The Battle of Rome Cross Roads, also known as Battle of Rome Crossroads, Skirmish at Rome Crossroads, or Action at Rome Cross-Roads was part of the Atlanta campaign of the American Civil War. It was fought in Gordon County, Georgia, a short distance west of Calhoun, Georgia, on May 16, 1864. The battle was a limited engagement between Union Army units of the Army of the Tennessee and Confederate States Army units of the Army of Tennessee in the aftermath of the Battle of Resaca, Georgia.
The Battle of Rome Cross Roads ended inconclusively with the Confederate Army units withdrawing. However, the Confederate force achieved the tactical objective of delaying Union Army pursuit. This allowed the Confederate wagon train and separated units of the Confederate force to reach the rendezvous point of Adairsville, Georgia, without being overtaken and attacked by Union forces after the Confederates had withdrawn from their defenses around Resaca, Georgia.
Union armies of the Military Division of the Mississippi under the command of Major General William T. Sherman engaged the Confederate Army of Tennessee under the command of General Joseph E. Johnston at the Battle of Resaca, Georgia on May 13–15, 1864. After two days of inconclusive but heavy and bloody combat, Union forces outflanked the Confederates by crossing the Oostanaula River, at Lay's Ferry, forcing the Confederates to withdraw from their advanced positions at Resaca. Both the Confederate forces and pursuing Union forces divided into three sections to hasten their movements south.
On May 16, 1864, the Union Army's 2nd Division, commanded by Brigadier General Thomas W. Sweeny, of Major General Grenville M. Dodge's XVI Corps, was the leading unit of the Army of the Tennessee in pursuit of the retreating Confederates of Lieutenant General William J. Hardee's Corp. The 2nd Division of the XVI Corps moved toward the intersection of the Rome-Calhoun Road and the Sugar Valley-Adairsville Road, near Calhoun, Georgia, in an attempt to cut off Hardee's Corps, including Confederate wagon trains. Hardee's Corps and the wagon trains were moving toward a rendezvous at Adairsville, Georgia with the other Confederate units that had withdrawn from Resaca.
General Johnston sent Hardee's Corps to block the Union advance and to protect the Confederate wagon train's withdrawal from Resaca. Hardee's Corps took up positions in the woods south of the Rome-Calhoun Road near the crossroad and anchored their line on Oothkalooga Creek.
As the leading Union skirmishers, Company G from the 66th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Western Sharpshooters), formerly Birge's Western Sharpshooters and later the "Western Sharpshooters-14th Missouri Volunteers", under the command of Captain George Taylor, advanced toward the crossroad, the Confederates launched a surprise attack from the woods. The 24th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment and the 1st Battalion Georgia Sharpshooters and the 16th South Carolina Infantry Regiment led the attack.
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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