The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood's First Effort to Save Atlanta

The Battle of Peach Tree Creek

Civil War America

PETER S. CARMICHAEL, CAROLINE E. JANNEY, and AARON SHEEHAN-DEAN, editors

This landmark series interprets broadly the history and culture of the Civil War era through the long nineteenth century and beyond. Drawing on diverse approaches and methods, the series publishes historical works that explore all aspects of the war, biographies of leading commanders, and tactical and campaign studies, along with select editions of primary sources. Together, these books shed new light on an era that remains central to our understanding of American and world history.

The Battle of Peach Tree Creek

Hood’s First Effort to Save Atlanta

EARL J. HESS

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

Chapel Hill

This book was published with the assistance of the FRED W. MORRISON FUND of the University of North Carolina Press.

© 2017 Earl J. Hess

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Set in Miller and Sentinel by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Cover illustration: The 111th Pennsylvania at Peach Tree Creek.

From John Richards Boyle, Soldiers True: The Story of the One Hundred and Eleventh Regiment Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, and of Its Campaigns in the War for the Union, 1861–1865 (1903).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hess, Earl J., author.

Title: The battle of Peach Tree Creek : Hood’s first effort to save Atlanta / Earl J. Hess.

Other titles: Civil War America (Series)

Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2017] | Series: Civil War America | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017007289| ISBN 9781469634197 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469634203 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Peachtree Creek, Battle of, Ga., 1864. | Hood, John Bell, 1831–1879. | Georgia—History—Civil War, 1861–1865. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns.

Classification: LCC E476.7. H465 2017 | DDC 973.7/371—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007289

For Pratibha and Julie, with love

Contents

Preface

  1:   To the Chattahoochee

  2:   Across the Chattahoochee, July 17–18

  3:   Across Peach Tree Creek, July 19

  4:   Preparations for Battle, July 20

  5:   Hardee versus Newton

  6:   Featherston versus Ward

  7:   Scott versus Geary

  8:   O’Neal versus Williams and Reynolds versus McCook

  9:   Rest of Day, July 20

10:   Cleaning Up

11:   July 21–22

Conclusion

Order of Battle

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

William T. Sherman / 3

Joseph E. Johnston / 22

John Bell Hood / 24

Joseph Hooker / 65

John Newton / 82

William J. Hardee / 85

George H. Thomas / 89

Clement H. Stevens / 92

Alexander P. Stewart / 105

Benjamin Harrison / 113

William T. Ward / 116

Joseph Hooker on the Battlefield / 123

John W. Geary / 131

Charles Candy / 136

111th Pennsylvania at Peach Tree Creek / 142

Alpheus S. Williams / 153

Joseph F. Knipe / 157

Anson G. McCook / 172

Peach Tree Creek Battlefield / 194

Maps

Chattanooga to Atlanta / 5

Chattahoochee River Area / 7

Evening, July 17 / 21

Evening, July 18 / 35

Evening, July 19 / 52

Three P.M., July 20 / 77

Hardee versus Newton / 83

Featherston versus Ward / 107

Coburn’s Brigade / 110

Harrison’s Brigade / 114

Wood’s Brigade / 119

Scott versus Geary / 132

Geary’s Division at Start of Battle / 134

Geary’s Division at End of Battle / 146

O’Neal versus Williams / 151

Robinson’s Brigade / 155

Knipe’s Brigade / 158

Reynolds versus McCook / 169

French versus Moore / 175

Midday, July 22 / 232

Preface

The midday sun was at its height on the afternoon of July 20, 1864, as the men of George H. Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland settled into positions south of Peach Tree Creek. The crossing had consumed many hours and was conducted in stages the day before and that morning. Now it was time for some of Thomas’s units to construct rude fieldworks, send out skirmishers, and consolidate their hold on the high ground just south of the stream. For other units, commanded by men who assumed there would be no fighting that day, there was an opportunity to lounge in the bottomland of the creek, fix a meal, and relax under the shade of trees.

