the day after he agreed to Grant’s terms of surrender at Appomattox Court House, General Robert E. Lee authored his famous farewell address to the Army of Northern Virginia, known officially as “General Order No. 9.” Colonel Theodore Lyman, a staff officer under the command of Union general George Meade, recalled upon meeting Lee later that day that he was “exceedingly grave and dignified—this I believe, he always was; but there was evidently an extreme depression, which gave him an air of a man who kept up his pride to the last, but who was entirely overwhelmed.” Bookmark this item // Back to Top The Fall of Richmond The “Burnt District” in Richmond was a pitiable sight for the various photographers who scrambled to record the Confederate capital in the last days of the Civil War. As the government collapsed and people rioted, fires—meant to destroy the arsenal, bridges, and anything of military value—spread to a large part of the city’s prime commercial district. Richmond’s weary and long-suffering inhabitants searched for missing friends and relations and combed the ashes for what could be saved. Northern forces, including an African American infantry brigade, entered burned-out Richmond on April 3, 1865. On the following day, President Lincoln visited the devastated Confederate capital. Andrew J. Russell 1829–1902. [Ruins on Carey Street, Richmond, Virginia, showing two women dressed in black approaching a shell of a four-story building gutted by fire], April 1865. Albumen silver print. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cph-3g04593] Unattributed. Ruins on Carey Street, Richmond, Virginia, April 1865 [printed later]. Albumen silver print. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID LC-DIG-ppmsca-33070] Bookmark this item // Hoisting the Flag at Fort Sumter Brass bands flourished in the United States throughout the last half of the nineteenth century and were popular in both the North and South during the Civil War. In July 1861, cornetist Gustavus W. Ingals was commissioned to organize selected New Hampshire and Massachusetts musicians to become the band of the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment. The band became one of the finest such ensembles and is now best remembered as the “Port Royal Band” because of an extensive duty tour at Port Royal Island, South Carolina. Its instruments consisted mostly of saxhorns—cornets and tubas—and they played largely from “part books,” like the ones displayed here, designed for individual instruments. It is believed that the band played during the Federal flag-raising ceremony at Fort Sumter on April 14, 1865. 3rd New Hampshire Regiment. “Star-Spangled Banner” for 1st E flat cornet and closed manuscript part book. Page 2. Music Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0195, cw0195_01] [The ceremony at Fort Sumter during which General Robert Anderson raised the flag he had been forced to take down exactly four years before], April 14, 1865. Reproduction from glass plate negative. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cwpb-02464] Bookmark this item // Artifacts of Assassination When Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, on April 14, 1865, he was carrying two pairs of spectacles and a lens polisher, a pocketknife, a watch fob, a linen handkerchief, and a brown leather wallet containing a five-dollar Confederate note and eight newspaper clippings, including several favorable to the president and his policies. Given to his son Robert Todd Lincoln upon Lincoln’s death, these everyday items, which through association with tragedy had become relics, remained with the Lincoln family for more than seventy years. Bookmark this item // Eyewitness to Lincoln's Assassination By assassinating President Lincoln in a crowded theater on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth ensured there would be many witnesses to his act. James S. Knox was in Ford’s Theatre on the fateful night and recounted the event for his father in a letter written the next day. The exuberant cheers that greeted the president’s arrival turned to cries of horror at the president’s wounding. Knox vowed never to forgive or forget Booth’s traitorous deed. Bookmark this item // Feeding the Public Hysteria Dime novel publishers such as T. R. Dawley were better positioned than traditional publishing houses to quickly produce titles related to topical news events. Dion Hasco’s J. Wilkes Booth, The Assassinator of President Lincoln was widely sold in Northern cities just a few weeks following Booth’s death at the Garrett Farm in Virginia on April 26, 1865. While presumably a fictionalized account of the assassination it was issued as part of Dawley’s New War Novels, it was among the popular works that cultivated public perceptions that the Lincoln assassination was orchestrated at the highest levels of the Confederate government. Dion Hasco. J. Wilkes Booth, The Assassinator of President Lincoln. New York T. R. Dawley, 1865. Alfred Whital Stern Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress [Digital ID cw0215] Bookmark this item // Back to top
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    • in november of 1863 the city of atlanta