The Battle of Ezra Church occurred during Sherman's Atlanta campaign in July 1864, as Union forces sought to isolate the Confederate capital of Atlanta by severing its supply lines. From May to July 1864, Sherman's numerically superior Union forces had pressed back their Confederate opponents to the outskirts of Atlanta. Confederate President Jefferson Davis, dissatisfied with the defensive strategy of General Joseph E. Johnston, replaced him with the more aggressive General John B. Hood. Hood immediately launched two major offensives—the Battle of Peachtree Creek on July 20 and the Battle of Atlanta on July 22—both of which failed with heavy losses. The Battle of Ezra Church represented Hood's third major counterattack in the span of nine days.
On July 28, 1864, Major General William T. Sherman directed Oliver Otis Howard's Union Army of the Tennessee in a flanking maneuver around the west side of Atlanta, aiming to cut the Macon and Western Railroad. Hood responded by sending two corps under the command of Stephen D. Lee and Alexander P. Stewart to block this movement. Before Howard's troops could reach the railroad, the Confederate forces launched several attacks against the Union position. These assaults were repulsed by the Union defenders, inflicting heavy casualties on the attacking Confederate forces.
Despite being defeated tactically, Hood's Confederates achieved a strategic success by preventing Sherman's forces from immediately blocking the railroad. However, this victory proved temporary, as Sherman persisted in his plan to cut the railroads leading into Atlanta over the next month. The battle demonstrated Hood's willingness to accept heavy losses in aggressive counterattacks, a pattern that would continue to weaken Confederate strength around 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.
Union ~700; Confederate ~3,000
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