But then, without warning, battle flags appeared from the woods south of Thomas’s new position, followed by division upon division of butternut-clad men. The Army of Tennessee was on the move, and its new commander, John Bell Hood, was making his first strike to save Atlanta. After falling back sixty miles from Dalton since early May, the Confederates attempted their first major attack on William T. Sherman’s army group as the enemy closed in on the outskirts of Atlanta. Hood hoped to take advantage of the fact that his enemy had just made a difficult crossing of Peach Tree Creek. His Confederates certainly took the Unionists by surprise. All along the developing battle front the Federals scrambled to get ready; two potentially dangerous gaps in the line of the Twentieth Corps were waiting to be exploited by the onrushing enemy, and some other bits of high ground still had not been secured by Union commanders along the line.

In short, there was reason for the Confederates to hope that Hood’s plan might work to their benefit. Only two days in command of the Army of Tennessee, Hood had precious little time to acclimate himself to a position he had not wanted and for which he possessed few attributes to fill. But he did his best to plan, position, and inspire his men despite widespread dissatisfaction at the relief of their beloved general Joseph E. Johnston and the elevation of someone who had served in the Army of Tennessee for only four months. Whether his men could fulfill Hood’s hope for a dramatic turnaround in Rebel fortunes during the Atlanta campaign would be worked out before dusk fell on that hot and bloody day of fighting north of the city.

This book tells the story of the battle of Peach Tree Creek—the battle of July 20, 1864, north of Atlanta. A successor to my studies of Kennesaw Mountain and Ezra Church, this book is also based on exhaustive research in primary sources and an examination of the ground. Its purpose is not only to detail the battle’s history in narrative fashion but to analyze and evaluate the major features of that history. Each phase of the Atlanta campaign possessed important aspects to explain the course of events from the May confrontation at Dalton to the final battle at Jonesboro in late August and early September. None of those phases were necessarily decisive in shaping the campaign, but all of them contributed to its contours and results. We need to understand each phase in its turn and how it contributed to the larger picture if we hope to understand one of the largest, most important, and most interesting campaigns of the Civil War.

The battle of Peach Tree Creek was heavily dominated by the sudden replacement of Johnston with Hood on July 17–18. In that event the Army of Tennessee lost its most respected commander (although one who did not hesitate to discipline the troops with executions for desertion) and gained a man whose capabilities were largely unknown. William J. Hardee, the only one of the army’s corps commanders with great experience in his job, was miffed at Hood’s ascension to command. Hardee’s colleagues (Alexander P. Stewart and Benjamin F. Cheatham) had not yet fought a battle with their new corps commands. Hood mandated an overly complex movement en echelon by divisions, and the attack took place several hours later than planned. The Confederates advanced with little information about the placement of their enemy, knew nothing of a one-and-a-half-mile gap in Sherman’s line, and were ill-informed that Sherman’s left wing was closing in along the eastern approaches to Atlanta. That latter development forced Hood to curtail the fighting at Peach Tree Creek earlier than anticipated.

Despite these disadvantages, the Confederates brought to bear a huge preponderance of manpower upon one division of Thomas’s army and found two gaps in the Twentieth Corps line as they approached the Federals south of Peach Tree Creek. Their failure to exploit these advantages doomed the Rebel effort that afternoon. A combination of poor Confederate troop handling, lack of offensive spirit, and very effective Union countermeasures evened the odds and resulted in a spirited Union victory. Hood completely failed in his objective, and the Army of the Cumberland achieved one more important success on the battlefield.

Morale loomed large as an element in the story of Peach Tree Creek. The Confederates suffered depressed spirits to a significant degree, and they were comparatively unused to offensive action thus far in the campaign. In fact the Army of Tennessee had not conducted a major attack since the battle of Chickamauga ten months before. Most Rebel soldiers did not know what to make of their new army commander. In contrast, the Federals had enjoyed unusually high morale for a long while before the Atlanta campaign began, and they had complete faith in Sherman’s ability to conduct the risky movements necessary to approach the city. They loved and trusted Thomas. We should keep in mind that the Federals were used to winning campaigns and battles, and the Confederates were not—an important factor in assessing troop morale. In terms of battle spirit, Peach Tree Creek matched the opponents at a time when the Confederates were at an important disadvantage, and the Federals were, as usual, riding high.

