On 13 May 1864 the Union armies of William T. Sherman closed in on Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate Army of Tennessee at Resaca, a railroad town on the Oostanaula River in north Georgia. Over the next two days they attacked Johnston's entrenched line and were thrown back, until a Union division crossed the river below the town and threatened his rear. Johnston slipped away south in the night. Resaca was the first major battle of the campaign for Atlanta, and it set the pattern for the rest of it.
The campaign for Atlanta
In May 1864 Sherman opened a campaign to take Atlanta, a vital city of the Confederacy. The New Georgia Encyclopedia puts his force at 110,000 men in three armies, under George H. Thomas, James B. McPherson and John M. Schofield. Johnston's army, which had wintered at Dalton after the defeat at Chattanooga, held the steep Rocky Face Ridge north of Resaca. The New Georgia Encyclopedia says it was outnumbered about two to one until reinforcements under Leonidas Polk brought it to almost 70,000 men.1
Sherman did not intend to storm the ridge. While his other armies demonstrated against it, he sent McPherson's Army of the Tennessee south through the unguarded Snake Creek Gap to reach Resaca, where the Western and Atlantic Railroad, Johnston's lifeline to Atlanta, crossed the Oostanaula. If Resaca fell, Johnston's army would be cut off. The New Georgia Encyclopedia quotes Sherman's cry when McPherson came through the gap: “I've got Joe Johnston dead!”2
A chance missed
McPherson moved cautiously and did not take the town. The American Battlefield Trust writes that, worried that Johnston would strike him, he pulled his men back toward Snake Creek Gap, and that Sherman wrote to him that he was disappointed beyond measure. Johnston saw that he was being outflanked. The New Georgia Encyclopedia says he gave up Rocky Face Ridge and Dalton on the night of 12 to 13 May and marched south, and his army took up a line about four miles long to the west and north of Resaca.3
On 13 May Sherman's armies arrived in front of it. Union and Confederate troops skirmished through the day, but the day ended before the Union armies were fully deployed. The date of the battle is given differently for that reason: the American Battlefield Trust dates it 13 to 15 May, while the New Georgia Encyclopedia counts the battle proper from 14 May and treats the 13th as a day of skirmishes.4
Camp Creek and the four guns
On 14 May the fighting spread along the whole front. Union attacks across Camp Creek, a stream with steep muddy banks in front of the Confederate center, were badly managed and thrown back. The New Georgia Encyclopedia adds that one of Schofield's division commanders was drunk. The encyclopedia also says that in the evening Union troops seized high ground west of Resaca that brought the bridges behind Johnston within range of their artillery.5
On 15 May the fight centered on a four-gun Confederate battery under Captain Max Van Den Corput, pushed out in front of the main line. The American Battlefield Trust puts it 20 yards ahead of the infantry, the New Georgia Encyclopedia 80. Union troops overran the gunners but were driven to cover by fire from the main line, and for the rest of the day the guns stood abandoned between the armies. The New Georgia Encyclopedia says the attacking regiment was the 70th Indiana under Colonel Benjamin Harrison, the future president. After dark Union soldiers dug through the parapet, tied ropes to the four cannons and dragged them back to their own lines.6
The pattern of the campaign
Meanwhile a Union division under Thomas W. Sweeny crossed the Oostanaula below Resaca. Flanked again, Johnston withdrew across the river on the night of 15 to 16 May. The American Battlefield Trust calls the battle inconclusive and gives about 2,747 Union and 2,800 Confederate casualties; the New Georgia Encyclopedia gives some 2,800 Confederate casualties and says Union losses were at least as high. In the encyclopedia's judgment, Resaca showed that the outnumbered Confederates could slow Sherman's advance but not stop it, because he could keep pressing and outflanking them all the way to Atlanta. How the campaign ended is told in our article on Sherman's March to the Sea, and its commander in our biography of Sherman.7
