The Atlanta Campaign

For scope, drama, and importance, the Atlanta Campaign was second only to Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia. Despite its criticality and massive array of primary source material, it has lingered in the shadows of other campaigns and has yet to receive the treatment it deserves. Powell’s The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1–19, 1864, the first in a proposed five-volume treatment, ends that oversight.
Once Grant decided to go east and lead the Federal armies against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, he chose William T. Sherman to do the same in Georgia against Joseph E. Johnston and his ill-starred Army of Tennessee. Sherman’s base was Chattanooga; Johnston’s was Atlanta. The grueling campaign opened on May 1, 1864.
While Grant and Lee grappled with one another like wrestlers, Sherman and Johnston parried and feinted like fencers. Johnston eschewed the offensive while hoping to lure Sherman into headlong assaults against fortified lines. Sherman disliked the uncertainty of battle and preferred maneuvering. When Johnston dug in, Sherman sought his flanks and turned the Confederates out of seemingly impregnable positions in a campaign noted Civil War historian Richard M. McMurry dubbed “the Red Clay Minuet.”
Contrary to popular belief Sherman did not set out to capture Atlanta. His orders were “to move against Johnston’s army, to break it up and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country . . . inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.” No Civil War army could survive long without its logistical base, and Atlanta was vital to the larger Confederate war effort. As Johnston retreated, Southern fears for the city grew. As Sherman advanced, Northern expectations increased.
This first installment of The Atlanta Campaign relies on a mountain of primary source material and extensive experience with the terrain to examine the battles of Dalton, Resaca, Rome Crossroads, Adairsville, and Cassville—the first phase of the long and momentous campaign. While none of these engagements matched the bloodshed of the Wilderness or Spotsylvania, each witnessed periods of intense fighting and key decision-making. The largest fight, Resaca, produced more than 8,000 killed, wounded, and missing in just two days. In between these actions the armies skirmished daily in a campaign its participants would recall as the “100 days’ fight.”
Like Powell’s The Chickamauga Campaign trilogy, this multi-volume study breaks new ground and promises to be this generation’s definitive treatment of one of the most important and fascinating confrontations of the entire Civil War.