Overview

The South, like the rest of the country, was forever altered by the dramatic events of the Civil War (1861-65). Few states, however, were more central to the outcome of the conflict than Georgia, which provided an estimated 120,000 soldiers for the Confederacy. In addition, several hundred white and 3,500 black Georgians enlisted for the Union cause.

Georgia's agricultural output was critical to the Confederate war effort, and because Georgia was a transportation and industrial center for the Confederacy, both sides struggled for control of the state. Some of the most important battles of the war were fought on Georgia soil, including Chickamauga, Resaca, and Kennesaw Mountain, while the battles of Peachtree Creek, Bald Hill (Atlanta), Ezra Church, and Jonesboro were significant turning points during the Atlanta campaign of 1864. Perhaps most important, one can argue that the Civil War's outcome was decided in Georgia with the Atlanta campaign and U.S. president Abraham Lincoln's subsequent reelection.

Part 1: The Secession Crisis

In the decades preceding the Civil War, different ideas about politics and economics drove a wedge between the northern and southern sections of the United States. At the root of these differences was African American slavery. The North advocated for a strong national government with a diversified economy that relied upon free labor, while Southern leaders advocated for states’ rights and an economy based overwhelmingly on agriculture that would depend on African American slaves. These differences were exacerbated by expansion westward into the territory recently acquired by the U.S. victory in the Mexican War. Because of these differences, Northern leaders wanted to contain slavery in the states where it already existed, and Southern leaders wanted the institution to expand westward. White Southerners saw any attempt by Northern leadership to restrict slavery as an attack on their personal liberty. A large part of the liberty that white Southerners were defending was their right to own slaves. For Southerners, white liberty was directly linked with black slavery. Even though only around 25 percent of southern families owned slaves, the region as a whole supported the institution. Slave ownership was most extensive in the Deep South, and in Georgia, 40 percent of white families owned slaves.

Because of the breakdown of party allegiances due to these sectional tensions during the preceding years, four presidential candidates ran in the election of 1860. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois ran as the candidate of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party split into northern and southern factions, with Stephen Douglas of Illinois and John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky as their respective candidates. The fourth party—the Constitutional Unionists—nominated John Bell of Tennessee. Although he received less than 40 percent of the popular vote, Abraham Lincoln won the election with 180 electoral votes. Most of the states that would eventually make up the Confederacy voted for Breckinridge, with the exception of Virginia and Tennessee, who gave their votes to Bell. Breckinridge won a plurality of the popular vote in Georgia  and was awarded all of the state’s electoral votes. In the states of the Deep South, including Georgia, Lincoln did not even appear on the ballot. Southerners feared that they no longer had any say in the national government. With the election of a president whom most Southerners viewed as being hostile towards slavery, the states of the Lower South—beginning with South Carolina in December of 1860—began to leave the Union.

Pro-secession leaders in Georgia—and the rest of the Lower South—saw themselves as continuing in the tradition of the Founding Fathers, who had defeated the British in the American Revolution just eighty years earlier. Lincoln and other Northern leaders were painted as tyrants who were violating the personal liberties of Southerners and, in turn, the true essence of the American Revolution. On January 19, 1861, the Georgia state legislature voted to secede from the United States. The support for secession was by no means universal. Several prominent Georgia statesmen, including future Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens and former governor Herschel Johnson, initially opposed secession. This faction—known as the Cooperationists—wanted to pressure the Lincoln administration into acceding to the South’s demands. Nevertheless, pro-secession forces triumphed and the “Empire State of the South,” as Georgia was known at the time, would come to play a pivotal role in the Confederacy.

On February 4, 1861, delegates from the six states that had seceded from the Union—South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia—met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form a government and draft a constitution. Georgia politicians would play a significant role in these proceedings. Howell Cobb, who had been Speaker of the House as well as Secretary of the Treasury for President James Buchanan, acted as the president of the convention and was also considered as a candidate for president of the Confederacy. Under Cobb’s guidance, the first Confederate Congress drafted a constitution for the new nation. Former U.S. Senator Robert Toombs was also considered for the presidency. However, both men would lose to Jefferson Davis. Toombs would become Davis’s first Secretary of State before leaving politics to become a general in the Confederate army. Cobb’s brother, Thomas R. R. Cobb, was one of the drafters of the Confederate Constitution. He too would give up politics for the military and would eventually be killed at the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Part 2: Georgia Goes To War

For the first two years of the war, Georgia was relatively untouched by the Union army.  The Union navy, however, was active off the Georgia coast. After capturing several islands off the coast of South Carolina in November 1861, the Union navy set its sights on the Georgia Sea Islands. General Robert E. Lee was placed in command of coastal defenses of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. In February of 1862, Lee ordered that Confederate troops occupying Georgia’s islands be evacuated to the mainland. Consequently, the Union occupation went largely unopposed. Lee saw little hope of maintaining control of the islands or securing the coast and referred to his new assignment as “another forlorn hope expedition.”

In April of 1862, the Union navy attacked and captured Fort Pulaski, which protected Savannah harbor. Not only did this attack close off Savannah to naval traffic, but it also sent a wave of panic across the mainland. Many in Georgia, including Governor Joseph Brown, feared that a Union invasion of the mainland, perhaps at Savannah, was imminent. The invasion, however, never occurred, and for the time being, Savannah remained in Confederate control. The majority of Union military actions in Georgia following the fall of the Sea Islands consisted of small skirmishes along the coast.

