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"ATLANTA IS OURS"
Confederate pickets quickly discovered and reported that the Federals
had vacated their trenches. At first Hood thought that this might mean
that Sherman was retreating, as he had received greatly exaggerated
claims of success from Wheeler and both spies and civilians testified
that the Yankees were short of food. Soon, however, he ascertained that
except for the XX Corps all of the Union army was to the southwest of
Atlanta and that its probable objective was the Macon railroad. But
exactly where on that railroad would Sherman strike? Until Hood knew
that—and also could be sure that Sherman was not merely feinting
toward the railroad before assaulting Atlanta on its weakly fortified
south side—all Hood could do was what he did do: wait for reliable
intelligence as to Sherman's movements and intentions.
That came on the evening of August 30 in the form of cavalry reports
to the effect that Howard's Army of the Tennessee was approaching
Jonesboro. At once Hood ordered Hardee to march his and Lee's corps to
that town and in the morning drive Howard's forces into the Flint River,
following which Lee would return to Atlanta and join Stewart in
attacking the rest of Sherman's army from the north while Hardee
assailed it from the south. Once more Hood, not content simply to parry
one of Sherman's thrusts, sought to smash him.
As before, he failed. Although Hardee's Corps, under the acting
command of Cleburne, reached Jonesboro on the morning of August 31, all
of Lee's Corps, which had a longer march to make, did not arrive there
until early afternoon. As a result Hardee was unable to deliver his
attack until about 3:30 P.M. By then Howard, whose 20,000 troops at
least equaled in number Hardee's effective force, had had ample time to
fortify along a line of ridges west of Jonesboro. Only by some military
miracle could the Confederates have carried the Union position, and no
such miracle occurred. Instead, the Federals, with Logan's XV Corps
doing most of the fighting, easily repulsed the ill-coordinated and
halfhearted Rebel assaults, inflicting approximately 2,200 casualties,
1,400 of them in Lee's Corps, while suffering a mere 172 themselves. It
was a more one sided slaughter than even Ezra Church had been and the
only thing that prevented it from being worse was the refusal of many
Confederate units to engage the enemy or to press forward once they came
under fire.
Shortly after midnight a courier brought Hood word of Hardee's
defeat. It had to come by courier because, even as Hardee vainly
endeavored to drive Howard's forces away from the Macon railroad,
portions of the XXIII, IV, and XIV Corps reached that railroad north of
Jonesboro and south of Rough and Ready, whereupon they cut the telegraph
wire to Atlanta. Thus, when Hood read Hardee's message, he realized that
there was no possibility of regaining control of the railroad and that
the only choice left him was to evacuate Atlanta. This he ordered done
as soon as it became dark on September 1. Meanwhile, Lee's Corps, as
previously directed, would return to Atlanta to guard against a Federal
thrust from the south, and Hardee was to hold on at Jonesboro so as to
cover the retreat of the rest of the Confederate army southward.
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THE CITIZENS' WAR: INSIDE ATLANTA DURING THE SIEGE
Just before noon on Wednesday, July 20, 1864, a family of Southern
refugees composed of a father, mother, and a little girl stood at the
corner of East Ellis Street and Ivy Street—now known as Peachtree
Center Avenue. To the east, a Federal artillery crew loaded a shell into
their 20-pounder Parrott rifle and pulled the lanyard, sending the
projectile hurtling through the sweltering summer air. The shell
exploded right over the refugee family, and when the smoke cleared the
stunned parents saw their little girl lying dead in the dusty street.
The siege of Atlanta had claimed its first noncombatant victim.
Atlanta's civilians shared the danger and misery of their defenders
for more than six weeks. Some citizens did leave, especially in the
first few days of the siege, including the newspaper publishers and
postal officials, but many stayed or returned shortly afterward when
Sherman's troops failed to take the city.
Union shells rained on the city until it surrendered, forty-four days
later, but at first the bombardment was so indolent that residents found
little cause to avoid it beyond giving a wideberth to prominent targets
like railroad landmarks and tall buildings. On July 23 a store owner
named S. P. Richards recorded that a shell landing near his home threw
dirt in his open windows, and that night he positioned his family's beds
behind the shelter of his chimney, but he noted that he saw no more
damage done that night.
The pace of the barrage increased as the Federals seemed to grow
impatient. Citizens frequently retreated to their cellars, or dug
makeshift bunkers in their yards, to avoid the sudden flurries of
shells. One little girl who kept a diary wrote of spending the entire
day of August 9 in her family's cellar because the shells were dropping
so closely around her house.
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CITIZENS LEAVING ATLANTA IN COMPLIANCE WITH SHERMAN'S ORDERS. (COURTESY
OF THE ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER)
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August 9 proved to he the bloodiest day of the siege for the citizens
of Atlanta. One shell exploded in a house at the corner of Elliott and
Rhodes streets, instantly killing both J. H. Warner, superintendent of
the city gas company, and his six-year-old daughter; a woman ironing
clothing in a house on Pryor Street was killed by another shell; a free
black barber named, ironically, Solomon Luckie, was wounded in the leg
by a shell fragment while standing at the corner of Whitehall and
Alabama streets and died in spite of an amputation; a young woman
walking near the railroad depot was struck in the back by a piece of
shell and killed; a Confederate officer saying good-bye to a woman in
her front yard was killed, as was her young son, by a single shell.
A few days afterward, S. P. Richards was inspecting the condition of
his store when a shell crashed through the rooms above him, covering him
in dust.
"It is like living in the midst of a pestilence," Richards wrote. "No
one can tell but he may be the next victim."
