The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain

INTRODUCTION

The scene was a grand one. Atlanta, once a major hub for Southern rail transportation, was being consumed by fire. The city had been a bustling metropolis, growing rapidly over the course of the mid-nineteenth century, becoming a crown jewel in the heart of the Confederacy. Atlanta’s fall was one of the most significant Union victories in the American Civil War. It boosted morale throughout the North and helped to ensure the reelection of Abraham Lincoln in early November, which in turn guaranteed that the Union government would not give up the fight against the Confederacy any time soon. Now, as Union soldiers marched past the city at the start of their famed March to the Sea, they could only marvel at the destruction that was taking place. Albert Champlin of the 105th Ohio recorded an impression of the scene in his diary on the night of November 15, 1864: Night comes on and yet the city is burning; what a magnificent sight and what a work of destruction. The destroying blow [that] the rebels aimed at our government and country is falling fatally upon themselves—Dearly they are paying for their folly and crime and wickedness.¹

This moment in time, enshrined in Champlin’s diary, was—and is—one of the most famous incidents of the American Civil War. It stands as a moment of victory for the Union and a moment of defeat and desolation for the Confederacy. Books, paintings and movies have burned this scene into American history, and it is no doubt quite familiar to many Americans today. Yet this moment of triumph for Champlin and the thousands of other Union soldiers marching south with him had not been predestined, nor had it been easily won.

Champlin’s strong words regarding the Confederacy reflected the importance of what had occurred during the campaign for Atlanta. These thoughts were no doubt shared by many Union soldiers who had likewise struggled that spring and summer in a grueling duel across the mountains, rivers and forests of northern Georgia. The year 1864 was extremely brutal, and it was characterized by battlefield losses and the terrible toll they exacted on all who endured them. The back-and-forth struggle in Georgia that summer often takes a backseat to the much more famous March to the Sea that occurred after Atlanta’s fall. But it was the campaign for Atlanta itself that was ultimately more important for Northern victory in the Civil War. Without the Atlanta Campaign, the legendary March to the Sea would have never occurred. During the months between May and September 1864, there had been many battles fought—some of which were won, some of which were lost and all of which changed the course of American history.

That summer, Union forces in both Virginia and Georgia had slogged slowly forward, pushing back Confederate defenders in an attempt to destroy the Confederacy’s will to continue the war. While the armies of Grant and Lee bloodied each other in Virginia, the hopes of the North and the South hung in the balance. President Abraham Lincoln worried over the possibility that he might lose his reelection bid that fall and the potential that the Confederacy could still have a chance to win the Civil War. Against this backdrop of uncertainty, William Tecumseh Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston engaged in a desperate and elaborate chess match across Georgia. The battles they fought did not bring the same scale of death and suffering as those of the Overland Campaign in Virginia, yet they were equally as important. In June 1864, when Grant and Lee were nearing Petersburg, Sherman and Johnston were squaring off near Marietta, Georgia, under the shadow of Kennesaw Mountain. It was here that one of the most desperate, vicious and important battles of the Atlanta Campaign was to be fought.

The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, fought on June 27, 1864, was not one of the bloodiest battles of the war, nor was it one of the longest. The fighting lasted a few hours that morning, and there were fewer than five thousand total casualties. It was smaller than the Battle of First Manassas in July 1861 and not even close to the scale of slaughter that occurred at places such as Antietam, Gettysburg and Chickamauga. Yet for the men who struggled there, Kennesaw Mountain would forever be remembered as an unforgiving place where death could come at any moment. With the threat of death on the skirmish line and the mass slaughter of frontal assaults against fortified positions, Kennesaw Mountain serves as an example of just how difficult the Civil War was for men in the ranks. For William Tecumseh Sherman, Joseph Johnston and the countless others who fought at Kennesaw, it was a crucial time in one of the most significant campaigns of the American Civil War. Kennesaw Mountain affected how each army fought during the rest of the campaign, ultimately serving as an important marker on the road toward both victory and defeat during the struggle for Atlanta in the summer of 1864.

What follows is the story of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and the Atlanta Campaign. I am greatly honored to be taking part in the Sesquicentennial Series being published by The History Press. As with most of these books, this account is written for the general audience. It is doubtful that those who have been hiking the Kennesaw battlefield and studying the troop movements for twenty-five years will find any new revelations in these pages. This is not meant to be a detailed examination of each regiment at Kennesaw Mountain. Instead, this book was written to provide an overview of the battle—placing it in the larger context of the Atlanta Campaign and the Civil War—as well as to tell of the bravery, courage and perseverance displayed by the soldiers on both sides who struggled at Kennesaw Mountain. It is my hope that readers will be able to follow the movements of the armies during the campaign, understand why the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain occurred as it did and appreciate the common men who made extraordinary sacrifices there 150 years ago.

Chapter 1

THE WAR IN 1864

You I propose to move against Johnston’s army, to break it up, and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.

–Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant

We have a new year and the cruel war is not ended." Thus wrote Corporal James Congleton of the 105th Illinois Infantry on January 4, 1864, in Nashville, Tennessee. For Congleton, like for so many others in both blue and gray, the coming of a new year did not bring promises of peace. Rather, the change in the calendar portended more of the same bloodshed that had saturated the nation over the previous three years. The year 1864 would prove to be the bloodiest of the Civil War. But no one could have predicted just how bad the new year would be. The fields of Shiloh, Corinth, Stones River, Vicksburg and Chickamauga were now silent, still bearing the marks of the great battles they had seen. Now the war would reach into new places, tearing apart new landscapes with bullets, cannons and the grave markers that the armies always left in their wake.²

The year 1864 began with Federal forces encamped across vast portions of the Confederacy. In the east, the winter campfires of the Army of the Potomac were once again burned on Virginia soil. The previous year had seen aggressive fighting in Virginia and in Pennsylvania. Robert E. Lee’s brilliant victory at Chancellorsville in May had come at a high price, including the death of his trusted subordinate Lieutenant General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson. Nevertheless, Chancellorsville had carried Lee’s army northward into Pennsylvania, where at Gettysburg Lee fought one of the great battles in history, sustaining unaffordable battle casualties in his defeat. With the start of 1864, the fields of Gettysburg were still recovering from the terrible fighting that occurred there six months earlier. As both Union and Confederate forces camped in Virginia that winter, the cold and snow put a damper on campaigning, but the soldiers of both sides were well aware that as soon as warmer weather chased away the winter chill, the fighting would resume.

In the west, Union armies had taken large portions of the Confederacy. The Mississippi River was controlled entirely by the Federals, and it had been nearly two years since Confederates had lost New Orleans and the crucial rail junction at Corinth, Mississippi. Tennessee was in Federal hands by 1864, as were numerous other river ways and railroads that served as avenues of invasion into the Deep South.

The previous September, Confederates under the leadership of General Braxton Bragg had achieved arguably the biggest Confederate victory of the war, defeating the Union Army of the Cumberland at the Battle of Chickamauga. More than thirty thousand men fell in just two days before Union troops under the command of Major General William Rosecrans made a hasty retreat to Chattanooga. Rosecrans and his army found themselves trapped in Chattanooga and facing the possibility of surrender, starvation or giving back a vital piece of Tennessee to the Confederates.

Because of these fears, help was dispatched to the beleaguered city. From Virginia, two corps of the Army of the Potomac—the 11th and 12th Corps, a combined twenty-three thousand men—were gathered together and sent south. Major General Joseph Hooker, the defeated general of Chancellorsville, was placed in command of these reinforcements. The War Department had ordered help from the western armies as well. Major General Ulysses S. Grant, the man who took Vicksburg and split the Confederacy in two, was given command of all Union forces in the west. This new consolidated command was titled the Military Division of the Mississippi.

With Grant overseeing all Federal armies in the west, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman assumed command of the Union Army of the Tennessee. Grant sent Sherman to Chattanooga with more than twenty thousand Union soldiers, bringing the combined number of reinforcements being sent there to well over forty thousand men. Grant himself would soon travel to Chattanooga, but before doing so, he made a switch regarding the generals who were already at the scene of the struggle. William Rosecrans had delivered a Union victory at Stones River at the beginning of 1863, and his Tullahoma Campaign that summer had been successful. But the defeat at Chickamauga, combined with the dire situation at Chattanooga, was too much for his superiors to tolerate. With permission from the War Department, Grant removed Rosecrans from his post, replacing him with Major General George Thomas, nicknamed the Rock of Chickamauga for his stellar conduct at that battle.

By the end of October, Grant had arrived in Chattanooga. After opening supply lines to his beleaguered troops, Grant turned his attention to the Confederates. On November 23, Union forces began launching attacks to break Bragg’s grip on the city. Men of George Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland pushed forward and took positions on Orchard Knob, a relatively small knoll near Missionary Ridge. The following day, Joseph Hooker led an assault that overran Confederate positions on Lookout Mountain. Dubbed the battle above the clouds, Hooker’s assault had been daring and difficult, and it was a bad development for Bragg. On November 25, Grant ordered Hooker to advance on Confederates positioned on Missionary Ridge from the south while Sherman led an attack from the north. Yet because of difficulties encountered by both Hooker and Sherman, it was George Thomas’s men, originally delegated to a reserve role, who charged up the face of Missionary Ridge and took the position, sealing the Union victory at Chattanooga.

Western Theater of the Civil War, December 1862–September 1863. Map by Hal Jespersen.

These events in September, October and November 1863 were crucial for setting the stage for what was to come in 1864 for both the Union and Confederate armies. Not only did they bring about leadership changes on both sides, but because Union forces had defeated Bragg at Chattanooga, the Confederate gains resulting from Chickamauga were essentially reversed. Rather than fighting in Tennessee, the spring campaign in 1864 would take place in Georgia.