On numerous occasions, Northern forces mounted raids onto the mainland in which they captured supplies and subsequently freed slaves. As soon as the Union captured the Sea Islands and began occupying small hamlets on the coast, slaves began to seek liberation from the Northern occupiers. Despite the fact that African Americans could not serve in the Union army at the time, it was recognized that they were a valuable source of labor for the Confederacy. Thus depriving the South of its slaves helped the Union war effort. A small colony of former slaves was established on St. Simon’s Island.

In April of 1862, a Union raid also took place in North Georgia. A Union spy, James Andrews, led a group of raiders with the ultimate goal of capturing a locomotive in Atlanta, driving it north toward Chattanooga and tearing up train tracks and telegraph wires along the way. Andrews’s Raiders commandeered The General in Big Shanty (present-day Kennesaw) and headed northward. While being pursued by railroad workers, the raiders tore up tracks and telegraph wires before The General ran out of steam and Andrews’s raid came to an end. Although the mission was a failure for the Union, some of the raiders became the first recipients of the Medal of Honor. Andrews and a handful of his men were tried as spies and executed.

Part 3: The Homefront

By the end of the war, 120,000 Georgia men were serving in the Confederate army. With the majority of men at the battlefront, white women and African American slaves took on increased responsibilities. Women, in addition to providing for their children, were now forced to manage their families’ finances as well. Women relied upon whatever skills they had in order to supplement their families’ incomes. Some became teachers, seamstresses or candle makers. Those in particularly dire straits were forced to sell their valuables in order to feed their families.  Sometimes those women who owned slaves were forced to act as overseers and plantation managers. The struggles of each woman varied greatly depending on her wealth and circumstances.

Southern women also aided in the war effort. Many volunteered their services as nurses—a career which, up until the Civil War, was dominated by men. This was particularly true in areas near battlefields or in cities that contained large hospitals. During the war, Atlanta was the home of seven Confederate hospitals that tended to soldiers from across the Deep South. Making socks, blankets and uniforms for their soldiers also kept many women busy during wartime. Urban-dwelling women worked in armories and factories. Women also organized fundraising events to support the men on the battle front. Most Southerners felt that it was their duty to sacrifice on behalf of the Confederacy. One Georgia newspaper proclaimed that “our people now have something presented to them of higher importance than the acquisition of wealth—that is the achievement of independence, to accomplish which they are willing, not only to give the last dime, but life itself.”

Even with the widespread popular support of the Confederacy, home-front disaffection did occur. Some women wrote their soldier husbands, encouraging them to desert the army and come home. This practice was especially prevalent after General William T. Sherman invaded the state in 1864. Others, desperate to feed themselves and their families, rioted in order to gain access to foodstuffs. Although the most famous of these occurred in Richmond in April 1863, another such uprising occurred in Columbus, Georgia, in the same month when a group of armed women stole food from stores and depots. Numerous other riots erupted across the Confederacy and in Georgia. Shortages were exacerbated by the large-scale inflation that took place in Georgia and throughout the Confederacy due to excessive printing of paper money.

In 1860 there were 466,000 African Americans in Georgia, the vast majority of which were in bondage. Since colonial times, white Southerners feared slave rebellions. With so many men away in the army, these fears increased as the war dragged on. Free African Americans had long been viewed with suspicion by whites, and slave rebellions were often blamed on the instigations of free blacks. In an effort to control this portion of the population, the Georgia legislature briefly considered enslaving the state’s free blacks.

The institution of slavery began to destabilize as soon as Union forces started mobilizing against the South. When Union naval forces occupied the islands off the Georgia coast, thousands of slaves escaped from their owners to seek refuge within federal-occupied territories. Many thousands more, however, were relocated by their masters into the interior of the state or other portions of the Confederacy that were still far away from Northern incursions. This pattern continued throughout the war.

Although it was not until 1863 with the advent of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that the Union army became a force of liberation, slaves saw the Northern army as a source of freedom from the beginning of the war. Anywhere Union forces were deployed, they were constantly met with slaves who had fled their owners in search of freedom. For example, during his “March to the Sea,” Sherman recalled that escaped slaves “followed us in swarms.” After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans became able to enlist in the Union army. By war’s end, about 10 percent of Northern troops were black. Roughly 3,500 African Americans from Georgia served in the Union military during the war.    

Other slaves were conscripted by the Confederacy to serve as laborers, building fortifications or serving as cooks or teamsters. Many planters resented the Confederate government impressing their slaves—one example of how some Southerners became angry over the power of their national government. One of the loudest spokesmen of this group was Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown. On numerous occasions, Brown clashed with the administration of Jefferson Davis. The Governor felt that the Confederate president was becoming too powerful. When Davis put forth conscription acts, tried to absorb the Georgia militia into the Confederate armies, or placed Georgia’s railroads under Confederate authorities, Brown tried to hinder these measures—often with little success. In February of 1865, Brown even went as far as calling for a convention with the purpose of impeaching Davis. This proposal failed.

Portions of Georgia’s population remained loyal to the Union, just as portions of the populations in the rest of the Confederate states did. While pockets of Union sympathizers could be found across the state, the mountains of north Georgia housed the majority of the state’s Unionists. This can largely be explained by the region’s lack of slaves. Men from north Georgia were also more likely to desert from the army. However, the region also had Confederate loyalists. Consequently, north Georgia became the scene of a brutal guerilla war that often placed neighbor against neighbor.

