Atlanta Campaign
The Atlanta Campaign was a military operation by the Union Forces under William Tecumseh Sherman in northern Georgia during the American Civil War . In a series of battles that lasted from May to September 1864, the Union armies defeated the Confederate Tennessee Army under Joseph Eggleston Johnston (later under John Bell Hood ) and eventually captured the strategically and economically important city of Atlanta . Their success contributed significantly to the re-election of President Lincoln on November 8, 1864, who - unlike his opponent McClellan - was against a compromise solution with the Confederation. The campaign is therefore considered to be crucial for the North's complete victory in the Civil War, but it also had a major impact on a cultural level.
Prehistory and strategic importance
With the victory in the Battle of Chattanooga in November 1863, the northern states finally succeeded in securing the state of Tennessee and thereby opening the gate for operations against other Confederate states further south.
The Atlanta railroad hub in Georgia, which had become one of the most important industrial metropolises in the south during the Civil War, was a particularly rewarding operational destination. The capture of this city by the Union would inflict a severe blow on the south and lead the northerners into the heart of the Confederation, in the deep south.
In addition, the overall strategic plan of the new Commander-in-Chief of the Army , Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant , provided for threatening the numerically inferior southern states at as many points as possible at the same time. In this way, Grant wanted to prevent the southern states from making use of their inner lines as in previous years and, depending on the situation, reinforcing their armies with troops from less threatened areas. For this reason, Grant gave his close confidante William Tecumseh Sherman a powerful army in North Georgia in the spring of 1864. With her he wanted to conquer the city of Atlanta and defeat the Confederate Tennessee Army that was protecting them .
The commanders in chief and their commanders
For this purpose, Sherman was given command of the "Military Division of the Mississippi". In addition to several defense areas (departments), three large field armies were subordinate to him.
The strongest of the three armies, the Cumberland Army , was led by Major General George Henry Thomas , who distinguished himself in the Battle of Chickamauga . Maj. General James Birdseye McPherson , whom Sherman held in high esteem , was in command of Sherman's former command, the Tennessee Army . Sherman's smallest field army, the Ohio Army , commanded Maj . Gen. John McAllister Schofield . Including the cavalry troops subordinate to the various armies , Sherman had a total of around 100,000 men.
Opposite him stood the Confederate General Joseph Eggleston Johnston with the Tennessee Army. Johnston, one of the senior Confederate generals , commanded around 50,000 men. Shortly after the campaign began, however, it was reinforced by the Confederate Mississippi Army under Leonidas Polk to around 65,000 men. Johnston, a clever, more defensively oriented tactician , had set up his army in the mountains of northern Georgia, near Dalton , and was expecting Sherman's offensive there at the end of April.
The place of the action
Terrain and infrastructure
The terrain along the roughly 100 miles that Sherman and his Union soldiers had to cover on the way to Atlanta seemed more suitable for defense than attack. It was mountainous and crossed by several rivers in a west-east direction. The three main ones were, from north to south, the Oostanaula River , the Etowah River, and the Chattahoochee River .
The north-south stretch of the Western and Atlantic Railroad (W&A) was also crucial for both sides . It was an essential supply line for both Johnston and Sherman and always had to be factored in to strategic considerations. As a supply, retreat, and advance line, the railway line was particularly important for both sides.
The city of Atlanta
The city was founded in 1836 as a terminus for the Western & Atlantic and in 1861 had 9,000 inhabitants. It had grown in importance during the civil war. At the time of the campaign, it was only surpassed by the capital, Richmond , in terms of industrial importance .
In Atlanta, the W&A rail line met with three other rail lines:
- the Georgia Railroad route from east Augusta, Georgia on the South Carolina border ,
- the route of the Atlanta and West Point Railroad from southwest Montgomery in Alabama and
- the Macon and Western Railroad route from the southeast.
The campaign
Rocky Face Ridge to Kennesaw Mountain
The first major skirmishes of the campaign broke out at Dalton in the Rocky Face Ridge area in early May 1864 , where Sherman's troops met tough resistance from the indented Confederates . He decided to use the bulk of his forces to launch a diversionary attack against Johnston's lines while McPherson's Tennessee Army was to bypass the Confederate left flank. McPherson was then to attack Johnston further southeast at Resaca on the Oostanaula in the rear and interrupt his main supply line, the W&A railway line. McPherson encountered strong resistance here, too, and Sherman then rushed to his aid with the rest of his force.
For three days, from May 13-15, he tried again to find weaknesses in Johnston's front, without success, whereupon he again bypassed the left flank of the Confederate and forced Johnston to retreat south. On May 18, Rome fell to troops of the northern states. During the retreat Johnston tried on May 19 at Cassville to attack one of Sherman's separately marching armies with a superior force. His plan was to attack Schofield's Ohio Army head-on with Polk's corps , while John Bell Hood and his corps were to fall on the right flank. Hood noticed for his part Union troops, which threatened his flank and back, and therefore broke off the attack. Polk and Hood took up a defensive position at Cassville , together with Johnston's Third Corps under General Hardee , but they vacated it shortly afterwards.
