What happened at the Battle of Atlanta?
The Battle of Atlanta was fought on 22 July 1864 east of Atlanta, Georgia. John Bell Hood sent Hardee's corps on a night march to strike the flank and rear of McPherson's Union Army of the Tennessee. McPherson was killed, but the Union line held, and Hood lost an estimated 5,500 to 8,500 men, or 10,000 by the Union count.1
On 22 July 1864 the Confederate army defending Atlanta tried the boldest stroke of the summer. Four days into his command, General John Bell Hood pulled most of his troops back into the city's fortifications and sent a whole corps on a night march around the open flank of the Union army east of the city. The attack came close: it killed the Union army commander James B. McPherson and broke the line in two places. It failed all the same, and the American Battlefield Trust counts it the bloodiest battle of the Atlanta campaign.2
The name causes confusion. The Battle of Atlanta is the single day's fight east of the city on 22 July; Sherman noted in his memoirs that the battle of that day was the one usually given the name; older accounts also call it simply the battle of 22 July. The Atlanta campaign was the four-month contest from early May to 2 September 1864. It included Peachtree Creek on 20 July, Ezra Church on 28 July and Jonesboro at the end of August, and it ended with the fall of the city.3
This page tells the battle from both sides: what Jefferson Davis wanted from Hood, how Hood planned the blow, why it miscarried and how the Union army survived it. For the wider war in the West see our guide to the Western Theater of the Civil War, the overview of the American Civil War and our life of William Tecumseh Sherman.4
What was the Atlanta campaign?
In the spring of 1864 Ulysses S. Grant, newly in charge of all the Union armies, ordered offensives along the whole Confederate frontier. William T. Sherman was to move against Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee in north Georgia, break it up and wreck the South's war resources. Behind Johnston lay Atlanta, a manufacturing center and the junction of the railroads that tied together what was left of the Confederacy east of the Mississippi.5
Sherman gathered about 110,000 men in three armies around Chattanooga: George H. Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, McPherson's Army of the Tennessee and John M. Schofield's Army of the Ohio. Johnston had a little under 55,000 in April. Sherman seldom attacked head on. Again and again he pinned Johnston in front and sent a column around his flank toward the railroad, usually McPherson's, and Johnston fell back: from Dalton to Resaca, across the Etowah, to Kennesaw Mountain, where Sherman's frontal attack of 27 June was thrown back, and finally across the Chattahoochee River in early July.6
The Confederate side had its own arithmetic. The New Georgia Encyclopedia describes a strategy of winning by not losing: if Lee held Richmond and Johnston held Atlanta into November, war-weary Northern voters might turn Abraham Lincoln out of office, and a Democratic president might seek an armistice. That made Atlanta a political prize as much as a military one.7
Why did Jefferson Davis replace Johnston with Hood?
By mid-July Sherman's armies were across the Chattahoochee, a few miles from the city. Davis feared Atlanta would be given up without a fight. He had long thought Johnston too cautious, and the two men had quarreled since 1861. On 16 July Davis telegraphed to ask about his plans and got an answer he found evasive. The order of 17 July relieved Johnston because he had failed to stop the enemy short of Atlanta and expressed no confidence that he could defeat him. Jacob D. Cox, a Union general who later wrote the history of the campaign, adds that Davis simply did not like Johnston.8
The new commander was John Bell Hood, a corps commander in the army, who had made his name leading troops in Virginia at Gaines's Mill, Second Manassas, Antietam and Gettysburg and was known for his willingness to attack. He took command on 18 July. In his own account the order astounded him: he urged Johnston to keep command until the battle for Atlanta was fought, and together with the corps commanders William J. Hardee and Alexander P. Stewart he telegraphed Davis to ask that the change be postponed. Davis refused. Cox, writing from the Union side, also judged that Hood seems to have been sincerely reluctant.9
The odds were against him. Hood had about 50,000 men; Sherman had some 80,000 within five miles of the city. Sherman asked Schofield, who had been Hood's classmate at West Point, what sort of man he was, heard that he was bold to the point of rashness, and warned his divisions to be ready for an attack. Cox recalls that the Union army welcomed the news: it wanted the Confederates to come out of their works.10
What happened at Peachtree Creek on 20 July?