On numerous occasions, deserters—along with other Unionists—formed armed bands of guerillas, often referred to as partisans or bushwhackers. Disrupting local government, raiding Confederate supply lines, harassing small bodies of Rebel troops and pillaging the property of Confederate sympathizers were the primary goals of these groups. Southern sympathizers often referred to these bands as Tories—the name given to British loyalists during the Revolutionary War. John Long and Sam Roberts were two of north Georgia’s most notorious Unionist partisan chiefs. For the most part, Confederate forces were too busy on the battlefield to concern themselves with the relatively small-scale threats presented by guerillas. Governor Joseph E. Brown formed and mobilized state militia companies to try to combat the Tory threat. However, these efforts were largely unsuccessful and partisan activity continued throughout the Civil War.

Confederate sympathizers also formed their own guerilla companies. The activities of these partisans largely mirrored those of their Union counterparts, except Southern guerillas targeted civilians and soldiers with Northern allegiances. John P. Gatewood was Georgia’s most infamous guerilla. He deserted from the Confederate army and formed a gang of up to 100 men that terrorized the countryside of northwest Georgia and east Tennessee. Gatewood’s brutality earned him the nickname “the red-bearded beast.” Even though Gatewood and his men claimed to be Southern loyalists, their activities revealed them to be little more than marauders and bandits who often preyed on civilians regardless of their sectional loyalty. 

This pattern of guerilla warfare that played itself out in northern Georgia also played itself out in other regions of the state. For example, 1,500 bushwhackers inhabited the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia. The other states of the Confederacy also experienced brutal guerilla conflicts. Kansas and Missouri experienced a particularly potent brand of guerilla warfare where men such as William Clarke Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson gained notoriety.

Part 4: War Comes to Georgia

While Georgia was largely spared of military campaigns during the first two and a half years of the war, beginning in the fall of 1863, it became one of the most significant areas of military operations. In June, the Union Army of the Cumberland, under the command of Major General William S. Rosecrans, moved out of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, with the ultimate goal of capturing Chattanooga. Standing between Rosecrans and Chattanooga was the Confederate Army of Tennessee, under General Braxton Bragg. Through clever maneuverings, Rosecrans forced Bragg’s army out of middle Tennessee. Soon the Confederate forces retreated into Chattanooga.

Instead of attacking Bragg head-on at Chattanooga, Rosecrans ordered his 60,000-man army into northwest Georgia in an effort to cut off Bragg’s supply lines. Afraid of being cut off from his flow of supplies, on September 9, Bragg ordered his army to abandon Chattanooga and head south to Lafayette, Georgia. A portion of Rosecrans’s forces soon occupied Chattanooga. Shortly thereafter, Bragg learned that Rosecrans’s army was moving in three columns. However, disagreements within the Confederate high command prevented Bragg from attacking Rosecrans’s divided forces.

Rosecrans’s forces began to assemble on September 17 at Lee and Gordon’s Mill on Chickamauga Creek. The Battle of Chickamauga began the next day when Bragg ordered his army westward to cross Chickamauga Creek and drive the Union army further away from Chattanooga. Despite some stiff resistance, Confederate forces were able to cross the creek. Fearing that Bragg’s army would put itself between the Union force and Chattanooga, Rosecrans ordered the XIV corps, under the command of Major General George Thomas, to extend its left flank northward to keep the Rebels from separating the Army of the Cumberland from Chattanooga.

The next morning, a portion of Thomas’s command advanced eastward, and they collided with Confederate cavalry under the command of Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest sent word to Bragg that he had made contact with the enemy and that he needed reinforcements. Likewise, Thomas inserted more of his forces into the fray. Bragg, still hoping to cut off the Union army’s connection to Chattanooga, ordered a series of attacks against the Union position. Despite a temporary breakthrough by the Confederates, they were unable to cut Rosecrans’s lines to Chattanooga, and at the end of the day, the Union troops held a strong defensive position.

On the night of September 19, Braxton Bragg reorganized his army into two wings. Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, a West Point graduate and Episcopal Bishop whose wartime performance thus far had been lackluster, was given command of the northern wing. The southern half of the Confederate army was put under Lieutenant General James Longstreet, one of Robert E. Lee’s corps commanders who had just arrived from Virginia with reinforcements.

Bragg, still hoping to drive Rosecrans further from Chattanooga, ordered Polk to attack the Union troops at dawn on September 20. Polk, however, was four hours late launching his attack, thus giving the Union troops more time to fortify their positions. Consequently, Polk’s series of attacks failed.

Reeling from the confusion of the day’s battle, Rosecrans became convinced that there was a hole in the center of his lines. This hole did not exist, however, and when Rosecrans ordered one of his divisions to move to plug it, he created an actual gap. Simultaneously, the portion of the Confederate army under Longstreet began its attack, which drove the southern half of Rosecrans’s army, including its commander, northward.

On the northern end of Rosecrans’s line, some Union troops under the command of George Thomas formed a strong position on Snodgrass Hill (also known as Horseshoe Ridge). These troops held off several Confederate attacks. Thomas’s defense of Snodgrass Hill provided the rest of the Army of the Cumberland with the opportunity to make it safely back to Chattanooga and earned him the nickname “the Rock of Chickamauga.”  

Tactically, the Battle of Chickamauga was a victory for the Confederacy. At the end of the day, Bragg’s army had possession of the field. Numerically, the South lost more men than the Union. Rosecrans’s army suffered 16,000 casualties (men killed, wounded or missing), while Bragg lost 18,000 troops. Strategically, however, the Federal forces still accomplished their goal of occupying Chattanooga. Furthermore, the Confederacy was unable to follow up their victory at Chickamauga, and in November 1863, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant decisively defeated Bragg’s army at Chattanooga. 

