Jonesborough

Fought over two days, August 31 through September 1, 1864, the clash at Jonesborough pitted Sherman's Union forces against Confederate troops commanded by Hardee, forming part of the larger Atlanta campaign. Acting under instructions from Hood, who led the Army of Tennessee, Hardee launched an assault against the Federal position on the opening day, only to see his men driven back with severe casualties. That night brought a fateful decision from Hood, who instructed Hardee to withdraw half of his remaining force back toward Atlanta. When the second day dawned, five Union corps had converged upon the town of Jonesborough, known today as Jonesboro. What followed was remarkable: a direct Union assault actually broke through Confederate lines, something that happened nowhere else throughout the entire Atlanta campaign. Nine hundred Confederate soldiers fell into Union hands during this breach, though the defenders managed to contain the damage and hastily construct alternative defensive positions. Remarkably, given the lopsided numbers arrayed against him, Hardee managed to withdraw his corps southward under cover of darkness without detection.

Earlier attempts by Sherman to compel Hood into giving up Atlanta had failed, prompting him to commit six of his seven infantry corps to a southward sweep. His aim centered on severing the Macon and Western Railroad, the only rail connection into Atlanta that remained intact. Three of Sherman's corps advanced close enough to bombard this railroad near Jonesborough with artillery, and Hood responded by dispatching two of his own three infantry corps to repel them. Even as combat raged at Jonesborough, a separate pair of Union corps succeeded in cutting the rail line on August 31. Once Hood realized that the city's last supply route had been severed, he ordered Atlanta abandoned on the evening of September 1. Federal troops marched into the city the following day, bringing the campaign to its close. The Confederate army under Hood survived intact, yet Atlanta's capture carried consequences reaching well beyond the battlefield, shaping both the political climate and the war's military trajectory.

Battle

At nine that morning Sherman sent word to Howard demanding that he seize and hold a point on the railroad, telling him plainly that the road was essential and worth a heavy battle to secure. Howard answered that Confederate troops were pouring into the area with great speed and that he suspected an attack was coming. By his own judgment, the Confederate concentration at Jonesborough had grown too formidable for him to strike first. For Hardee, morning had proven impossible for launching an assault. A false report sent his corps in the wrong direction, delaying its arrival until daybreak, and the entire force was not in position at Jonesborough until nine o'clock. Lee's corps was not due until noon. Upon learning that three Union corps stood before him with two more nearby, Hardee asked Hood to travel to Jonesborough and take command personally. Hood's answer was simply to repeat his earlier order, insisting the attack proceed with bayonets fixed. While these exchanges took place, Howard's men worked steadily to strengthen their earthworks.

Logan's XV Corps positioned Harrow's division on the right and Hazen's on the left, holding Osterhaus in reserve. Corse's division from XVI Corps extended Logan's right, and Bryant's brigade from XVII Corps covered his left. The rest of Ransom's XVI Corps waited on the Flint River's west bank behind Logan's right, while the balance of Blair's XVII Corps held the west bank behind his left. Engineers threw up bridges linking the three corps for mutual support. Fuller commanded the remaining XVI Corps division, and Giles Alexander Smith and Charles R. Woods led the two divisions of XVII Corps. Farther south, one of Kilpatrick's cavalry brigades guarded Anthony's Bridge on the east bank, backed by a four-gun battery across the river. Howard tallied his strength at twelve thousand men in line and seventy-five hundred held in reserve, with the thousand-strong 1st Missouri Engineer Regiment from the Army of the Cumberland available if needed.

Not until half past one did S. D. Lee's corps fully assemble at Jonesborough, its men exhausted from two nights of little rest. One brigade escorting Lee's ammunition train was forced to take a roundabout path because Federal troops blocked the direct road. Although the combined strength of Hardee's and Lee's corps stood at twenty six thousand infantry present for duty, historian Castel judged that only twenty thousand were actually fit to fight, since hundreds had straggled along the march, prompting one general to remark he had never witnessed such disorder. Hardee positioned his own corps, under Cleburne, on the left, with Lee's corps on the right. Within Hardee's command, Lowrey led Cleburne's division on the left flank, Brown commanded Bate's division on the right, and Maney's troops, representing Cheatham's division, waited behind Lowrey. A battalion of sappers and dismounted cavalry under McGuirk supported Cleburne's flank. On the opposite side, Lee arranged Stevenson's division on his left, Anderson commanding Brown's division on the right, with Clayton's division held in support behind Anderson. Jackson's cavalry screened both flanks of the combined force.

Hardee's design called for the two corps to strike in echelon, moving from left to right. Lowrey's division would open the assault, trailed by those of Brown and Maney. Stevenson would then press against the center of Logan's line, while Anderson and Clayton delivered the main blow against the Federal left. In essence, Cleburne's corps was to swing north and strike the line held by Ransom's men, while Lee's men bore down on Logan's position. Hardee again insisted that bayonets be fixed for the charge, though brigade commander Manigault later remembered his troops receiving the order with little enthusiasm.

At three o'clock Hardee's guns opened up, and roughly ten minutes afterward Cleburne's skirmishers advanced. Mistaking this skirmish fire for his cue, Lee sent his corps forward too so

In popular media

The 1939 film Gone with the Wind contains well-known moments portraying the fires that swept through Atlanta once Confederate forces had withdrawn from the city.

Aftermath

Pushing southward, Sherman's men caught up with Hardee's force of 10,000, dug in a mile north of Lovejoy's Station, by the afternoon of September 2. Light skirmishes that day did nothing to push Hardee out of position. The following morning, word reached Sherman directly from Slocum confirming that Federal forces now held Atlanta, and he judged the moment right to close out the campaign. Union forces kept facing off against Hardee until September 5, at which point they pulled back toward Atlanta. On September 4, Sherman put out Special Field Order # 64, telling his men that the army, having finished its task of thoroughly reducing and occupying Atlanta, would now hold the city and surrounding territory until a fresh campaign could be worked out alongside the other major Union forces. Writing officially to Halleck, the Union's chief of staff, Sherman put it plainly: Atlanta belonged to them now, honestly taken, and rather than press the pursuit further he would soon bring his troops back to the city to rest.

On more than one occasion between August 27 and September 3, circumstances gave Sherman a shot at wrecking most or all of Hood's army, yet he let those chances slip by. His attention stayed fixed instead on the original aim, seizing Atlanta by cutting its rail links to the rest of the Confederacy. As a result, Hood's force lived on to fight again, though weakened by losses in battle and by desertion. Even so, taking Atlanta turned into a major win on the political and strategic front for Sherman. With Grant's Overland campaign bogged down in the grinding Siege of Petersburg, the North badly needed some sign of progress ahead of the 1864 election. For people back home, Atlanta's capture read as proof that the war effort was succeeding. Just weeks earlier, in late August, the Democratic Party had put forward a platform declaring the war effort a failure, a claim that now looked hollow. Backers of the Republican Party and of President Lincoln took heart from the win, while in the South the city's fall brought only gloom. Lincoln ultimately carried the 1864 presidential election, taking 212 electoral votes against 21 for his Democratic opponent, George B. McClellan.

By 1872, many of the soldiers killed in the fighting had been dug up and moved to the Patrick R. Cleburne Confederate Cemetery for reburial.