The fourth week of August began with another heavy barrage, but after
three days the shelling subsided as Union troops swept south of Atlanta.
August 25 began a week of ominous silence: the calm before the storm.
Eight days later, the city fell.
From the outset, Atlanta was crowded with Confederate troops, both on
duty and off. On the night of July 21 the store owned by S. P. Richards
was broken into by Southern cavalrymen who stole all his merchandise and
what little cash he had remaining in the till. Wagons and troops jammed
the streets as the Army of Tennessee passed through the city, and male
citizens were required to take arms and perform police duty. Wounded men
poured into Atlanta, wearing both blue and gray: the fairgrounds became
one vast hospital for Confederate casualties, while Union wounded were
cared for in the southeastern quadrant of town. Forage for livestock ran
out altogether, so horses and cattle subsisted almost entirely on what
they could graze from patches of grass.
Martial law ruled the city, and civilians going about their business
had to show passes. That ended with the beginning of September, though:
when Federal troops gained control of the last rail line into the city,
the Confederate army evacuated. Through the night of September 1 and the
morning of September 2 throngs of deserters, stragglers, abandoned
slaves, and desperate refugees filled the streets, looting empty stores
and homes. Residents huddled in their homes, expecting to see their city
pillaged either by the mob or by the Yankees. With no other recourse,
Mayor James Calhoun rode out Marietta Street that morning and
surrendered his city, asking the protection of Union troops for private
property and the civilian population.
That protection was granted, but only for a few days. On September 8
General Sherman issued Order No. 67, requiring that all civilians not
connected with the Union army depart the city. After a series of
indignant, unavailing protests from the Confederates the exodus began,
and over ten days virtually all the civilian citizens were
evacuated.
—William Marvel
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Sherman's orders for September 1 called for the IV Corps, followed by
the XXIII Corps, to move down the railroad, destroying the track as it
went, until it reached the Jonesboro area where it was to join the XIV
Corps in an attack on Hardee's forces, which Sherman thought still
included Lee's Corps despite having been notified to the contrary by
Thomas. Not until the early afternoon of September 1 did Sherman realize
that Thomas's information was correct and that only Hardee's Corps faced
him at Jonesboro. He then directed Major General David S. Stanley, who
had replaced Howard as commander of the IV Corps, to stop tearing up
rails and hasten to assist the XIV Corps in attacking what Sherman
believed to be Hardee's exposed right flank north of Jonesboro. If
Hardee could be crushed—and Sherman was confident that he would
be—then Hood either would have to abandon Atlanta or else stay
there until starvation forced him to surrender the city and what was
left of his army. Or so Sherman calculated; evidently it did not occur
to him that with his only supply line, the Macon railroad, in Union
possession, Hood's sole rational alternative was to do what in fact he
was preparing to do—leave Atlanta as soon as safely possible.
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CAPTURED CONFEDERATES ARE LED TO PRISON CAMP AFTER THE BATTLE OF
JONESBORO. (FRANK AND MARIE WOOD PRINT COLLECTION)
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Starting at 4 P.M., just as the van of the IV Corps came up, the XIV
Corps made a series of assaults on Hardee's right flank. By stripping
his front facing Howard's Army of the Tennessee, which Sherman had
directed to "demonstrate" but which did not even do that, Hardee was
able to reinforce his right sufficiently to beat back the initial
attacks. But then three XIV Corps brigades managed to carry a weak point
on the Confederate line, swamping the Arkansas brigade of Cleburne's
Division, most of whose men held their ground until killed or physically
overpowered. It was the first and only successful large-scale frontal
attack of the entire campaign. Yet Hardee by bringing up still more
troops from his center and left, sealed off the Union breakthrough and
also prevented the IV Corps from getting into his rear until night put
an end to the battle. Hardee thereupon withdrew his forces from their
trenches and headed south toward Lovejoy's Station, having conducted one
of the finest defensive stands of the war—thanks in large part to
Sherman, who botched an opportunity to demolish Hardee's Corps and so
wreck Hood's army.
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BEFORE RETREATING FROM ATLANTA, HOOD DESTROYED THIS MILL AND ORDNANCE
TRAIN TO PREVENT CAPTURE. (LC)
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While Hardee's men marched south, so did the troops of Stewart, Lee,
and the Georgia militia as they left Atlanta via the McDonough road.
Before departing the Confederates set fire to boxcars filled with
ammunition, setting off tremendous explosions that leveled nearby
buildings, among them a rolling mill, and which could be heard all the
way to Jonesboro. Sherman, unsure as to what this meant, asked a local
farmer who told him that it sounded like a battle. Agreeing, Sherman
concluded that Hood remained in Atlanta and probably was engaging Union
forces south of the city. Sherman also believed that Hardee still was at
Jonesboro declaring that it would be impossible for him to slip away
undetected.
In the morning, on discovering that Hardee had done precisely that,
Sherman gave belated pursuit. North of Lovejoy's Station he came upon
Hardee's forces strongly entrenched—so strongly that he decided not
to attack and instead await definite word as to the situation in and
around Atlanta. Early on the morning of September 3 a dispatch arrived
from Major General Henry B. Slocum, who recently had taken command of
the XX Corps, that his troops had occupied the city yesterday. That
night a telegram from Sherman reached the War Department in Washington.
It read: "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won." Two days later, by which
time all of Hood's army had reassembled at Lovejoy's, the Union troops,
as soon as it was dark, left their trenches and began marching north
toward Atlanta. The campaign had ended.
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