The Confederate Army of Tennessee began its retreat into northwest Georgia from Missionary Ridge outside of Chattanooga on November 25, 1863. The weary Rebels marched south towards Dalton, Georgia, with a portion of the Union army in pursuit. General Bragg was afraid that the Union forces, commanded by Major General Joseph Hooker, would capture the Southerners’ supply wagons and artillery pieces, which were bogged down in mud. To prevent this from happening, Bragg ordered the division of Major General Patrick R. Cleburne to make a stand at Ringgold Gap—a narrow clearing in the North Georgia mountains—to give the Confederate wagons and canons enough time to withdraw to safety.

On November 27, shortly after Cleburne had all of his men in position, Hooker’s division arrived. Cleburne ordered his troops to hold their fire until the Union soldiers were almost on top of them. When the Confederates finally opened fire, Hooker’s lead troops were beaten back. Undaunted, Hooker attempted to flank Cleburne’s division on the right and then the left. The Southerners, however, beat back these assaults as well. For five hours, Cleburne’s division held back a Union force that outnumbered it roughly three to one.

After Cleburne was notified that Bragg’s wagons and artillery were safely away, he began to prepare for a withdrawal. Sending out skirmishers to hide his movements from Hooker, Cleburne began to move the main body of his troops south. To further slow the Union advance, the Southerners burned the bridges outside of Ringgold. Cleburne’s men, along with the rest of the Confederate army, went into winter quarters in and around Dalton, Georgia. Here, Bragg submitted his resignation to President Jefferson Davis. Command of the Confederate Army of Tennessee temporarily passed to Lieutenant General William J. Hardee, and then to General Joseph E. Johnston. Although Johnston had yet to distinguish himself during the war, Davis had no other generals that were capable of leading an army.

Part 5: The Atlanta Campaign

The Atlanta Campaign was one of the most significant turning points of the Civil War. More so than the Battle of Gettysburg, which is often referred to as the war’s most significant battle, the fall of Atlanta made ultimate Northern victory certain. Prior to the city’s capitulation in September of 1864, the reelection of Abraham Lincoln appeared unlikely. In the months before the battles for Atlanta, the simultaneous advances of Union forces—orchestrated by General in Chief Ulysses S. Grant—had stalled. Grant and Lincoln hoped that by advancing in multiple locations, the Union forces would be able to capitalize on their numerical superiority and exhaust the Confederate forces. 

The plan, however, got off to a shaky start. Grant himself got bogged down outside of Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, facing Robert E. Lee. Smaller Union operations against Mobile Bay in Alabama and the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia also failed. An effort—dubbed The Red River Campaign—to occupy Texas also ended in disaster for the Union. By mid-May of 1864, these setbacks had eroded much of the Northern populaces’ support for the Lincoln administration and, in turn, support for the vigorous prosecution of the Union war effort. The South’s last hope for success was to prevent any significant Union battlefield victories, which would thus prevent Lincoln’s reelection; this strategy would guarantee that a candidate from the Democratic Party would be elected as President of the United States in the election of 1864. Peace Democrats, also called Copperheads, had gained power within their party in the preceding months. This faction of the Democratic Party wanted to bring the war to a speedy end, even if that meant allowing the South to leave the Union. Confederate leaders believed that a Democratic president would be open to conducting negotiations with the South that would lead to Confederate independence.

The remaining portion of the Union’s coordinated advance was General William Tecumseh Sherman’s drive towards Atlanta. Following the Union victory at Chattanooga, Tennessee, Grant, now in command of all Union armies, attached himself to the Army of the Potomac to focus on defeating Lee in Virginia. Sherman, in turn, took command of the Northern forces in the Western Theater—typically considered the territory between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains. There were three principal Union armies in this region: The Army of the Cumberland, commanded by Major General George H. Thomas, the Army of the Tennessee (not to be confused with the Confederate Army of Tennessee), commanded by Major General James B. McPherson, and finally, the Army of the Ohio, under the command of Major General John M. Schofield. In early May 1864, Sherman’s army group, which consisted of over 100,000 men, was assembled at Chattanooga in preparation for its advance into Georgia.

Opposing this formidable force was the dispirited Confederate Army of Tennessee. Following the Southern defeat at Chattanooga the previous November, President Davis replaced the largely unpopular Braxton Bragg with General Joseph E. Johnston, who, despite a reputation for temerity and indecision, was popular with the rank and file and many high-ranking Confederates. Under Johnston’s guidance, much of the Confederate army’s confidence had been restored. Aiding Johnston were his corps commanders, Lieutenant Generals William J. Hardee and John Bell Hood.  

With a little over 50,000 men at his disposal, Johnston, outnumbered two to one, knew that stopping Sherman would be a formidable task. Because of his numerical inferiority, Johnston assumed a defensive posture. Throughout the campaign, the Confederate commander hoped Sherman would launch a frontal assault against the dug-in Rebels. On other occasions, Johnston would hope for the opportunity to attack isolated portions of Sherman’s command. Furthermore, Johnston’s defensive posture was unpopular with President Davis, who advocated for an offensive into Tennessee, thus further straining the already tenuous relationship between Johnston and Davis. This tension did not exist in the Union army, where Sherman enjoyed the support of his commanding general, Grant, and his Commander in Chief, President Lincoln.

