The Battle of Resaca, from May 13 to 15, 1864, formed part of the Atlanta campaign during the American Civil War, when a Union force under William Tecumseh Sherman engaged the Confederate Army of Tennessee led by Joseph E. Johnston. The battle was fought in Gordon and Whitfield counties, Georgia, and is generally viewed as inconclusive.
The campaign began with Johnston holding strong defensive positions at Buzzard's Roost Gap and Rocky Face Ridge, which he hoped Sherman would assault. He was compelled to abandon Dalton when the Union Army of the Tennessee under James B. McPherson seized the unguarded Snake Creek Gap on May 8, threatening Resaca from the west. Johnston retreated to Resaca where he was joined by reinforcements gathering there; he was pursued by Sherman, most of whose forces followed McPherson through Snake Creek Gap, while others came south down the Western and Atlantic Railroad.
On May 14, Sherman gained a foothold west of Resaca but an attack on Confederate defenses to the north and northwest was repulsed, as was an assault by Johnston on the Union left flank later the same day. On May 15, Sherman's attack to the north and a Confederate counterattack were both stopped, but other Union forces seized a bridgehead on the south bank of the Oostanaula River. With his line of retreat threatened, Johnston abandoned Resaca that night and retreated south to Adairsville, where there was a skirmish on May 17.
On April 30, Sherman commanded the Military Division of the Mississippi and gathered a field army numbering 110,000 soldiers of which 99,000 were available for "offensive purposes". All of the Union army's 254 guns consisted of 12-pounder Napoleons, 10-pounder Parrott rifles, 20-pounder Parrott rifles, and 3-inch Ordnance rifles. The 25,000 non-combatants accompanying the army included railroad employees and repair crews, teamsters, medical staff, and Black camp servants. Sherman directed elements of three armies.
According to Jacob Dolson Cox, the Army of the Cumberland led by George H. Thomas mustered 60,000 troops and 130 guns, the Army of the Tennessee under James B. McPherson counted 25,000 soldiers and 96 guns, and the Army of the Ohio commanded by John Schofield numbered 14,000 men and 28 guns.
Mark M. Boatner III credited Thomas' army with 63,000, McPherson's army with 24,000, and Schofield's army with 13,500. On May 1, Sherman had 88,188 infantry, 4,460 artillery, and 6,149 cavalry, or an effective strength of 98,797 men. According to Kevin W. Young, Sherman had 110,000 troops.
Thomas' army was made up of the IV Corps under Oliver Otis Howard, the XIV Corps under John M. Palmer, the XX Corps under Joseph Hooker, and three cavalry divisions led by Edward M. McCook, Kenner Garrard, and Hugh Judson Kilpatrick. McPherson's army consisted of 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. would not join until June 8. Schofield's army was made up of the XXIII Corps under Schofield and a cavalry division led by George Stoneman. The IV and XX Corps each numbered 20,000 soldiers, the XIV Corps totaled 22,000, the XV Corps had 11,500, while 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.
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