Kennesaw Mountain

On June 27, 1864, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Kennesaw Mountain in what became the largest direct infantry charge Sherman ordered during the Atlanta campaign. Major General William T. Sherman's troops moved against General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee, and though the Confederates held their ground and inflicted a tactical setback on the attackers, they could not achieve the one outcome their cause needed most: stopping Sherman's march toward Atlanta, Georgia.

For the first two months of his advance, Sherman had relied on flanking movements rather than direct confrontation, repeatedly forcing Johnston to abandon well-built defensive positions while keeping casualties low on both sides. This pattern continued across roughly 70 miles (110 km) of Georgia terrain until Confederate fortifications atop Kennesaw Mountain, close to Marietta, brought the advance to a halt. Rather than maneuver again, Sherman decided on June 27 to try a different approach and committed his men to a massive frontal assault. Major General James B. McPherson created a diversion at the mountain's northern end, and under his command Major General John A. Logan's corps struck Pigeon Hill at the southwestern edge. Simultaneously, Major General George H. Thomas pressed hard against Cheatham Hill, situated in the middle of the Confederate defenses. Union forces suffered heavy casualties and were driven back at both points. Yet a diversionary movement led by Major General John M. Schofield paid off strategically, endangering the Confederate left flank badly enough to force Johnston's army into another retreat toward Atlanta, an outcome that ultimately cost Johnston his command.

Background

Grant received a promotion to lieutenant general in March 1864 and took command as general in chief of the Union Army. His plan called for a series of coordinated offensives launched at the same time against the Confederacy, the goal being to keep rebel forces from shifting troops between fronts along interior lines to reinforce one another. Of these efforts, two carried the greatest weight. Meade, leading the Army of the Potomac with Grant traveling alongside him, would move directly against Lee's forces and push toward Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. Meanwhile Sherman, who took over from Grant as head of the Military Division of the Mississippi, was tasked with pushing from Chattanooga, Tennessee, toward Atlanta.

At the outset, destroying the Confederacy's two main armies mattered more to both Grant and Sherman than seizing enemy territory or cities, which they viewed as secondary. Lincoln had pushed for this kind of approach for years, though Grant became the first commander to genuinely embrace it in practice. Still, as the campaigns unfolded, capturing Richmond and Atlanta grew increasingly central to their thinking for political reasons. Atlanta in particular had become an essential objective by 1864. This city of some 20,000 residents sat at a junction where four vital rail lines converged, lines that kept the Confederacy supplied, and it also functioned as a manufacturing center for war materials. People called it the "Gate City of the South," and the name fit, since losing it would leave nearly the whole Deep South exposed to Union advance. Grant instructed Sherman to move against Johnston's army, break it apart, and push as deep into enemy territory as possible while destroying as much of the Confederacy's capacity to wage war as he could.

Roughly 100,000 troops made up Sherman's command, divided among three armies. McPherson led the Army of the Tennessee, the same force Grant and later Sherman had commanded during 1862 and 1863. Thomas commanded the Army of the Cumberland. Schofield headed the smaller Army of the Ohio, which consisted solely of the XXIII Corps. Standing against them was the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Johnston, who had taken over after Bragg, unpopular among his men, was removed following his loss at Chattanooga in November 1863. This 50,000 strong force included infantry corps led by lieutenant generals Hardee, Hood, and Polk, along with a cavalry corps commanded by Wheeler.