On May 5, 1864, Sherman began his march into Georgia. The Federal advance largely followed the line of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which ran from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Sherman remained close to the railroad because he feared Confederate cavalrymen would destroy sections of track and cut him off from his base of supplies in Chattanooga. Two days later, he encountered Johnston’s Confederates entrenched outside Dalton along Rocky Face Ridge. Disappointingly for Johnston, Sherman did not launch a frontal assault. Instead, he sent the men under Thomas and Schofield to keep Johnston’s army occupied while the Union troops under McPherson moved south through Snake Creek Gap—an opening in the mountains of North Georgia. Johnston apparently did not know of this gap, and failed to fortify it in any way. McPherson’s forces flanked Johnston’s army and forced the Confederates to retreat south towards Resaca in order to protect their railroad supply lines.

As at Rocky Face Ridge, Johnston once again ordered his army to dig-in near Resaca. Here Johnston began receiving reinforcements under the command of Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, who became the Confederate army’s second-in-command. Polk’s reinforcements would eventually number 20,000. On May 13, Sherman ordered some of his men forward to probe the Rebel position. Over the next two days, Sherman ordered a series of attacks on Johnston’s lines that were largely unsuccessful. On May 15, Sherman once again sent McPherson’s forces on a flanking mission, and yet again, McPherson succeeded and the Confederates were forced to retreat southward, this time pausing at Adairsville. Johnston, however, did not think he could fortify the grounds around Adairsville and ordered his army to continue its retreat. Because of the size of the Union force, Johnston knew Sherman would have to divide his army in order to pursue the Southerners effectively. Johnston hoped to attack one of these isolated columns. A portion of the Rebel army fought a delaying action while the main body retreated south. The Union advance was further slowed by Southern cavalry under the command of Georgian Major General Joseph Wheeler. Wheeler was born in Augusta in 1836, graduated from West Point, and as a cavalry officer in the United States Army, fought against Native Americans before the Civil War.

On May 17, the same day the Confederates retreated from Adairsville, a detachment of Sherman’s army under Brigadier Jefferson C. Davis (no relation to the Confederate president) captured Rome, Georgia—one of the state’s major industrial centers. The fall of Rome also opened up Alabama to a possible Federal incursion. After a short period of occupation, the Union forces abandoned Rome to join the advance on Atlanta. Before leaving, the Northerners burned anything in the city that could be used by the Rebels. 

After abandoning Adairsville, Johnston divided his army, sending one corps, under General Hardee, to Kingston. Hardee was born in southeast Georgia, served with distinction in the Mexican War and authored the military manual Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics, which was widely read in both Northern and Southern armies during the Civil War. Hardee’s solid, yet unremarkable performance thus far in the war earned him the nickname “Old Reliable.” Johnston took his remaining corps, commanded by Leonidas Polk and John Bell Hood, who had served with distinction under Robert E. Lee in Virginia, to Cassville. When Sherman dispatched two-thirds of his army towards Kingston, Johnston had an opportunity to strike at the remaining portion of the Union force. However, when Union cavalry threatened Hood’s corps before it could form a line of battle, Johnston ordered his army to withdraw once again southward through Allatoona Pass.

Here again, Sherman, wanting to avoid a full engagement, attempted to flank Johnston’s army and head towards Dallas. The Union commander hoped that by occupying Dallas, he would force Johnston to abandon his fortified position at Allatoona Pass. Johnston, however, reacted by sending Hardee’s and Polk’s corps towards Dallas. Determined to stay in Sherman’s path, Johnston’s line now stretched from Dallas to New Hope Church. When a portion of his army arrived at the church, Sherman was unaware that it faced the bulk of the Confederate army and ordered his army to assault the Rebel lines on May 25. This Union attack failed, and two days later, Sherman decided to attack the northern portion of Johnston’s army, located at Pickett’s Mill. The division of Patrick Cleburne—which by this time had solidified its reputation as the best fighting force in the Army of Tennessee—awaited the Northerners at Pickett’s Mill. Here again, the Rebels were able to beat back the Union attacks.

From Pickett’s Mill, Sherman, in an effort to get closer to his supply line, shifted his army back eastward toward the Western and Atlantic Railroad. On June 3, the Union army occupied Acworth. Meanwhile, Johnston, still determined to stay in Sherman’s path, yet unwilling to deliver any sort of counterstroke, entrenched his forces around Marietta. Seeing that Sherman was unwilling to order a frontal assault on entrenched positions, Johnston now argued that the best chance for slowing Sherman’s advance was for Confederate cavalry to attack the Union’s supply lines on the Western and Atlantic Railroad. If these raids were successful, Sherman would be cut off from his primary supply depot at Chattanooga. Johnston, however, was unwilling to part with his cavalry under Wheeler’s command and argued that cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest should be given the mission. Forrest, however, was currently fighting off Union raiders in Mississippi. President Davis was unwilling to transfer Forrest, and Johnston refused to part with Wheeler, and thus nothing came of the plan. 

At this juncture, Sherman granted his forces a few days rest in and around Acworth. On June 10, Sherman ordered his men to continue their march. Johnston had meanwhile occupied the high grounds in and around Marietta. The first Rebel position Sherman encountered was at Pine Mountain. General Johnston, along with Hardee and Polk, convened on the summit of Pine Mountain to examine the Federal position. Sherman noticed this cloister of Confederates and ordered one of his artillery batteries to open fire. One of these rounds hit Polk, killing him instantly. Johnston and Hardee barely escaped injury or death. The Southerners abandoned Pine Mountain, and, when Union troops advanced further, Lost Mountain as well.

