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reason for the assault that the position could not well be turned without abandoning the railroad:
‘I can not well turn the position of the enemy without abandoning my railroad, and we are already so far from our supplies that it is as much as the road can do to feed and supply the army.
There are no supplies of any kind here.
I can press Johnston and keep him from reenforcing Lee, but to assault him in position will cost us more lives than we can spare.’
And yet at 9 o'clock the same evening he telegraphed
General Thomas:
‘Are you willing to risk the move on Fulton, cutting loose from our railroad?
It would bring matters to a crisis, and Schofield has secured the way.’
But his excuses to
Generals Halleck and
Grant a few days later cap the climax of all which the records contain in regard to
Kenesaw.
Witness the following:
Sherman to Halleck, July 9: ‘The assault I made was no mistake.
I had to do it. The enemy, and our own army and officers, had settled down into the conviction that the assault of lines formed no part of my game, and the moment the enemy was found behind any thing like a parapet, why, every body would deploy, throw up counter-works and take it easy, leaving it to the “Old man” to turn the position.
Had the assault been made with one-fourth more vigor, mathematically, I would have put the head of George Thomas' whole army right through Johnston's deployed line, on the best ground for “go-ahead,” while my whole forces were well in hand on roads converging to my then object, Marietta.’
And the following:
Sherman to Grant, July 12: ‘I regarded an assault on the 27th June necessary, for two good reasons: first, because the enemy, as well as my own army, had settled down into the belief that “flanking” alone was my game; and second, that on that day and ground, had the assault succeeded, I could have broken Johnston's center and pushed his army back in confusion and with great loss to his bridges over the Chattahoochee.
We lost nothing in morale in the assault, for I followed it up on the extreme right, and compelled him to quit the very strong lines of Kenesaw, Smyrna camp ground, and the Chattahoochee in quick succession.’
But
Sherman states that the enemy lost only eight hundred