Looking objectively at the course of the fighting at Peach Tree Creek, it is striking that so many Confederate brigades in William J. Hardee’s Corps moved forward only part way across the contested ground before stopping well short of the Union line and doing little more than firing for the rest of the afternoon. Hardee greatly outnumbered the lone Fourth Corps division opposing him, commanded by John Newton, yet he utterly failed to capitalize on that unusual advantage. Even the men of Alexander P. Stewart’s Army of Mississippi, advancing to the left of Hardee, failed to exploit the two gaps in Joseph Hooker’s Twentieth Corps line. Ironically, about one-third of the troops in Winfield S. Featherston’s Mississippi Brigade did not even attempt to move into the gap they found, choosing to remain at the captured Union skirmish line rather than advance farther toward the enemy. Although some Rebel units would later attack well on July 22 and at Ezra Church on July 28, Peach Tree Creek marked the beginning of a deterioration of combat spirit among many other units in the Army of Tennessee.

The Federals of William Ward’s Union division responded remarkably well, surging forward up a steep slope to grapple in many places hand to hand with Featherston’s men, but they also tended to exaggerate the intensity of the fighting that developed. Ironically, Ward’s three brigades competed with only two-thirds of Featherston’s Brigade in this contest. Without taking anything away from the inspired fighting conducted by Ward’s division, it has to be pointed out that even in Stewart’s command a significant lack of fighting spirit hampered the Confederate effort on July 20.

Confederate fighting spirit increased after Peach Tree Creek but not in a uniform way. As the disruption caused by Johnston’s relief faded and Hood endured an agonizing transition period into army command, some units attacked with a good deal of determination on July 22 east of Atlanta when the Army of Tennessee came closer than at any other time in the campaign to winning an important victory over Sherman. Other units also attacked with a good deal of determination at Ezra Church on July 28. In both engagements, however, improved morale failed to translate into tactical success, and in each of them some Confederate units failed to press home their assaults. Peach Tree Creek represented the beginning of a trend in the Atlanta campaign, resulting in uneven battle spirit within Confederate ranks. As a result, the course of the campaign continued to be dominated by the Federals until the final agony at Jonesboro led to Hood’s evacuation of Atlanta on September 2, 1864.

Like all the battles that took place during the Atlanta campaign, Peach Tree Creek held the potential for decisive results. But, like all of them, those results were not realized. It would be misleading to argue that any one engagement in this long campaign was the decisive moment in Sherman’s struggle for Atlanta. Each one contributed in its own way toward shaping the course of the campaign and influencing its outcome. The purpose of this study is to determine how the battle of July 20 affected the events in Georgia, why it became a failure for one side and a success for the other, and how the battle affected the 46,000 men directly engaged in combat that hot afternoon in late July, more than 150 years ago.

I wish to thank all the staff members of the archival institutions listed in the bibliography for their assistance in making their valuable holdings accessible during the course of gathering material for this book. Also a note of thanks to all the graduate student researchers who aided me in accessing material at archives I was unable to visit personally.

The two scholars who read the manuscript for the University of North Carolina Press, Peter S. Carmichael and A. Wilson Greene, deserve a deep note of thanks from me for their helpful suggestions.

Most of all my deep gratitude to my wife Pratibha for all she means to me. She and I also are responsible for all the maps that appear in this book.

The Battle of Peach Tree Creek

1: To the Chattahoochee

I am getting very wearied of this eternal retiring.

—W. H. T. Walker

By the middle of July 1864, the Atlanta campaign had stretched into the longest and most grueling military effort in the Civil War’s Western Theater. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman had started from the vicinity of Chattanooga with some 100,000 men organized as an army group. Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland was the largest of the three armies in this group with about 60,000 men, and Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee consisted of about 30,000 men after the Seventeenth Corps joined it in early June. Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield’s Army of the Ohio, consisting only of the Twenty-Third Corps, was the smallest of the three with about 10,000 troops. These three armies were drawn from the military departments embraced by Sherman’s command, the Military Division of the Mississippi.¹

Sherman had benefited from the tutelage of Lieut. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who now served as general-in-chief of the United States Army. Grant made his headquarters with Maj. Gen. George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac so as to direct its operations against Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the East. His conduct of the Overland campaign astonished the country with its fierce attacks against Lee’s well-fortified positions. In driving south from the Wilderness to Petersburg, Grant lost 64,000 troops in six weeks of rugged campaigning, inflicting a proportionate number of casualties on Lee and laying semi-siege to an important rail center thirty miles south of Richmond.²

