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| John A. Logan. |
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| View on the Atlanta battle-ground.1 |
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captured by them, but Wangelin's brigade, obeying McPherson's last order, came up in time to check the assailants there.
One wing of Smith's division was forced back, and two more guns were lost.
Fortunately for the Nationals, General Stewart, who was to attack Blair in front simultaneously with Hardee's assault on flank and rear, was not up in time to effect much.
When Logan assumed command, the battle had been general along the whole line, and it raged fiercely for several hours.
The Nationals had the advantage of position, and inflicted very heavy loss on the Confederates, who had been unable to drive Blair and Dodge.
The latter gave their assailants
very severe blows on their right, killing and wounding many, and capturing a considerable number of prisoners.
Finally, at four o'clock in the afternoon, there was a lull in the contest.
Meanwhile, Wheeler, with his cavalry, finding no opposition on the left of Sherman's army, in consequence of the absence of Garrard and his horsemen at Covington, between Decatur and
Augusta, engaged in destroying the railway there, attempted to capture McPherson's wagon-train at the former town.
But Colonel (afterward General) Sprague, in command there, so skillfully guarded the wagons that he succeeded in sending all but three of them out of the reach of danger.
The lull in the battle was brief.
The Confederates soon charged up the railway and main Decatur road, scattering an advanced regiment acting as pickets, and capturing its two guns in battery at the foot of a tall pine-tree,
1 this is a view of the remains of a National battery, by the side of one of the roads leading from Atlanta to Decatur, which did great execution on the 22d of July, as it appeared when the writer sketched it, in May, 1866. it was in the woods seen in front of it, and not more than eighty rods distant from it, that McPherson was killed. Here was the place of some of the heaviest fighting in the battle of Atlanta.
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