The Battle of Dallas (May 28, 1864) was an engagement during the Atlanta campaign in the American Civil War. The Union army of William Tecumseh Sherman and the Confederate army led by Joseph E. Johnston fought a series of battles between May 25 and June 3 along a front stretching northeast from Dallas toward Acworth, Georgia. At Dallas a probe launched by William B. Bate's and William Hicks Jackson's Confederate divisions accidentally turned into a full-scale assault against the defenses of John A. Logan's XV Corps. The attack was driven off with heavy Confederate losses. The previous Union defeats at New Hope Church and the Pickett's Mill are sometimes considered with Dallas as part of one battle.
On May 23, Sherman moved away from his railroad supply line when he launched a wide sweep that aimed to turn Johnston's left flank. Johnston adroitly shifted his army toward Dallas to block Sherman's maneuver. The result was ten days of close fighting that resulted in more Union than Confederate casualties. After the Dallas battle, Sherman shifted his army to the northeast, looking for a way to turn the right flank of Johnston's entrenched defenses. On June 1, Union forces occupied Allatoona Pass on the Western and Atlantic Railroad line. This allowed the railroad to be repaired as far as that location and promised that future supplies could reach Sherman's army by train. On June 3, Union troops arrived at a flanking position that convinced Johnston to abandon his lines and fall back to another entrenched position that covered Marietta.
General-in-chief of the Union Army Ulysses S. Grant ordered Sherman, "to move against Johnston's army, to break it up, and to get into the interior of the enemy's country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources". Sherman commanded elements of three armies. The Army of the Cumberland under George H. Thomas was made up of the IV Corps led by Oliver Otis Howard, the XIV Corps under John M. Palmer, the XX Corps commanded by Joseph Hooker, and three cavalry divisions led by Edward M. McCook, Kenner Garrard, and Hugh Judson Kilpatrick. The Army of the Tennessee led by James B. McPherson included the XV Corps under John A. Logan and the Left Wing of the XVI Corps under Grenville M. Dodge. The XVII Corps under Francis Preston Blair Jr. did not join until June 8. The Army of the Ohio commanded by John Schofield consisted of the XXIII Corps under Schofield and a cavalry division commanded by George Stoneman. The XIV Corps had 22,000 men, the IV and XX Corps each numbered 20,000 soldiers, the XV Corps totaled 11,500, and the XVI and XVII Corps had about 10,000 men each.
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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