Sherman admired Grant’s aggressive approach to the thorny problem posed by Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, but he also was stunned by the human cost of that approach. He preferred a more cautious method of dealing with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, which consisted of about 60,000 men after Lieut. Gen. Leonidas Polk joined Johnston in mid-May with his Army of Mississippi. Polk’s command essentially formed a third corps for Johnston’s army, even though it technically constituted an independent force drawn from the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana.³

Sherman crafted an effective strategy, working it out through trial and error during the course of the Atlanta campaign. The foundation of that strategy was maneuver, for his larger force had many opportunities to find either of Johnston’s flanks whenever the Confederates took up a fortified position. Sherman experimented with several attacks, but they always were local rather than general in nature. Localized attacks tended to minimize casualties and reduce the resonance of failure; they never neutralized Sherman’s ability to continue operations after they failed. In contrast, Grant tended to attack more often and trusted too much on general assaults. He often gave little time to Meade for planning these massive efforts and too little attention was paid to heavy skirmishing and trying to reach Lee’s flanks in subtle movements. Of course, the well-known vigilance and aggressive tactics that characterized Lee’s handling of the Army of Northern Virginia in previous campaigns contributed to Grant’s sense of urgency; he could ill afford to be idle or complacent in front of the Army of Northern Virginia. But the result of Grant’s campaign thus far was apparent stalemate outside Petersburg with a military force that had lost about half the men in its ranks when it started the Overland campaign. The military effectiveness of the Army of the Potomac had been severely reduced by June and July, greatly contributing to the slow pace and often failed offensives of Grant’s efforts at Petersburg.⁴

Just as Lee’s reputation and conduct contributed to the nature of Grant’s operations in Virginia, the reputation and conduct of Joseph E. Johnston helped to shape the way Sherman conducted the Atlanta campaign. The two commanders had met before, in the Jackson campaign that followed the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863. At that time, Grant sent Sherman with a sizable force to deal with Johnston’s troops (who later constituted the core of Polk’s Army of Mississippi during the Atlanta campaign). Johnston refused to offer battle to Sherman as he fell back from the Big Black River twenty-eight miles to Jackson, having already failed to mount an effective effort to relieve the siege of Vicksburg, despite urgent entreaties from authorities in Richmond to do so. Johnston acted strictly on the defensive in the short campaign for Jackson, preferring to rely on the ring of fortifications that barely protected the capital of Mississippi. When Sherman made moves to cross the Pearl River and cut off his retreat east of the city, Johnston evacuated Jackson on the night of July 16. The Jackson campaign was a foretaste of Johnston’s handling of the Army of Tennessee in the Union drive toward Atlanta.⁵

William T. Sherman, commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi, whose calculations did not include having to deal with a Confederate attack at Peach Tree Creek on July 20. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-07315)

While Sherman retained a healthy respect for Johnston’s skill as an army administrator, he knew that his opponent was not an aggressive tactician.⁶ As long as he could maintain his tenuous line of communications (a rail line stretching 350 miles to Louisville) and keep his army intact, Sherman could afford to take his time in approaching Atlanta.

Several rivers not only posed obstacles to Sherman’s advance but marked geographic divisions along his march toward Atlanta. The Oostanaula River, which flowed from northeast toward the southwest near Resaca about twenty miles south of Chattanooga, marked the limit of Appalachian terrain. The area north of this stream consisted of high ridges that dominated the countryside, but Sherman had little difficulty maneuvering through it, using the long ridges to shield his flanking movements around the imposing Confederate positions. The Etowah River, draining toward the west some forty miles south of Chattanooga, marked the limit of a transition zone between Appalachia and the Piedmont. This was an area of more open and fertile country, also posing few difficulties to Sherman’s advance.⁷