Johnston's closest line of defense was a few miles south at Allatoona Pass , near the town of Cartersville . This position also proved to be a strong obstacle for Sherman, who therefore did not want to attack her. As before, he bypassed Johnston's flank instead, forcing him to retreat. He could not sever Johnston's line of communication and retreat, however, because Johnston had foreseen the movement and had taken a position southwest of it at New Hope Church . Sherman underestimated the strength of Johnston's troops and ordered one of his corps to attack, which was violently repulsed. A Confederate counterattack at Dallas was equally unsuccessful, and Sherman marched eastward to threaten Johnston's supply line again.
Subsequently, the armies faced and groped each other in the Pine Mountain area in early June , fatally wounding Leonidas Polk, who commanded one of Johnston's corps. Once again, Sherman forced Johnston to retreat through his bypassing and overlapping maneuvers. The Confederates then took up a strong defensive position at Kennesaw Mountain . Sherman nevertheless sensed a chance for a frontal attack, which was carried out without success on June 27th: The firmly entrenched Confederates repelled all attempts by the Northerners to break through their lines, with high losses for the attackers.
From Marietta to the Battle of Atlanta
Johnston managed by this victory to keep Sherman in the Marietta and Kennesaw Mountain area for several days . The Confederate general had to clear his line in the end because there was another danger of bypassing it. His new defensive line ran along the Chattahoochee River , just a few miles north of Atlanta, but this too was soon bypassed by Sherman, and Johnston withdrew once more, this time to just outside Atlanta.
Meanwhile, in Richmond , the Confederate capital, Johnston's maneuvers had been taken aback. Although the Confederate general had stayed the outnumbered Sherman in the mountains of northern Georgia for two months and caused him a few tactical defeats, he had given up more and more territory, so that Sherman was now practically at the gates of Atlanta. When Johnston also gave a vague answer to a question from President Davis about his plans for further operations, he dismissed the general, who in his eyes was too defensive and with whom he had argued several times before. On July 17, he appointed the Texan by choice John Bell Hood, who had previously commanded one of the corps of the Tennessee Army, to be Johnston's successor. The president expected him to take a more offensive approach against the invading army.
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Hood attacked Sherman's troops immediately, but was repulsed by the Cumberland Army at Peachtree Creek with heavy losses. Hood's second attack, this time on the Union's Tennessee Army, also failed on July 22nd. The Tennessee Army Commander-in-Chief, General McPherson, a close friend of Hood's West Point days, was among those killed in action that day.
Siege and Fall
After Sherman was unable to take Atlanta from the north and east, he shifted his center of gravity to the west and from there threatened the city with the Tennessee Army, now under Major General Oliver Otis Howard . Hood countered this movement with a counterattack at Ezra Church on July 28th. The attack failed, but prevented Howard Hood's last supply line from being cut. Another attack by Sherman on this line, this time with Schofield's Ohio Army, also failed.
Sherman decided now to besiege the city, dug himself in front of Atlanta and began to bombard the city. In the next few weeks, it was mainly the cavalry under General Wheeler (CS) and General Kilpatrick (US) who repeatedly sparked fighting through their raids and sabotaged the supply lines of their opponents.
In late August 1864, Sherman undertook another large-scale attack on Hood's last rail-supported supply line. So he sent the bulk of his force on a long march to Jonesborough , south of Atlanta. He did not succeed in destroying General Hardee's Confederate Corps opposing him there, but he overran his positions and took the Macon & Western railway line. As he expected, Hood then evacuated the city, which surrendered on September 2 and was occupied by US troops. The next day, most of Sherman's troops marched into Atlanta, and Sherman telegraphed Lincoln: Atlanta is ours and fairly won. (“Atlanta is ours, and we have won.”) His victory cost the northern states 31,687 soldiers, the southern losses amounted to 34,979 men. Other estimates assume that around 40,000 men were lost on both sides (see ibid.).
logistics
Importance of the railroad in the American Civil War
The American Civil War is often considered the "first modern war". One reason for this was the increasing importance of the railroad for warfare. The railroad made it possible to transport large numbers of associations, large quantities of supplies and food for people and animals quickly and efficiently over long distances. It was therefore vital for the armies involved not to be cut off from their rail connections to the hinterland.
Union Forces logistics
The main supply depot for the western theater of war was in Louisville , Kentucky , 473 miles from Atlanta. The depot responsible for the Atlanta campaign was in Nashville , Tennessee. From here the supplies were transported by rail and on the Cumberland River by ship to the forward supply depot in Chattanooga .
The supplies were transported from the forward depot with the W&A to field depots near the front. These field depots advanced south along the railway line with the attacking troops as soon as the rails damaged in the course of the fighting were repaired. From the field depots the armies were supplied with carts pulled by mules and oxen. At the beginning of the campaign there were over 5,180 wagons, 28,000 horses and 32,000 mules.