Capitalizing on his numerical superiority, Sherman extended his lines in an attempt to envelop the Confederate army. After failing to strike a blow to the Confederates during the first month of the campaign, Sherman found Johnston entrenched along a long, thin line of mountain ridges that protected the Western and Atlantic Railroad between Big Shanty (now Kennesaw) and Marietta. Sherman’s skirmishers probed this line for several weeks, forcing Johnston’s Confederates to contract their line to a sweeping ridge known as Kennesaw Mountain on June 18. This line was anchored on the north by the railroad and extended for six miles, protecting the main roads leading into Marietta.

On June 27, Sherman ordered Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland to assault the center of the Confederate line at Cheatham’s Hill. His plan was to collapse the Confederate line at the center and then attack the smaller, divided army while Thomas captured the railroad and Marietta. The assault began at 8 a.m. and lasted for less than an hour. However, this brief span of time saw some of the fiercest fighting of the entire campaign, including hand-to-hand fighting at several points. The Union soldiers would assault uphill to a heavily-entrenched Confederate line. And while many Union soldiers reached the line, they could not capture the Confederate defenses and were forced to withdraw. Union losses in this brief battle were more than 3,000, while the Confederates lost fewer than 1,000. Regardless, Sherman intended to renew his assault later in the afternoon until Thomas warned him, “One or two more such assaults would use up this army.” The Union soldiers would entrench themselves just a few hundred yards from their Southern enemy, and here the armies would remain for the next two weeks.

Knowing that Sherman could eventually flank him and cut him off to the south, Johnston withdrew his men from the Kennesaw Mountain line on July 2. He placed them in a defensive line along the Chattahoochee River, below Smyrna and near Vinings. Johnston believed he could stop Sherman’s army here, where he had prepared a strong line of defenses. What Johnston did not plan for was that Sherman’s army was large enough to cross the river at several points to the north near Sope Creek and Roswell. Although Sherman’s army was exposed and divided, Johnston was in no position to attack and was forced to withdraw across the river, taking up a position just north of the Atlanta defenses, near Buckhead at Peachtree Creek. The fact that Sherman was allowed to cross the river without a fight infuriated President Davis and the Confederate government. On July 17, as the citizens of Atlanta fled the city in fear, Davis removed Johnston from command of the Army of Tennessee for his failure to stop Sherman. Hood replaced Johnston and would lead the Southern forces through the battles for Atlanta.

Hood was a much different general from Johnston. While Johnston was cautious, not wanting to waste his army on futile attacks, Hood was a bold fighter whose only instinct was to attack. His first chance came on July 20 at Peachtree Creek. Sherman divided his army into three wings to cross the Chattahoochee and had them advance on Atlanta separately from the north and east. Hood’s plan was to attack Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland while it was isolated as it crossed Peachtree Creek. After destroying Thomas’s army, he would turn and face the rest of Sherman’s force to the east. The plan was good, but it began to fall apart from the start.

Hood wanted to keep the element of surprise, so he planned the attack for the unusually late time of 1 p.m. By this time, most of Thomas’s men had crossed the creek and were ready for an attack. Hood then further delayed the assault by shifting a large portion of his army to the east to protect his flank. This movement, which was misunderstood by the Confederate generals on the field, would delay the assault for another three hours. Further compounding the problem was the fact that Hood was not present on the field of battle. He instead remained at his Atlanta headquarters and left the command of the battle to Hardee, his senior corps commander. The confusion of his orders thus derailed an otherwise effective plan of attack.

After moving nearly one mile to the east, Hardee’s men were now attacking through a dense mass of forest that had not been properly reconnoitered. The first wave of the attack finally began at 4 p.m. They thrashed through the brush, unable to find the enemy. The rest of the assault was handled in a piecemeal fashion that initially drove the Union forces back, but eventually allowed those forces to repel the Confederate onslaught. By 6 p.m., it was clear that the Confederate plan would not work, and Hardee ordered the men back to their original lines. Two days later, Hood would plan another bold offensive—this time attacking a wing of Sherman’s army group to the east of Atlanta.

Hood now had to arrest the advance of McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee, which was moving quickly on Atlanta from the east. His plan was for his army to fall back into the Atlanta defenses on the night of July 21. Once there, Hardee’s corps, the largest in the army, would then march overnight through the city and to the east toward Decatur, where they would attack McPherson’s force from the rear at dawn of July 22. When this attack opened, Lt. General Benjamin Frank Cheatham would attack McPherson from the city, and Lt. General A.P. Stewart would attack Thomas’s men at Peachtree Creek, driving the enemy from the gates of the city.

The plan, while brilliant in conception, had too many components that had to be executed with precision. Hardee was unable to begin his march until 11 p.m. because much of his corps was still engaged with the enemy; some of his men would not start until 1 a.m. The march would take Hardee’s men on a grueling 15-mile trek through the city that would be impossible to complete by the desired time of the attack. At dawn, only a small portion of Hardee’s force had completed the march, and when they arrived, the area resembled the dense brush the men had fought through two days prior. Hardee later said, “I marched in line for two miles through dense forest, where I could not see ten paces.”