Hood struck first north of the city. On 20 July, while Thomas's army was crossing Peachtree Creek and the armies of McPherson and Schofield were far to the east near Decatur, the Confederates came out of their works and attacked Thomas. They had some local success but were driven back, losing about 2,500 men to about 1,700 Union casualties by the New Georgia Encyclopedia's count; the Trust gives 1,750.11
Meanwhile McPherson had cut the Georgia Railroad to Augusta near Decatur and was marching west along it toward the city. On the evening of the 20th Hood pulled Patrick Cleburne's division away from Hardee to hold a bald hill south of the railroad. The next day a brigade of Mortimer Leggett's division, in Frank Blair's XVII Corps, took the hill in a sharp fight, and it became known as Leggett's Hill. From its top the Union officers could see into Atlanta.12
Hood's plan: Hardee's night march
Hood learned from his cavalry commander Joseph Wheeler that McPherson's left flank was hanging in the air beside the Georgia Railroad, with a mass of Union wagons parked around Decatur. Sherman had sent his cavalry under Kenner Garrard east to Covington to burn bridges and tear up track, so there was no cavalry screen on that flank.13
Hood's plan was ambitious. On the night of 21 July Stewart's and Cheatham's corps and Gustavus W. Smith's Georgia militia would withdraw into a new inner line around the city. Hardee's corps, four divisions, would march south out of Atlanta and then northeast, about 15 miles, to fall on McPherson's left and rear at dawn, while Wheeler struck the wagons at Decatur. When Hardee had rolled up the Union left, Cheatham would attack from the city and drive the Union armies back against Peachtree Creek. Hood likened the move to Stonewall Jackson's flank marches at Chancellorsville and Second Manassas, a comparison the American Battlefield Trust also draws, though he added that so short a march within his own cavalry screen needed no Jackson to lead it.14
The march did not go to plan. The start was late, the night hot, the roads dusty, and the cavalry passing through the column in the dark caused more delay. Hardee formed his divisions, from left to right Maney, Cleburne, Walker and Bate, well short of where Hood wanted them, and then had to push through thickets and broken country. The attack that was meant for dawn began only shortly after noon.15
How did the attack on 22 July unfold?
Luck now favored the Union. McPherson, worried about his left, had sent Grenville M. Dodge's XVI Corps toward it, and its two divisions were on the march there when Walker's and Bate's divisions came out of the woods. Dodge's men only had to halt and face left to be in line of battle. The Confederates had to cross open fields under heavy fire and could not break through. Major General W. H. T. Walker was killed leading his division into the fight.16
Farther west, Cleburne's and Maney's divisions found the gap between Dodge and Blair's corps and came in behind Giles A. Smith's division at the end of the Union line. They captured a regular battery that was moving along the road, overran field hospitals and took hundreds of prisoners. Smith's men jumped over their own breastworks and fought from the other side, with their backs to Atlanta.17
The fight then turned on the bald hill. Leggett's division held it against attacks from the south and, later, from the front, and Blair's line swung back on it like a door on a hinge. Brigades of the XV Corps came across the fields to fill the gap between Blair and Dodge, and by midafternoon the Army of the Tennessee had a new front at right angles to its old one.18
How did General McPherson die?
That morning McPherson had ridden over to Sherman's headquarters at the Howard House. The two generals sat on the steps and talked about Hood, and agreed to be ready for hard fighting. When firing broke out behind the Union left and guns sounded toward Decatur, McPherson called for his horse and rode off to see what it meant.19
He sent his staff in all directions with orders and set out for Blair's line along a wagon road through the woods, almost alone. The road ran straight into Cleburne's skirmishers coming through the gap. They called on him to surrender; he raised his hat, turned his horse to gallop off and was shot dead. The Trust gives the time as 2:02 p.m., preserved by an officer's watch smashed against a tree in the escape; Sherman's first telegram to Washington put it before noon. Union troops soon retook the spot, and a pocketbook taken from the body, holding Sherman's orders for the day, was found on a Confederate prisoner.20
McPherson had graduated from West Point in 1853, in the same class as Hood, Schofield and Philip Sheridan, and had risen under Grant through Fort Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg to command the Army of the Tennessee. Hood wrote that the news caused him sincere sorrow: McPherson had been his friend at the academy and had treated Southern civilians around Vicksburg with kindness. Sherman put John A. Logan, the senior corps commander, in command of the army.21
Cheatham's breakthrough at the Hurt House
Hood had watched the morning from a salient of the city's works, waiting for the sound of Hardee's guns. In the afternoon he ordered Cheatham's corps forward against the Union line east of the city. Along the Georgia Railroad its attack broke through Logan's XV Corps near the Troup Hurt House, overran the line and captured Francis De Gress's battery of 20-pounder Parrott rifles.22
Sherman saw the break from the Howard House. Schofield brought up about twenty guns and shelled the Confederates in the gap, Charles R. Woods's division wheeled in on their flank, and Logan rallied the broken division in person. The counterattack restored the line and recovered most of the lost guns. On the Confederate left, Smith's Georgia militia advanced against Schofield's front and were also repulsed.23
What happened at Decatur?
