...when, at dawn, Sherman's skirmishers stood on the top of that mountain, they saw the Confederate hosts flying through and beyond Marietta, in hot haste, toward the Chattahoochee, in the direction of Atlanta . Thomas's corps pressed closely upon the heels of the fugitives; and between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, Sherman rode into Marietta just as the cavalry of Johnston's rear guard left it, ...