When the Federals crossed the Etowah River on May 23, temporarily cutting away from the railroad, they entered a Piedmont region of rolling terrain often engulfed with thick pine forests and dotted by isolated villages. This territory slowed Sherman enormously and aided Johnston’s defensive tactics. The Federals often did not discover their enemy until within a few yards of their works, and Sherman’s massive army group found it difficult to maneuver across the narrow, primitive roads. When rains set in, the situation grew worse, and Federal progress slowed to a crawl. Only by working their way in short stages were the Unionists able to regain the railroad by June 7. Then Sherman continued to move in short stages southward until forcing Johnston onto the dominating heights of Kennesaw Mountain. He again experimented by launching a major attack, the largest of the campaign, on June 27. His 15,000 troops hardly dented the Confederates’ well-constructed earthen line, and suffered 3,000 casualties in the attempt. Only when he mounted a major movement away from the railroad to turn Johnston’s left flank did the Confederates give up Kennesaw Mountain and fall back on July 2.⁸

Johnston now gave up ground in smaller increments, exhibiting more determination to make his Fabian tactics work by tenaciously holding every possible defensive position. He fell back from the Kennesaw Mountain Line only a short distance to Smyrna Station, giving up that line on July 4 and taking up the Chattahoochee River Line along the north bank of that stream. It took Sherman two months to get this far, ninety miles on a straight line from Chattanooga and only ten miles north of Atlanta. Along the way the Federals lost about 21,000 men, and Johnston suffered about 9,000 casualties, far less than the Union and Confederate losses in Virginia.⁹

Chattanooga to Atlanta

But Sherman’s success thus far should not be underestimated. He had pried enemy forces out of ten fortified positions and was busy devising ways to eject them from the eleventh line. After that, the crossing of the Chattahoochee River itself represented an event of symbolic importance. It was, in a sense, Sherman’s Rubicon. Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon River in 49 BC had been a major event in Roman history; as the governor of Cisalpine Gaul, he was forbidden by law to take his troops across the border of that province and toward Rome or risk being branded an enemy of the state. In crossing the river to seize power, Caesar knew he had to either win or suffer the worst consequences. For Sherman the stakes were not so high, but once south of the Chattahoochee he could not go back across the river except after capturing Atlanta. To be driven back to the north side would be rightfully seen as a major military defeat with potentially dire consequences for the Northern war effort as a whole. Once across, the Federals had to whip Johnston decisively or drive him out of the city by other means to make a success of the Atlanta campaign.

Sherman dealt with the Chattahoochee River Line the same way he had dealt with the other ten Confederate positions—by threatening the flanks. He crossed a small force to the south side of the river at Isham’s Ford, upstream from both the railroad bridge and Johnston’s right flank, on July 8. This was enough for Johnston to order his army to evacuate the line on the night of July 9. Like most of the previous evacuations, it was conducted relatively smoothly and without interference from the enemy who did not know it had taken place until the early morning hours.¹⁰

But Johnston failed to tenaciously block the many crossing points of the river; instead, he pulled his troops close to Atlanta for rest and to watch enemy developments. This gave ample room for Sherman to create bridgeheads on the south side of the Chattahoochee at several locations with virtually no interference. Brig. Gen. Kenner Garrard’s cavalry division crossed at Roswell about twelve miles upstream from the railroad bridge on July 9. By the next day, Schofield’s Twenty-Third Corps crossed at the mouth of Soap Creek, using Isham’s Ford to get across the stream. On July 12, Maj. Gen. David S. Stanley’s Fourth Corps division, Army of the Cumberland, crossed at Isham’s Ford and moved more than three miles south to secure the bluffs on the east side of the Chattahoochee River opposite Power’s Ferry, making that crossing available to Sherman as well. After the 58th Indiana laid a pontoon bridge at Power’s Ferry, Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Wood’s Fourth Corps division crossed it to join Stanley on the south side. Brig. Gen. John Newton’s division of the Fourth Corps crossed the river at Roswell on July 13 and moved down to join Stanley and Wood.¹¹