While the infantry fought, Wheeler's cavalry rode into Decatur, where McPherson's supply trains were parked, guarded by a brigade under Colonel Sprague. Sherman wrote that the sound of artillery from that direction worried him more than all the musketry on his left. Sprague's men held off the cavalry long enough to get the wagons away, losing only a handful, and a brigade sent by Schofield helped secure that flank.24
Hardee's divisions kept attacking the hill and the new Union front until evening, but the attacks of the two Confederate corps were never made together, and Blair's men could face each in turn. By nightfall the Confederates had fallen back toward the city's works.25
How many soldiers died in the Battle of Atlanta?
The Union loss is well documented. Logan's report of 24 July counted 3,521 killed, wounded and missing and ten guns lost. Modern summaries give similar totals: about 3,600 in the New Georgia Encyclopedia, 3,641 in the National Park Service summary and 3,722 in the American Battlefield Trust's figures.26
The Confederate loss is much less certain. The Trust and the New Georgia Encyclopedia give about 5,500, the Park Service 8,499. Logan reported 3,220 Confederate dead, counted or estimated, buried or returned under a flag of truce and estimated the total Confederate loss at no less than 10,000. Sherman thought the count of dead looked excessive but credited it; Cox accepted Logan's estimate. Hood, for his part, listed the trophies: Hardee brought off eight guns and thirteen flags and Cheatham five guns.27
By the Trust's count about 34,900 Union and 40,400 Confederate soldiers were engaged. Two generals were killed, McPherson and Walker.28
Who won the Battle of Atlanta?
The Union. The Army of the Tennessee held its ground, the Confederates went back into their fortifications, and Sherman's armies kept their grip on the city. The New Georgia Encyclopedia still calls it the Confederates' greatest success of the campaign: they took a dozen guns and rolled up a division's length of trenches before they were stopped.29
Hood blamed Hardee. In his memoir he wrote that Hardee had failed to swing far enough around McPherson's flank and had thrown his men against entrenchments instead of taking them in the rear. He still counted the day a partial success that raised morale, stopped desertions and checked the Union advance toward his last railroad. Cox, who fought on the other side, rejected the charge: a fifteen-mile night march through that country and an attack that landed squarely on the Union flank seemed to him a remarkable piece of maneuvering.30
Sherman made his own choice that day. He left the Army of the Tennessee to fight the battle almost unaided, with only demonstrations by Thomas and Schofield, because the attackers could be only part of Hood's army and because, as he put it, McPherson's old army would have been jealous of help. Thomas and Schofield reported the city works in front of them strong and fully manned.31
How did Atlanta fall?
Sherman did not assault the city's works. He shifted the Army of the Tennessee, now under Oliver O. Howard, to the west to reach the last railroads. Hood attacked again at Ezra Church on 28 July and was repulsed once more; the New Georgia Encyclopedia puts the losses at 4,600 Confederate to 700 Union, the Trust at 3,000 to 642.32
Through August Union guns shelled the city. On 25 August Sherman swung most of his army south toward Jonesboro, and on 31 August his troops cut the Macon and Western Railroad, Atlanta's last supply line. Hood evacuated the city on the night of 1 September, and Union troops marched in on 2 September. Sherman telegraphed that Atlanta was ours, and fairly won.33
The news reached the North two months before the presidential election. The Georgia Historical Society, the New Georgia Encyclopedia and the Trust all credit the fall of Atlanta with securing Lincoln's reelection. From the city Sherman set out on the March to the Sea, while Hood led his army north into Tennessee, to Spring Hill, Franklin and Nashville.34
What is the Atlanta Cyclorama?
The battle of 22 July lives on in one of the largest paintings in America. In the 1880s German painters working for the American Panorama Company in Milwaukee painted it as a cyclorama, a circular canvas viewed from the inside. It puts the viewer near the Troup Hurt House at the moment Logan's men counterattack to close the break in the line, with Logan himself galloping to the front. It is one of only two Civil War cycloramas on public display in the United States; the other shows Gettysburg.35
The painting first went on show in Minneapolis in 1886 (a copy opened in Detroit in 1887) and reached Atlanta in 1892. The New Georgia Encyclopedia says Logan influenced the choice of subject; Daniel Pollock's study in Southern Spaces calls the story that he commissioned it almost certainly apocryphal. Showmen altered the canvas for local audiences, and the Atlanta History Center notes that in Atlanta it was advertised as the only Confederate victory ever painted. Restored, it reopened at the Atlanta History Center on 22 February 2019.36
Where was the Battle of Atlanta fought?
East of downtown Atlanta, between the city's fortifications and Decatur, along the line of the Georgia Railroad. The American Battlefield Trust notes that, like the other battlefields around the city, it has been lost to development, and a Georgia Historical Society marker now tells the story of the battles for Atlanta.37
For other battles of the war in the West, see Chickamauga, Shiloh and Vicksburg, our list of the greatest battles of the Civil War and the military history of the United States.38