LEADERSHIP CHANGES

After his success at Chattanooga, Grant was promoted once again. In 1864, Congress revived the rank of lieutenant general, held previously by only George Washington. That March, Grant was called to Washington and given this prestigious rank. Just three years after starting his Civil War career as a regimental recruiter in Illinois, Grant now took command of all Union armies. He was the most successful Union general of the war thus far with his victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg and now Chattanooga, making him a logical choice for the position. As overall commander, Grant would orchestrate and oversee a strategy of simultaneous campaigns that struck deep into the heart of the Confederacy. Grant believed that hitting Confederate armies with multiple strategic attacks across the South would be the best way to win the war. When he received his new commission from President Abraham Lincoln, Grant declared, I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me. Lincoln, too, understood the importance of the moment. After having gone through numerous commanders in numerous posts, the commander in chief was looking for a man who could oversee the war with the perseverance and strategic vision necessary to win.³

Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia, 1864. Library of Congress.

Shortly after taking his new role, Grant visited with Major General George Meade, the commander of the Army of the Potomac. Grant later wrote that his original intention was to remain in the west, where he had accomplished so much in 1862 and 1863; yet, as he noted in his memoirs, when I got to Washington and saw the situation it was plain that here was the point for the commanding general to be. Grant would make his headquarters in the east. After all, this was the most visible theater of the war, with most of the battles all occurring near the capitals of Washington and Richmond. By 1864, Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia were the most prominent force in the entire Confederacy. Additionally, Grant had some understanding of how Washington worked, and he knew that in order for his plans to be implemented in the east, where Washington politicians were never far away, he had to be there himself to make sure things went smoothly. Thus, Grant would personally direct the push toward Richmond and the campaign against Lee, meaning that he would now be overseeing Major General George Meade and the Union Army of the Potomac during the 1864 fighting, not the men whom he had led to victory so many times in the west during the previous two years.⁴

This, of course, left a glaring vacancy at the head of the newly created Military Division of the Mississippi in the west. Grant had several options for filling this post. Major General George Henry Thomas certainly had a convincing case to receive the job. The Virginia native was one of the highest-profile officers from a Southern state who remained loyal to the Union. Furthermore, Thomas had gained a solid reputation for his actions in battle the previous year. His command had fought well at Stones River and at Chickamauga, where his men had been the last Union corps to leave the field after making a gallant stand on Snodgrass Hill and Horseshoe Ridge. Yet it was not the Rock of Chickamauga who received the promotion.

Instead, it was a fellow Ohioan who succeeded Grant in the command in the west. Tecumseh Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1820. His father had an admiration for the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh and gave his son the name out of respect. Sherman was one of eleven children born to Charles Robert Sherman and his wife, Mary Hoyt Sherman. When Charles passed away in 1829, prominent neighbor Thomas Ewing took in young Tecumseh to care for him. Ewing was a prominent politician; during his lifetime, he served as a United States senator from Ohio, the secretary of the treasury under William Henry Harrison and briefly under John Tyler, and he was the first secretary of the interior under Zachary Taylor.

Upon entering the Ewing’s home, Maria, Thomas’s wife, desired that the nine-year-old Sherman be baptized. While many only knew him by Tecumseh, or Cump for short, the priest noted that the boy needed a Christian name. Thus, in June 1829, on St. William’s day, young William Tecumseh Sherman was baptized and entered into the Ewing family.⁵

Thomas Ewing’s political connections ensured that a sixteen-year-old Sherman secured an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1836. There, Sherman studied with fellow cadets such as Braxton Bragg, Joseph Hooker, P.G.T. Beauregard, Henry Halleck, George Thomas (who was in the same class as Sherman), Don Carlos Buell, William Rosecrans and James Longstreet. There was even another Ohioan, one who did not make much of an impression on Sherman, who entered into West Point during Sherman’s final year at the academy. The young cadet’s name was Ulysses S. Grant.⁶

Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander, Military Division of the Mississippi. Library of Congress.

After West Point, Sherman became an artillery officer. His antebellum military career was quite diverse; it took him all across the growing country. He spent time in Florida fighting the Seminoles, and he was garrisoned at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina. During the Mexican-American War, Sherman found himself in California. Much to Sherman’s disappointment, he missed out on seeing combat in Mexico. In 1850, he married his foster sister, Ellen Ewing. She had been his confidante in writing for years and would remain so during the pivotal years of the 1860s.

After experimenting with civilian pursuits in the 1850s, Sherman found himself at the head of a new military academy in Louisiana at the outbreak of the war. With Louisiana’s secession, Sherman left his post to return north to St. Louis, where he ran a cable car company until being called to Washington to resume his military career in June.

At First Bull Run in July 1861, Sherman led a brigade of infantry into the fight, and despite the Union defeat, he and his men performed well. He was soon promoted to brigadier general. That fall, Sherman was placed in command of the Department of the Cumberland in Kentucky. The stress of the position was too much, and Sherman’s worries over not having enough men and possible Confederate attacks led to a mental breakdown. He was ridiculed in the press, notably being called insane by the Cincinnati Daily Commercial that December. Sherman was removed from command and sent to St. Louis.⁷

Despite his hard fall from grace in late 1861, Sherman’s redemption began the following spring in southern Tennessee. After the victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862, Major General Ulysses S. Grant made a push up the Tennessee River deep into Confederate territory. Sherman led a division in Grant’s army, which came under attack on April 6, the opening day of the Battle of Shiloh. Sherman and his men fought well that day, helping to prevent