Start of the Atlanta campaign

The push toward Atlanta commenced on May 7, when Sherman set his three armies in motion from around Chattanooga. His men made feint assaults against Johnston's stronghold atop the long, elevated Rocky Face Ridge, giving cover for McPherson's Army of the Tennessee to slip quietly around the Confederate left toward Resaca and the vital Western & Atlantic Railroad line that fed Johnston's forces. The plan faltered when McPherson ran into a modest body of entrenched Confederates near Resaca and chose to retreat cautiously to Snake Creek Gap, letting slip a real chance to snare the enemy army. Sherman then redirected his whole force toward Resaca, prompting Johnston to fall back and take up new ground there. The two sides clashed head on during the Battle of Resaca on May 14 and 15, yet neither side gained a clear advantage, and Sherman again outmaneuvered his opponent, this time by crossing the Oostanaula River. Johnston pulled back once more, sparking a skirmish at Adairsville on May 17 and he

Battle

Sherman aimed first to stretch and thin Johnston's defenses by having Schofield push his army further to the right. With that accomplished, McPherson would use cavalry and one infantry division to feint against the far left of the Confederate position, covering the northern edge of Marietta and the northeastern tip of Kennesaw Mountain, while directing his real effort at the southwestern end of Little Kennesaw Mountain. Thomas's army carried the heaviest burden, striking the Confederate center directly, while Schofield probed the enemy's left near the Powder Springs Road and struck wherever the odds loo

A soldier's perspective

Sam Watkins, who served as a volunteer with the 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment on the Confederate side, offers his own account of the fighting in his book Company Aytch, within the portion titled "Dead Angle, on the Kennesaw Line."

Aftermath

The casualty toll fell unevenly on the two sides: Sherman's armies lost roughly 3,000 men, while Johnston's losses numbered about 1,000. These figures did not immediately discourage the Union commander, who pressed Thomas twice to launch another assault. Sherman remarked that his losses seemed minor set against certain eastern battles, but Thomas, known as the Rock of Chickamauga, warned that a couple more assaults of that kind would exhaust the army. Days afterward, Sherman confided to his wife that he had begun to view the death and mutilation of a couple thousand soldiers as almost routine, calling it a kind of morning dash.

This engagement at Kennesaw Mountain was not the first time Sherman had ordered a massive frontal attack, though it would prove to be the final one of his career. He had broken from his pattern of flanking maneuvers during the Atlanta campaign partly out of logistical necessity, and partly to leave Johnston uncertain about his future tactics. Sherman later explained that he sensed both the enemy and his own officers had grown convinced he would never assault fortified positions, expecting him always to outflank instead. He believed an effective army could not rely on one method of attack alone but needed readiness to pursue whatever approach promised success. For the sake of morale and psychological impact, he wanted to demonstrate that a direct assault against entrenched defenders could succeed, and he chose to attempt it where victory would yield the greatest rewards.

Historians generally regard Kennesaw Mountain as a notable tactical setback for the Union, though Richard M. McMurry observed that Johnston had achieved only a modest defensive win along Loring's and Hardee's lines. Schofield's accomplishment elsewhere, however, handed Sherman a significant edge, one he moved swiftly to capitalize on. After five days of close confrontation between the armies, favorable summer conditions on July 2 allowed Sherman to dispatch the Army of the Tennessee along with Stoneman's cavalry around the Confederate left. This maneuver compelled Johnston to abandon Kennesaw Mountain and retreat to fortified ground near Smyrna.

Sherman repeated the flanking strategy on July 8, this time striking Johnston's right for the first occasion, by directing Schofield across the Chattahoochee near where Sope Creek entered the river. With this move, the final significant natural obstacle guarding Atlanta had been cleared. The mounting threat to the city, combined with growing impatience over repeated Confederate retreats, led President Jefferson Davis to remove Johnston from command on July 17. His replacement was the more combative John Bell Hood, given a temporary promotion to full general. Hood then launched attacks against Sherman at Peachtree Creek on July 20, at Atlanta and Decatur on July 22, and at Ezra Church on July 28, suffering heavy losses in each without gaining any tactical benefit. Throughout August, Sherman kept Atlanta under siege while shifting nearly his whole force southward to sever the city's final rail link. When Hood struck again at Jonesboro on August 31 and September 1 in an effort to protect that railroad, he failed and had to abandon Atlanta altogether. Union troops marched into the city on September 2, prompting Sherman to wire President Lincoln that Atlanta belonged to them, fairly won. Many consider this achievement a crucial factor in securing Lincoln's reelection that November.