Finally, General Hardee was prepared to attack at 1 p.m. He had reached the Federal flank, but a surprise waited for him. Earlier in the day, General McPherson, worried about his flank, shifted a division of troops to protect his left. These troops were placed directly in the line of Hardee’s advance and “prevented the full force of the blow from falling where it was intended to fall.” The attack began with huge Confederate gains. They drove the Union troops from their lines back to their stronger positions on Bald Hill. During this initial attack, McPherson rode out to inspect his lines. His party ran into an advancing Confederate patrol, and he was killed while trying to escape. He was the highest-ranking Union officer killed during the War. The Confederate attack would not continue as it was planned. General Cheatham attacked late, and this allowed for the Union forces to place their full force into repelling Hardee’s attack, and then later turn and place their full force into repelling Cheatham instead of having to fight against both attacks at once. The Union army suffered its worst beating of the campaign at the Battle of Atlanta, but at the end of the day, they still held the ground they started on and could count the battle as a victory. Sherman had won the day, but he would have to find another way into Atlanta.

Part 6: A Cause Denied

The fall of Atlanta in September 1864—and to a lesser extent Admiral David Farragut’s capture of Mobile Bay, Alabama, the preceding August and General Phillip H. Sheridan’s victory over Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia—made certain the reelection of Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, Lincoln won the election of 1864 by a landslide. The last viable chance for Southern independence vanished; Confederate defeat was merely a matter of time. Rebel leaders, however, were convinced that victory was still possible. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, although bruised and battered, still survived in the trenches in and around Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia. Likewise, the demoralized, ill-fed and ill-equipped Confederate Army of Tennessee, commanded by John Bell Hood, was still in the field.

In October 1864, Hood, hoping to lure Sherman out of Atlanta, took his army north to operate against Sherman’s supply line on the Western and Atlantic Railroad and possibly threaten Chattanooga. Sherman initially determined to chase the Rebel army. Hood then decided to move his army into Alabama, hoping Sherman would again follow. Sherman, however, decided to return to Atlanta and dispatched General George Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland to Nashville to confront Hood if he moved into Tennessee. Hood indeed moved into Tennessee and was defeated at Franklin in November. The next month, the Army of Tennessee was decisively defeated by Thomas at the Battle of Nashville.

After Hood moved his army into Alabama, Sherman began to plan his march to the coast. Sherman surmised that protecting the railroad would cost him dearly and yield few results. To avoid this, he decided to detach his force from its supply lines and live off the land. This unorthodox plan could have been dangerous, but nevertheless, Sherman confidently promised Grant, “I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!” To further supply his men, Sherman ordered that 2,500 wagons and 5,000 head of cattle accompany his army on the march.

On November 15, 1864, Sherman began his drive towards the coast. He ordered his men to set fire to Atlanta’s principal buildings, but not to injure dwellings. From Atlanta, Sherman’s army would carve a sixty-mile-wide swath of destruction through the heart of Georgia. To allow for a quicker march, he divided his army into two wings: the right commanded by Major General Oliver O. Howard and the left commanded by Major General Henry W. Slocum. Howard’s and Slocum’s wings initially headed for Macon and Augusta, respectively, before changing course so as to occupy the state capital of Milledgeville, which surrendered on November 23.

Confederate authorities were virtually powerless to halt Sherman’s advance. Hardee was in overall command of Southern forces in Georgia. However, with only 8,000 cavalrymen under Joseph Wheeler and scattered state militia at his disposal, there was little he could do. Wheeler’s men often did more harm than good by plundering the property of loyal Confederate civilians. One Georgia planter referred to Wheeler’s command as a “plundering band of horse stealing ruffians.” The marauding of Wheeler’s cavalry often equaled the depredations of Sherman’s men, despite the latter’s notoriety.

Although Wheeler’s cavalry harassed Sherman’s columns and portions of Rebel infantry made brave, yet futile, stands against the Union juggernaut, by December 10, Sherman’s army was outside Savannah. Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River, however, prevented the commander from linking up with the Union navy. Not wanting to besiege Savannah without the support of the navy, Sherman dispatched a portion of his command to capture the fort. The small Rebel garrison at Fort McAllister surrendered on December 13.

With the added support of the Union navy, Sherman was confident that he could shell Savannah into submission. He sent a letter to Confederate General Hardee requesting the surrender of the city. Sherman assured Hardee that he was “prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison.” However, if Hardee resisted, Sherman warned that his army was “burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah and other large cities which have been so prominent in dragging our country into civil war.” Hardee, now seeing that his situation was hopeless, ordered the city of Savannah to be evacuated. Hardee and his army withdrew to South Carolina, leaving the mayor of Savannah to surrender the city on December 21. After Union forces occupied Savannah, one of the city’s African American inhabitants exulted, “Glory be to God, we are free!”

Three days after the fall of Savannah, Sherman sent a letter to Major General Henry W. Halleck, the Chief of Staff, stating that “we are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect.” Indeed, Sherman’s March to the Sea, more than any other campaign of the war, convinced Southern civilians of the futility of further conflict. It also showed that by this stage in the Civil War, Confederate authorities were powerless to protect their civilians from the Union war machine. 

Sherman’s forces stayed in Savannah for a month before marching into South Carolina. While Sherman’s men were continuing their destructive drive in the Carolinas, Union General George Thomas in Nashville ordered for a cavalry raid into Alabama and central Georgia. These Union cavalrymen, commanded by General James Harrison Wilson, moved south through the center of Alabama, capturing Selma and Montgomery before swinging eastward into Georgia to capture Columbus—a major center of industry.