Sherman planned to bring up to 130 transports a day close to the front on the Western & Atlantic railway line. For this he had 1,000 cars and 100 steam locomotives at his disposal. Because of the constant raids by the Confederate cavalry behind the fighting armies, Sherman had relocated the main depot for repairing the locomotives and tracks to Ringgold, Georgia, southwest of Chattanooga. He created a division that was only used to protect the connection and supply lines and was deployed along the railway line. It also protected the troops used for repairs. Sherman was able to repair rails, bridges and telegraph connections very quickly. On the Confederate side, rumor has been circulating that Sherman was carrying a duplicate of every important bridge and tunnel on the way to Atlanta.
Confederate Army logistics
As for the Northern States, the W&A was the "aorta" of Johnston's Tennessee Army. However, the Confederates had the advantage of getting closer and closer to their Atlanta supply depot during the course of the campaign, which made their supplies much easier. In Atlanta, their supplies depended mainly on the south-facing Atlantic & West Point and the Macon & Western Railroad, as the Georgia Railroad was blocked early by the northern states.
After the campaign
Political and military consequences
The Atlanta campaign had far-reaching political consequences. The important Union victory came at just the right time for Lincoln . In the east, General Grant had not yet succeeded in taking the Confederate capital of Richmond and Lee's Northern Virginia Army a decisive defeat despite several extremely bloody battles (see Battle of the Wilderness , Battle of Spotsylvania Court House , Battle of Cold Harbor ) to prepare what had led to a strengthening of the oppositional war opponents. Sherman's victory, however, strengthened the President 's backs and he convincingly won re-election on November 8, 1864 with 212 of 233 electoral votes. He also robbed the south of one of its most important cities and paved the way for further operations deep in the heart of the south, such as Sherman's "March to the Sea" to Savannah in the fall of 1864 or, building on that, the 1865 Carolina campaign .
The city of Atlanta
For the city of Atlanta itself, the fighting and the conquest were a disaster. The retreating southerners had already set fire to anything of military value. An ammunition train also exploded because it could no longer leave the city and should not fall into the hands of the enemy. The Union troops completed the devastation by destroying the rest of the city's economic base and evacuating large parts of the population into the surrounding area. This should serve to secure the hinterland and secure Sherman's march to the sea. Still, residents returned just a few months later and, although about 90 percent of the buildings were destroyed by that point, they quickly rebuilt their city, giving the city the nickname Phoenix City . Atlanta was named the capital of Georgia as early as 1868.
Cultural impact
The fall and destruction of Atlanta also had a major impact on a cultural level. In literary terms he was memorialized by Margaret Mitchell in Gone With the Wind (1936), one of the most famous and most translated books in world literature. The cinematic implementation with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable from 1939 was also an enormous success, both works shaped the romantic image of the sinking south . The film shows the siege and the escape of the residents of Atlanta.
War graves
There are many cemeteries with war graves along the route of the armies involved in the campaign. The Marietta National Cemetery, with around 10,000 graves, is the only national cemetery in the country to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the Atlanta campaign.
Sources and Notes
- ↑ Dr. Cristopher R. Gabel: Railroad Generalship, Foundations of Civil War Strategy. (867 kB) US Army Command and General Staff College, Combat Studies Institute Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1997, accessed April 20, 2013 (pdf).
- ^ Robert U. Johnson, Clarence C. Buel (Ed.): Battles & Leaders of the Civil War, Volume 4, p. 289 Losses of the Northern States
- ^ Robert U. Johnson, Clarence C. Buel (Ed.): Battles & Leaders of the Civil War, Volume 4, p. 292 Losses of the Southern States
- ↑ Michael Brasher: “Good Logistics is Combat Power,” Sherman, Atlanta, and the Sinews of War. ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: Civil War Interactive Newspaper. Huntingdon TN 2006 (online).
- ^ Nick Overby: Logistics Supplying Hell. The Campaign for Atlanta. ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Quartermaster Professional Bulletin. Quartermaster Museum, Fort Lee VA 1992 (pdf).
literature
- United States. War Dept .: The War of the Rebellion, a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Vol. 38, chap.50. Print. Off., Washington 1880-1901.
- James M. McPherson : Die for Freedom. The history of the American Civil War. List, Munich 1992, Weltbild, Augsburg 2000. ISBN 3-471-78178-1
- Stanley Horn: The Army of Tennessee. University of Oklahoma 1952. Norman, London 1993. ISBN 0-8061-2565-9
- Shelby Foote : The Civil War - A Narrative. Vol. 3. Red River to Appomattox. Vintage Books, New York 1974, 1986. ISBN 0-394-74622-8
- Albert Castel: Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864. Lawrence, KS 1992
- James L. McDonough & James P. Jones: Was So Terrible: Sherman and Atlanta . New York 1987
- Richard M. McMurry: Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy , Lincoln, 2000. ISBN 0-80323212-8
Web links
Pictures and maps
- Overview map
- Map of the first part of the campaign (PDF; 470 kB)
- Maps for the second part of the campaign
- Virtual tour
- Animated course of the campaign
Further texts
- The War of the Rebellion: Official reports of the civil war (English)
- Chronology of the campaign (English)
- Descriptions of individual slaughter (English)
- Orders of battle, Official Records and much more (English)
- Memoirs of General WT Sherman (English)
- Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume 4 contains numerous written by participants texts about the Atlanta Campaign (English)
