The Battle of Gilgal Church (June 15, 1864) was an action 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 June 10 and 19 along a front stretching northeast from Lost Mountain to Pine Mountain to Brushy Mountain. At Gilgal Church, attacks by the divisions of John W. Geary and Daniel Butterfield from Joseph Hooker's XX Corps were repulsed with about 700 casualties by Confederates from William J. Hardee's corps. That day in a separate action, other Union troops overran a Confederate skirmish line, capturing about 300 men. Gilgal Church was part of a series of minor actions that included the Battle of Latimer's Farm on June 17–18.
After the Battle of Dallas on May 28, Sherman moved northeast until he reached the Western and Atlantic Railroad at Acworth. On June 4, Johnston abandoned his defensive positions near Dallas and New Hope Church and withdrew to a new line of entrenchments. Sherman was reinforced by Francis Preston Blair Jr.'s XVII Corps, and on June 10 he resumed his offensive. Confederate corps commander Leonidas Polk was killed by an artillery round on June 14 at Pine Mountain. That evening, Johnston withdrew from Pine Mountain and Sherman's forces followed, bringing on the clashes near Gilgal Church. Shortly after the Union attacks failed, Johnston pulled Hardee's corps back to a new line behind Mud Creek. At Latimer's Farm, Union troops from Oliver Otis Howard's IV Corps gained a foothold in the Confederate line. On June 19, Johnston's Army of Tennessee fell back to fresh defenses based on Kennesaw Mountain.
William T. Sherman directed parts of three armies drawn from the Military Division of the Mississippi in the Atlanta campaign. On April 30, 1864, the Army of the Cumberland commanded by George H. Thomas numbered 73,000 troops and 130 guns, the Army of the Tennessee led by James B. McPherson counted 24,500 soldiers and 96 guns, and the Army of the Ohio under John Schofield fielded 11,362 infantry, 2,197 cavalry, and 28 guns. Sherman's forces were supported by 25,000 non-combatants including railroad employees and repair crews, teamsters, medical staff, and Black camp servants. Thomas' army included Howard's IV Corps, John M. Palmer's XIV Corps, Hooker's XX Corps, and three cavalry divisions led by Edward M. McCook, Kenner Garrard, and Hugh Judson Kilpatrick. McPherson's army was made up of John A. Logan's XV Corps and Grenville M. Dodge's Left Wing of the XVI Corps. Blair's XVII Corps joined McPherson's army on June 8. Schofield's army consisted of his own XXIII Corps and a cavalry division under George Stoneman. The IV and XX Corps each numbered 20,000 soldiers, the XIV Corps counted 22,000, the XV Corps had 11,500, and the XVI and XVII Corps each counted about 10,000 men.
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.
This page covers Battle of Gilgal Church - Second Fight. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Wikipedia source.
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.