July, 1864. |
Aug. 16, |
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which was posted on a wooded ridge, with open fields sloping from its front.
That gallant leader was well prepared for battle, and the assailants were met by a fire that made fearful havoc in their ranks.
They recoiled; but with amazing gallantry and fortitude they returned to the attack again and again, and the battle raged furiously from noon until nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, when the smitten columns refused to fight longer.
They suddenly retired to their intrenchments, leaving several hundred of their comrades dead on the field.
Hood's entire loss in this desperate conflict was about five thousand men. That of the Nationals did not exceed six hundred.1 So ended the second battle of Atlanta.2 The conflict was so disastrous to the persons, and so demoralizing to the spirit, of the Confederate army, that Hood thereafter was constrained to imitate, in a degree, the caution of Johnston.
Sherman was near the scene of the conflict on the 28th,
and was busy in extending his right.
For this purpose he brought down Schofield's Army of the Ohio and the Fourteenth Corps to Howard's right, and stretched an intrenched line nearly to East Point, the junction of two railways, over which came the chief supplies for Atlanta and Hood's army.
The latter extended a parallel line of works; and with great impatience of spirit, Hood acted on the defensive for more than a fortnight, while obvious dangers were gathering thick around him. Sherman's long range guns shelled Atlanta, and kindled destructive fires in the city; yet its defenders kept quiet within the intrenchments.
At length, taking counsel of his impulses rather than of his judgment, and seemingly unmindful of the fact that he had wasted nearly one-half of his infantry in rash acts, Hood sent out Wheeler, with the greater part of his cavalry, to capture supplies, burn bridges, and break up railways in the rear of Sherman's army, with a hope of depriving him of subsistence.
Wheeler moved swiftly with about eight thousand horsemen.
He struck and broke the railway at Calhoun, captured nine hundred beeves in that, vicinity, and seriously menaced the depot at Allatoona.
This was just at. the time when Sherman had issued an order
for a grand movement of his army upon the West Point and Macon railway, for the purpose of flanking Hood out of Atlanta.
The first named road was. to be struck at Fairborn Station, and the other at near Jonesboroa, some twenty miles south of Atlanta.
When he heard of Wheeler's raid he was rejoiced.
“I could have asked nothing better,” he said, “for I had provided well against such a contingency, and this detachment left me superior ”
1 Logan estimated Hood's loss at a much greater number. The Confederate leader said it was only 1,500. But he left 642 dead on the field, which were counted by the Union burial parties, and these were not all. Making allowance for the usual proportion of the wounded and missing to the killed, would make Hood's loss about 5,000. Logan reported that he captured nearly 2,000 muskets, and took 23388 prisoners, of whom 73 were wounded.
2 Sherman ordered General Davis's division, of the Fourteenth Army Corps, to move round toward East Point, and, in the event of a battle, to fall upon Hood's flank and rear. These troops were delayed in consequence of misinformation given by defective maps concerning roads, and did not participate in the action. Sherman said in his report: “Had General Davis's division come up on the Bell's Ferry road, as I calculated, at any time before four o'clock, what was simply a complete repulse would have been a disastrous rout to the enemy. But I cannot attribute the failure to want of energy or intelligence, and must charge it, like many other things in this campaign, to the peculiar tangled nature of the forests, and the absence of roads that would admit the rapid movement of troops.” Only those persons who have traveled in that region can fully under — stand the significance of this statement.
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