July 23, 1864. |
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| Signal tree. |
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used as a signal station.1 Then advancing rapidly, they broke through the Union line between the divisions of Wood and Harrow, of Logan's corps, posted on each side the roads, and pushed back, in much disorder, Lightburn's brigade, about four hundred yards, to a point held by it the night before.
The Confederates took possession of two important batteries, and held them, at the point of separation which they had made between the divisions of Wood and Harrow.
Sherman, who was near, fully comprehending the importance of the unity of the army at that point, and of checking the farther advance of the Confederates, ordered up several of Schofield's batteries, and directed Logan to regain the ground just lost, at any cost, while Wood was directed to press forward, supported by Schofield, and recover the captured guns.
The orders were all promptly executed, Sherman said, “in superb style, at times our men and the enemy fighting across the narrow parapet.”
At length the Confederates gave way, and fell back to their defenses; and so ended, in advantage to the Nationals, the battle of Atlanta, on the 22d of July.
It was a sanguinary one, and was much more disastrous in the loss of men to the Confederates than to the Patriots.2
On the day after the battle
just recorded, General Garrard returned from Covington
where he had sufficiently injured the Augusta railway to make it useless to the Confederates.3 At the same time Generals Thomas and Schofield had well closed up, and Hood was firmly held behind his inner line of intrenchments.
Considering the situation in all its bearings, Sherman concluded to make a flank movement by his right, and in the mean time to send out the bulk of his cavalry to raid on the railways in Hood's rear.
He accordingly ordered Stoneman to take his own and Garrard's cavalry, about five thousand in all, and move by the left around Atlanta to Macdonough, while McCook, with his own, and the fresh cavalry brought by Rousseau (now commanded by Colonel Harrison, of the Eighth Indiana), was to move by the right to Fayetteville, and, sweeping round, join Stoneman on the railway south of Atlanta leading to Macon, at Lovejoy's Station, on the night of the 28th.
These bodies of mounted men moved simultaneously.
McCook went
1 This station was for the purpose of directing the fire of the Nationals on the Confederate army, the country being so broken and wooded that the artillerists could not certainly know the position of their foes. Lieutenant Reynolds was at the platform near the top of this tree, acting as signal officer when the Confederates made the charge mentioned in the text, and was shot dead at his post. This tree was between the railway and the Decatur road, and the writer sketched it, in May, 1866.
2 The total loss of the Nationals was 3,722, of whom about 1,000 were well prisoners. General Logan computed the Confederate dead, alone, at 3,240. He delivered to Hood, under a flag of truce, 800 dead bodies and reported that 2,200, by actual count, were found on the field. Sherman estimated Hood's entire loss on the 22d of July, “at full 8,000 men.” Among the Confederate killed was General W. H. T. Walker, of Georgia.
3 Garrard destroyed the railway bridges over the Ulcofauhatchee and Yellow rivers, burned a train of cars and 2,000 bales of Confederate cotton, the depots of stores at Covington and Conyer's Station, and captured 200 men and some good horses. His loss was only two men.
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