The Battle of Allatoona, also known as the Battle of Allatoona Pass, was fought October 5, 1864, in Bartow County, Georgia, and was the first major engagement of the Franklin-Nashville Campaign of the American Civil War. A Confederate division under Maj. Gen. Samuel G. French attacked a Union garrison under Brig. Gen. John M. Corse, but was unable to dislodge it from its fortified position protecting the railroad through Allatoona Pass.
After the fall of Atlanta, Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood moved the Confederate Army of Tennessee northward to threaten the Western and Atlantic Railroad, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's supply line. Hood's corps under Lt. Gen. Alexander P. Stewart attacked a number of minor garrisons and damaged track from October 2 to October 4. Hood ordered Stewart to send a division to attack the Federal supply base where the railroad ran through a deep gap in the Allatoona Mountain range and then move north to burn the bridge over the Etowah River. At Hood's suggestion, Stewart selected the division of Maj. Gen. Samuel G. French—three brigades commanded by Brig. Gens. Claudius Sears, Francis M. Cockrell, and William Hugh Young.
The small Federal garrison, commanded by Col. John Eaton Tourtellotte, was a partial brigade (1st Brigade, 3rd Division, XV Corps), consisting of the 93rd Illinois Infantry, 18th Wisconsin Infantry, and Tourtellotte's own 4th Minnesota Infantry. Before the Southern division arrived, Sherman ordered reinforcements be sent from Rome (3rd Brigade, 4th Division, XV Corps) to Allatoona, under the division commander, Brig. Gen. John M. Corse, who took command of both brigades. The Federal troops occupied strong defensive positions in two earthen redoubts on each side of a 180 feet (55 m), 65 feet (20 m) deep railroad cut and many of the men, including most of the 7th Illinois, were armed with Henry repeating rifles.
French's division arrived near Allatoona Gap during the early morning hours of October 5. The battle began at 7:00 A.M. when eleven Confederate-manufactured 12 pounder bronze Napoleon guns began firing upon the Union fortifications. Confederate artillery involved were two batteries of Myrick's Artillery Battalion manned by men of Capt. Alcide Bouanchaud's Battery of Louisiana, Capt. James J. Cowan's Battery of Warren County, Mississippi and a battery from Storr's Artillery Battalion, French's Division, Capt. R. F. Kolb's Battery of Alabama. French had ordered a one gun detachment to force the surrender of the blockhouse a few miles away on Allatoona Creek. Six guns of the 12th Wisconsin Battery answered the Confederate artillery. After a two-hour artillery bombardment, French sent a demand for surrender, which Corse refused. French then launched his units in an attack — Sears' brigade from the north (against the rear of the fortifications) and Cockrell's Missouri brigade, supported by Young, from the west.
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.
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