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The scope, drama, and importance of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign were on par with Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia. Despite its significance and wealth of primary source material, the operations in North Georgia have long lingered in the shadows. Award-winning author David A. Powell’s first and second volumes of his planned five-volume series covered the campaign’s opening phases: the maneuvers around Dalton and Resaca in May, and the trench warfare and fierce fighting near Marietta in June. This third installment, The Atlanta Campaign: From the Chattahoochee to Peach Tree Creek, June 28 to July 20, 1864, examines the next stage of the operation.
The heavyweight match between Grant and Robert E. Lee—from the Wilderness to the trenches of Cold Harbor—intensified the pressure on William T. Sherman to prevent Confederate commander Joseph E. Johnston from sending reinforcements to Virginia. By the third week of May, Sherman had closed half the distance to Johnston’s base at Atlanta, but the Army of Tennessee had grown in strength, and the odds had evened. June became a slogging match. Steady rain and extensive defensive works slowed both sides, leading Sherman to order a bloody and fruitless series of frontal assaults against the Confederate bastion at Kennesaw Mountain.
Frustrated at Kennesaw, Sherman returned to flanking maneuvers. On July 2, General Johnston abandoned the Kennesaw Line and fell back to the Chattahoochee River—the last major water obstacle between Sherman’s forces and Atlanta. Two months of combat had taken a heavy toll on both armies, especially Johnston’s much-reduced Army of Tennessee. When Johnston retreated across the Chattahoochee on July 9, his army numbered about 60,000 men, while Sherman’s strength was roughly 100,000. Confederate President Jefferson Davis, meanwhile, watched Johnston’s withdrawals with growing frustration. The abandonment of the Chattahoochee River Line convinced Davis to replace the defensive-minded and close-mouthed Johnston with corps commander John Bell Hood, who promised a far more aggressive strategy.
This multivolume study draws heavily on hundreds of primary accounts (many previously unused), 22 original maps, a detailed understanding of the terrain, and a keen grasp of military strategy and tactics. Powell’s The Atlanta Campaign stands as this generation’s definitive treatment of one of the Civil War’s most important and compelling confrontations—and it will stand the test of time.
David A. Powell is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (1983) with a BA in history. He has published many articles in various magazines and more than fifteen historical simulations. For the past decade his focus has been on the epic battle of Chickamauga, and he is nationally recognized for his tours of that battlefield. David is the author of many books including The Chickamauga Campaign trilogy, The Maps of Chickamauga, and Failure in the Saddle. He won the Nevins-Freeman Award given by the Chicago Civil War Round Table and his first installment of The Atlanta Campaign was a finalist for the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award. David and his wife Anne live with their trio of Bloodhounds in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.