Chattahoochee River Area

Within four days of Johnston’s drawback to the south side of the Chattahoochee, Sherman had all of Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s Fourth Corps, the entire Army of the Ohio, and Garrard’s cavalry division on the Confederate side of the river. The Federals possessed a connected bridgehead from Isham’s Ford to Power’s Ferry that was more than three miles wide, plus an isolated bridgehead at Roswell six miles farther upstream. Howard and Schofield had access to a road network that reached from the river out toward road junctions at Cross Keys and Buck Head due north of Atlanta. Those junctions gave access to roads running in nearly any direction. Increasing his presence on the south side, Sherman moved Maj. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge’s Left Wing, Sixteenth Corps over the river at Roswell by July 14 to enlarge that bridgehead. He also extended cavalry troops south of the railroad bridge as far as Baker’s Ferry some seven miles downstream. The Federal army group stretched for some twenty miles along the north side of the Chattahoochee River with two important bridgeheads on the south side.¹²

As historian Thomas L. Connelly has rightly pointed out, Johnston did nothing to stop Sherman from gaining control of useful crossings of the Chattahoochee River. Judging by his performance, the Confederate commander intended to continue his passive resistance to Sherman’s advance, await developments, and fight from behind chosen positions. Johnston posted his cavalry to watch the Federals north of Atlanta, given that the bridgeheads held by Howard, Schofield, Dodge, and Garrard portended a major move north of the railroad bridge. Brig. Gen. John H. Kelly, commander of a cavalry division, took Col. George G. Dibrell’s brigade to Cross Keys by July 10. To Dibrell’s left, Kelly positioned Brig. Gen. John S. Williams’s cavalry brigade some distance north of Buck Head and straddling the road between that place and Roswell. Still farther to Williams’s left, Kelly positioned Col. Robert H. Anderson’s cavalry brigade so that Anderson’s left flank touched the Chattahoochee near the mouth of Long Island Creek.¹³

Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler, who commanded the Cavalry Corps, Army of Tennessee, was responsible for the overall positioning of these mounted units under Johnston’s general direction. They were posted to guard against a major Union move south from Roswell but were in position so as to quickly confront any Federal move out of the Isham’s Ford–Power’s Ferry bridgehead as well. Johnston’s directions to Wheeler were simple: Please watch the force you mention as on this side of the river, and whenever it moves forward impede its march as much as you can, destroying bridges after you. Give notice of all the roads by which they march, also.¹⁴

Despite the missed opportunity inherent in failing to block these crossing points of the river with large infantry forces, Johnston displayed an air of calm routine in posting his cavalry and issuing orders. But his withdrawal across the Chattahoochee caused anything but calm among the residents of Atlanta. "Our presence on the south side of the Chatahoochee [sic] created considerable alarm, wrote Irenus Watson Landingham, a member of Lieut. Gen. John Bell Hood’s corps staff, and the good people of that city have been getting to the rear in a hurry." As soon as he settled the Army of Tennessee south of the river and just a short distance north of the city, Johnston ordered surplus government stores removed from Atlanta to safer locations south. This logical step simply increased the sense of panic among the citizens. News of the shifting of stores also penetrated the rank and file and led many soldiers to wonder if Johnston had any intention of fighting for possession of the city. J. Walker Coleman of the 1st Tennessee was not surprised to learn that the residents despaired of their safety and were trying to leave Atlanta. Many officers shared Coleman’s view. Maj. Gen. W. H. T. Walker, who commanded a division in Lieut. Gen. William J. Hardee’s Corps, was convinced that the civilians had become disheartened by Johnston’s fall back from Dalton to the gates of Atlanta, but he assured his daughter that most of his men were still in good heart and willing to fight.¹⁵

Johnston paid no attention to public opinion as he calmly prepared for the future. After crossing the Chattahoochee, he concentrated on improving the City Line that encircled Atlanta. Started the previous summer of 1863, and laid out and supervised by engineer Capt. Lemuel P. Grant, only the basic trench line studded with many forts on high ground existed when the Army of Tennessee crossed the river. Johnston told his chief engineer to assist Grant in the improvements, including cutting embrasures so the artillery could be protected from enemy sharpshooters. He also asked for the shipment of several heavy guns from Mobile and selected an outer line north of the City Line to oppose the Federals when they moved down from Roswell and Power’s Ferry. Johnston gave indication that he intended to hold the city as long as possible and that the City Line could be made a formidable position barring Sherman’s entry into Atlanta.¹⁶

