Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[543] by Johnston for his line of defence; the immediate fortifications of Atlanta were strengthened; and the two armies now confronted each other in what was unmistakably the crisis of the Georgia campaign.

To this point the incidents of the campaign had all been in favour of the Confederates. The engagements at Resaca, New Hope Church, and Kenesaw Mountain, had been all Confederate victories. In connection, too, with the campaign, Gen. Forrest had achieved a brilliant success in Northern Mississippi, and intercepting at Guntown, on the 10th June, an expedition under Sturgis on its way from Memphis to protect and operate in Sherman's rear, had driven it back in utter rout and confusion, and hotly pursued it a distance of a hundred miles, taking two thousand prisoners, and killing and wounding an equal number. This stroke uncovered Sherman's rear, and left him a hundred and thirty-five miles in the interiour of Georgia, in constant dread that cavalry might get upon his line, and destroy it beyond the possibility of further use. The situation was all that Gen. Johnston had anticipated; all that he wished for. Hie had performed all the conditions of the campaign he had proposed to himself; he had now “got the chances of battle in his favour ;” he had “reduced the odds against him by partial engagements ;” he had brought his army to Atlanta, after inflicting a loss upon the enemy five times as great as his own; and he had performed the almost marvellous feat of conducting a retreat through a difficult and mountainous country more than a hundred miles in extent, without the loss of materiel or of a single gun. Gen. Johnston held Atlanta more firmly than Lee held Richmond. Sherman was unable to invest the city, and to withdraw he would have to pass over a single road, one hundred and thirty-five miles long, traversing a wild and broken country. Johnston held him as it were suspended for destruction. The situation was brilliant for the Confederates. A pause had now been given to the parallel operations of the enemy in Virginia and Georgia--the one aimed at Richmond, the other at Atlanta ;--both movements were now unmistakably in check; and intelligent men among the ranks of the enemy did not hesitate to declare that it was only necessary for the Confederates to maintain the situation at each point to put Northern patience to the last proof, and compel a peace.

In this interesting condition we must leave the great campaign of 1864 on the dominant lines in Virginia and Georgia, to make a rapid narrative of other events of the war, including certain successes of the enemy on the water, and some detached operations important enough to draw attention after them.

The naval events of 1864 may be briefly summed up as a battle in Mobile Bay; the destruction of the Confederate privateer Alabama, and the capture of her most efficient ally, the Florida. We shall discuss these in the order of their importance.

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