Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[385] rifle trenches, abatis and chevaux-de-frise covering every road connected with Atlanta.

Hood's policy was to fight for positions, not to abandon them, as Sherman discovered, when, on the 22d,

July, 1864.

the Army of the Tennessee, with McPherson at its head, was preparing to move against the Confederate works. That army, describing in its line of march the arc of a circle, rapidly diminishing in radius, moved from Decatur on the direct road to Atlanta. Logan's corps formed the center, Dodge's the right, and Blair's the left. On the previous night, the latter, after a severe struggle, had driven the Confederates from a hill that overlooked the heart of the city, and McPherson now made preparations for planting heavy batteries upon it, to be supported by Dodge's corps, which was ordered from the right to the left, to make that point a strong general left flank.

While, at near noon, Dodgers troops were making their way along an obscure road in the rear of Logan, Sherman, who was at Howard's house, with General Schofield, some distance off, heard the sound of battle on the left and rear of McPherson's troops, first as a mere sputter of musketry, then as volleys, and then as the thunder of artillery. McPherson had left Sherman only a little while before, for that part of his line, and the latter, who quickly comprehended the situation, felt sure that the commander of the Army of the Tennessee would do all that man could to avert calamity. Hood had made a bold movement, and this was the first revelation of it. He had left a sufficient number of troops' within his intrenchments on the front of Sherman, to hold them, and with. his main body, led by Hardee, had made a long night march to the left and rear of the Nationals, and struck them there a severe and unexpected blow. It fell with heaviest force upon Giles A. Smith's division of Blair's corps, and it was received with gallantry and fortitude. Alas! McPherson was not there to order the further movements of the troops. He had ridden from Sherman to Dodge's moving column, when he sent nearly the whole of his staff and orderlies on various errands, and moved forward into a wood, for observations, in the rear of Smith's troops. At that moment Hardee made his first charge. His troops were pouring into a gap between Dodge and Blair; and just as McPherson had given an order for a brigade to move up and fill that gap, a Confederate sharp-shooter, of the same name, shot the brave leader dead.¹ His riderless and wounded horse made his way back to the Union lines, and the body of the hero was recovered during the heat of battle, and was sent in charge of his personal staff back to Marietta.

“The suddenness of this calamity,” General Sherman afterward said, “would have overwhelmed me with grief, but the living demanded my whole thoughts.” ² He ordered General John A. Logan to take command of the Army of the Tennessee, and hold the ground McPherson had chosen, and especially a hill which General Leggett had secured the night before. At the gap, into which the charging Confederates poured, Murray's battery of six guns was