But the city’s supply lines were vulnerable. Johnston had been unable to prevent Sherman from outflanking him thus far in the campaign, and there was every reason to believe the Federal commander would continue using maneuver and flanking rather than frontal attacks as his modus operandi once he moved south of the Chattahoochee. In fact, Sherman had no intention of battering his army group against Grant’s line of fortifications. As early as June 30 he had informed his wife that he would operate against the city’s lines of communication instead of against its earthworks. Sherman expressed it well to Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, chief of staff of the United States Army, when he wrote on July 6 that, instead of attacking Atlanta direct, or any of its forts, I propose to make a circuit, destroying all its railroads. This is a delicate movement and must be done with caution.¹⁷

The presence of three corps and one cavalry division at Roswell and Power’s Ferry telegraphed to the enemy that Sherman intended to move on the city from the north. Was there an alternative? Maj. Gen. Jacob D. Cox, who commanded a division in Schofield’s Twenty-Third Corps, carefully examined that question after the war. Cox noted that two railroads entered Atlanta from the south. The Atlanta and West Point Railroad came from Montgomery, Alabama, and joined the Macon and Western Railroad at East Point six miles south of the city. From there traffic on both roads used the track of the Macon and Western Railroad into Atlanta. The Georgia Railroad entered Atlanta from the east, coming from Augusta, Georgia, while the Western and Atlantic Railroad, already in Federal hands, came from Chattanooga, northwest of Atlanta.¹⁸

Cox envisioned the possibility of Sherman crossing the Chattahoochee River downstream from the railroad bridge. Such a crossing would have given him a relatively short march to reach the railroad south of Atlanta. But Cox foresaw that then Johnston could have relied on the Georgia Railroad and his connection with Augusta. The Confederate commander could also have given up Atlanta and defended every town on the Georgia Railroad as he retired toward Augusta. Missing from Cox’s analysis, however, was the knowledge that Johnston had positioned two of his corps (Hardee’s and Hood’s) to the northwest of Atlanta. They could have quickly confronted any Union move toward the railroad south of the city.¹⁹

Moreover, Sherman feared that a major crossing downstream from the railroad bridge would expose his own line of communications to a Confederate cavalry force that crossed the Chattahoochee north of the bridge. Moreover, he always had to keep in mind a significant threat: Robert E. Lee might be able to detach troops from the Army of Northern Virginia and use the Confederate rail network to shift reinforcements to Johnston. If so, those troops would likely arrive by way of the Georgia Railroad rather than by the southern route to Atlanta. The strategic situation as well as the tactical environment therefore seemed to dictate a move upstream of the railroad bridge, an approach from the north, and an attempt to cut the Georgia Railroad before hitting the other lines.²⁰

The difficulties of this approach were apparent to Sherman, and Cox explained them well in his postwar history of the campaign. Atlanta lay on high ground that constituted the watershed of terrain draining north toward the Chattahoochee River and south toward the Ocmulgee River. But the ground north of Atlanta did not drain directly into the river; it mostly drained into Peach Tree Creek, which ran generally east to west about four miles north of Atlanta. The creek dominated the area and represented a good defensive position for the Confederates. It emptied into the Chattahoochee River just upstream from the railroad bridge where its mouth was, in Cox’s words, a wide and muddy bed.²¹

Not only did the creek pose a serious obstacle to the Federal advance, in terms of both the depth of its valley and the possibility of Confederate resistance, but a northern approach would have to come out of the two bridgeheads already established south of the Chattahoochee. Cox noted that any Union force moving from Roswell would have to march three to four times more miles to reach the Georgia Railroad than would troops marching from the Isham’s Ford–Power’s Ferry bridgehead to Peach Tree Creek. Sherman faced the problem of coordinating the movement of his army group over a wide area within reach of the enemy so as not to open a dangerous hole in his line of approach that could be exploited by the Confederates. His left would have to move a long distance from Roswell toward Decatur, while his right would have to move a very short distance to the mouth of Peachtree Creek. With inadequate information about the road system, this would be a difficult task.²²

