The Battle of Dallas occurred during Sherman's Atlanta campaign as part of a broader strategic maneuver in late May 1864. On May 23, Union commander William Tecumseh Sherman moved his army away from its railroad supply line to execute a wide flanking sweep intended to turn Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston's left flank. Johnston responded by skillfully repositioning his army toward Dallas to block Sherman's maneuver, setting the stage for ten days of intensive combat across a front stretching northeast from Dallas toward Acworth, Georgia.
The engagement at Dallas itself took place on May 28, 1864, when a Confederate probe initiated by divisions under William B. Bate and William Hicks Jackson unexpectedly escalated into a full-scale assault against the defensive positions of Union General John A. Logan's XV Corps. The Confederate attack was repelled with significant losses to Johnston's forces. This battle, along with earlier Union defeats at New Hope Church and Pickett's Mill, is sometimes considered part of a larger, interconnected engagement rather than as separate actions.
Following the Dallas battle, Sherman adjusted his strategy by shifting his army to the northeast in search of an opportunity to turn the right flank of Johnston's fortified defenses. The ten days of close fighting from May 25 to June 3 resulted in more casualties on the Union side than the Confederate side, though this proved tactically inconclusive. By June 1, Union forces achieved a significant strategic objective by occupying Allatoona Pass on the Western and Atlantic Railroad line, which would help secure Sherman's supply lines as the campaign progressed toward Atlanta.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.