A motley assortment of Southern troops—mainly state militiamen—under the command of General Howell Cobb defended Columbus. Even though they burned some of the bridges leading into the city, the Confederates were unable to hold back Wilson’s troops, and Columbus fell to the Union on April 16, 1865. After Wilson’s men destroyed anything of military value in Columbus, they set out for Macon, which was surrendered on April 20. On May 3, Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown surrendered all the forces under his command to Wilson. One week later, men under Wilson’s command captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Irwinville, Georgia. A month prior, Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Ulysses. S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, and on April 26, Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to William T. Sherman at Bennett Farm in North Carolina. In early May, the last Confederate forces east of the Mississippi River surrendered. Although some Confederate troops east of the Mississippi River remained in the field, the Civil War was over.

Part 7: Reconstruction

While the bloodshed of the Civil War had come to an end, the state of Georgia—along with most of the former Confederacy—was embroiled in disorder. Four years of war left the state economically devastated, and much of its infrastructure had been destroyed during the last year of the conflict. Furthermore, Union victory in the war had freed the state’s half a million slaves, resulting in social turmoil characterized by African Americans trying to capitalize on their newfound freedom and white Southerners struggling to maintain the Antebellum tradition of white supremacy.

Reconstruction in Georgia, as in the rest of the South, occurred in two phases: the first under the guidance of President Andrew Johnson and the second controlled by a Republican-dominated Congress. Johnson became the President of the United States on April 15, 1865, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Shortly after Governor Brown surrendered the state to Union forces, Johnson formed the Military Department of Georgia and appointed a Georgia Unionist, James Johnson, as governor. Nine thousand Union troops occupied the state at this time. In October 1865, the state held its first post-war constitutional convention. With the exception of denouncing secession and outlawing slavery, the constitution was very similar to the one that existed before.

In November 1865, Georgia held its first general election of the post-war period. The winners of this election were predominantly former Confederates. The next month, after the Georgia General Assembly eliminated slavery in the state by ratifying the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, President Johnson allowed Georgia’s elected leaders to take control of the state. Northern Republicans were displeased with Johnson’s handling of Reconstruction. They felt that Johnson—a Southerner himself—was too lenient on former Confederates. In the elections of 1866, Republicans gained a solid majority in Congress and wrested control of Reconstruction from President Johnson.

Even before the November elections, congressional Republicans created the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. This committee put forward the 14th Amendment—which would grant citizenship to former slaves—and the First Reconstruction Act—which would place Georgia and the rest of the former Confederacy under military occupation. Consequently, with their ascendancy in Congress, Republicans passed both measures over Johnson’s objections and created the Third Military District—consisting of Georgia, Alabama and Florida—commanded by General John Pope. In addition to creating the Third Military District, the First Reconstruction Act eliminated the elected governments of every former Confederate state except Tennessee. General Pope ordered for a new constitutional convention to take place. In March 1869, the convention ratified a new state constitution that granted citizenship to African Americans. This convention also moved the state capital from Milledgeville to Atlanta. The following month, Republicans gained control of the state senate, and Rufus Bullock, a Republican, became governor. With all this, military rule in Georgia came to a temporary end.

Georgia’s Democrats did not take this loss of power lightly. They objected to being run out of office by carpetbaggers (Northern Republicans) and scalawags (Southern Republicans). The most visible and notorious expression of white Democratic power was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Although it was formed in 1866 in Tennessee, by 1868, the KKK was active in Georgia, with former Confederate general John Brown Gordon acting as its Grand Dragon. The Klan relied upon terror, intimidation and even murder to restrict Republican influence. Black voters and prominent Republicans were the primary targets of Klansmen. Freedman’s Bureau agents were also targets. The actions of the Klan often proved effective for white Democrats.

The Ku Klux Klan was not the only instrument of white supremacy active in Georgia during Reconstruction. By September 1868, an alliance of Democrats and some white Republicans had forced all black legislators out of the General Assembly. One of those African American politicians forced from office was Philip Joiner. Joiner, along with other black Republicans, led a march from Albany, Georgia, to attend a political rally in Camilla in southwest Georgia. Angry whites greeted the black activists with violence, killing twelve and wounding thirty. Consequently, Georgia was once again put under military occupation.

Even with the presence of Union troops, Georgia’s African American population faced an uncertain—and often dangerous—future. In addition to persecution at the hands of the KKK or other white Southerners, the newly-freed blacks had to struggle to survive economically. The Freedmen’s Bureau, an organization formed in 1865 to provide for the social welfare of ex-slaves in the occupied South, was often unable to perform their assigned tasks. Hence, many ex-slaves found themselves serving as sharecroppers often under the watchful eye of their former masters.

Rights for Georgia’s African Americans developed in fits and starts. In 1869, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled in the case White v. Clements that African Americans could legally hold office. The next year, the new military commander in Georgia, Alfred H. Terry, removed former Confederates from office and allowed the expelled African American politicians to retake their seats. The new, Republican-dominated state legislature ratified the 15th Amendment, which granted voting rights to African Americans. Consequently, Georgia was readmitted into the Union and military rule came to an end.

This Republican resurgence was short-lived. As soon as the next popular election took place in November 1871, Democrats regained control. Governor Bullock, now without the military to provide support, left the state in the fall of 1871. Bullock would be the last Republican governor of Georgia until the election of Sonny Purdue in 2003. Bullock was replaced by James M. Smith, a former Confederate officer, in October 1871. The Democrats were now back in full control of the state; Reconstruction in Georgia was effectively over.