Before tackling this problem, Sherman offered his troops much needed time for rest. They had been marching, digging, and fighting for more than two months. Seventy odd days is a long time in such a life as we are leading, with just enough of rest and comfort to keep us from breaking down altogether, complained Luther P. Bradley, a brigade commander in Newton’s division. While quartermasters and commissaries stockpiled supplies at forward depots located in newly occupied places such as Allatoona, Marietta, and Vining’s Station, the rank and file took it easy for a few days. Scurvy became apparent in some units due to the lack of fresh vegetables, and clothing was universally ragged and worn out. Officers dealt with these problems as best they could in the short time available before the campaign moved into its next phase south of the Chattahoochee River. Morale was high in Sherman’s ranks; the course of the campaign thus far had inspired most Federals to assume they would be successful in capturing the city, and they expected the place to fall soon after they crossed the river.²³

Most Confederates also expected something important to happen soon after their enemy crossed the Chattahoochee. Ellison Capers, commander of the 24th South Carolina, thought Johnston would hit the Federal flank as his enemy maneuvered north of Atlanta while closing in on the city. Capers feared that if Johnston did not take the tactical offensive, he might evacuate Atlanta and retire east. W. H. T. Walker more than conjectured about Johnston’s intentions; he was deeply worried that his commander would not fight. I am getting very wearied of this eternal retiring, he told his wife on July 12, Where it is to stop I don’t know. Walker was certain the men remained in good spirits and were eager to fight. A company commander in the 28th Mississippi Cavalry named Sidney S. Champion also thought the rank and file was solidly in favor of a major battle, and he was certain a great stand up fight will be made on the south side of the Chattahoochee.²⁴

While many Confederates worried about Johnston’s long retreat from Dalton, most of them retained faith in his leadership and hoped that, with the army’s back to Atlanta, there would be no more retreats. But that sense of cautious optimism was not shared by Confederate authorities in Richmond. In fact, Johnston’s long withdrawal from Dalton had created an atmosphere of crisis in the Confederate capital. President Jefferson Davis had a deep history of frustration and conflict with Johnston stemming from the period following the Confederate victory at First Manassas. Johnston had disappointed everyone in Richmond when he failed to relieve the siege of Vicksburg the previous summer. Davis had consented to Johnston’s replacement of Gen. Braxton Bragg to command the Army of Tennessee because he felt there was no better alternative, but his fears grew with each retrograde movement south from Dalton. Johnston made the situation worse by failing to mollify Richmond and harping on the need for sending Confederate cavalry from Mississippi to cut Sherman’s line of communications in Tennessee. That cavalry had its hands full dealing with several Union expeditions penetrating the state from Memphis. Davis in turn urged Johnston to use his own cavalry command to strike at Sherman’s line of communications, but the general felt he needed the horsemen to extend and protect his flanks in the face of Sherman’s more numerous army group. What little communication was exchanged between the general and the president tended to have a testy, worried tone on the part of Davis and an air of frustrating calm on the part of Johnston.²⁵

The Chattahoochee River was a Rubicon of sorts for the Confederate general as well; when Johnston fell back to the south side, Davis felt he had gone one river too far. The Confederate president sent Bragg, now his military advisor to visit the Army of Tennessee. Bragg had helped to organize that army and had commanded it from the spring of 1862 until the disastrous defeat at Missionary Ridge in late November 1863. Always controversial, Bragg nevertheless possessed talent as an administrator and had become an important part of Davis’s presidential staff. When Bragg reached Atlanta on July 13, he confirmed that all Confederate troops were south of the Chattahoochee, and indications seem to favor an entire evacuation of this place.²⁶

When Bragg met with Johnston on July 14, they had a rather strange series of interactions. Davis’s emissary did not disclose the real reason for his visit, preferring to observe Johnston to see if there were any signs of fight in the general. For his part, Johnston also failed to take Bragg into his confidence. They conversed about a wide range of topics without engaging in meaningful discussion about the most important issue of the moment. Bragg also conferred with the two corps leaders in the Army of Tennessee, William J. Hardee and John Bell Hood, on July 14. He spoke as well with Alexander P. Stewart, who had been named as Leonidas Polk’s permanent replacement in charge of the Army of Mississippi after Polk was killed by Union artillery fire at Pine Mountain on June 14. This army, consisting of troops drawn from the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana, had been on detached service cooperating