Earl J. Hess - Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign

Kennesaw Mountain

CIVIL WAR AMERICA
Gary W. Gallagher,
Peter S. Carmichael,
Caroline E. Janney, and
Aaron Sheehan-Dean,
editors

2013 Earl J. Hess
All rights reserved

Set in Miller, Willow, and Copperplate
by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hess, Earl J.
Kennesaw Mountain : Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign / Earl J. Hess.
p. cm.
(Civil War America)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4696-0211-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4696-0212-7 (ebook)

1. Kennesaw Mountain, Battle of, Ga., 1864. 2. Atlanta Campaign, 1864. I. Title.

E476.7.H47 2013
973.7371dc23 2012037476

17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1

Confederate Fortified Lines from Dalton to Kennesaw Mountain

Dalton to Marietta

Closing on Marietta

Four Confederate Lines

Kolbs Farm

Kennesaw Line

Confederate Troops on Cheathams Hill

Fifteenth Corps Attack

Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps Demonstrations

Fourth Corps Attack

Fourteenth Corps Attack

Operations South of Kennesaw

Flanking the Confederates

Kennesaw Mountain Today

Federal and Confederate Works near Big Kennesaw

Pigeon Hill

Gists Salient

Horseshoe Salient

South of Noyes Creek

North and South of Dallas Road

Cheathams Hill

Upper and Lower Artillery Emplacements

William T. Sherman

Joseph E. Johnston

Lost Mountain from Kennesaw

Confederates dragging guns up Little Kennesaw

Confederate artillery position on Little Kennesaw

Carter L. Stevenson

Big and Little Kennesaw

Confederate trench

Little Kennesaw and Pigeon Hill

Big Kennesaw from the east

Pigeon Hill and the open field

Giles A. Smith

Cockrells trench on Pigeon Hill

George D. Wagner

Truce on Fourth Corps sector

Dan McCook

Federal approach to Cheathams Hill

View from Cheathams Hill

John M. Schofield

Barnards photograph of Confederate works on Kennesaw

Rocky Confederate trench

Traverses at Dead Angle

Barnards photograph of Federal works near Hardage House

Tree growth on earthwork remnant

Confederate trench with no ditch

Six weeks after setting out from Chattanooga in early May, 1864, Major General William T. Sherman hit a massive roadblock while fighting his way toward Atlanta. Confederate general Joseph E. Johnstons Army of Tennessee was heavily fortified along a line that stretched across the Georgia countryside, anchored on the twin peaks of Kennesaw Mountain near Marietta. It was the ninth fortified position Johnston had created thus far in the campaign, and it proved to be the most difficult to bypass. For two weeks, from June 19 to July 3, Sherman tried to find a way to turn Johnstons left flank. Both armies were stretched to the breaking point in their extended positions as artillery duels, constant sniping, and a fierce battle or two erupted. As the two sides tested each other, heavy rains descended, and the dirt roads of Georgia became quagmires. Frustrated at the delay, Sherman decided to try a major frontal assault against three points of Johnstons line on June 27. The Federals who survived that day would remember the attack for the rest of their lives.

The assault of June 27 was a significant departure from Shermans mode of operations during the Atlanta campaign. He had more often maneuvered parts of his massive force, an army group consisting of available troops from the departments of his Military Division of the Mississippi, in order to turn enemy flanks and force the Confederates out of their trenches. Sherman did mix attacks with his turning strategy at Dalton, Resaca, New Hope Church, and Picketts Mill, but most of those assaults had been exploratory efforts to find and develop enemy lines and take advantage of opportunities that occurred. On June 27, the Federals knew what to expect and were hitting a heavily fortified, well-manned position. It was, in a way, an experiment, and Sherman arrived at the decision after many days of deliberation.

Sherman threw eight brigades of veteran troops, some fifteen thousand men, at three locations along the heavily fortified Confederate line on June 27. They failed to make a dent in the defenses, losing about three thousand casualties in the process. Only at one location, a small rise of ground that came to be called Cheathams Hill, did the Federals stay close to the Confederate works after their attack. They dug new field works within yards of the Rebels. Here they stayed for the remainder of the Kennesaw phase of the Atlanta campaign, sniping, digging a mine with the intention of blowing up an angle in the Confederate works, and cooperating with their enemy in burying the many bodies of Union men killed in the attack. When Sherman resumed his practice of flanking Johnston out of his works, the Confederates evacuated the Kennesaw Line on the night of July 2 and retired a few miles to the next fortified position. The Chattahoochee River, the last natural barrier to Shermans approach to Atlanta, lay only a short distance farther south.

The purpose of this book is to tell the story of Kennesaw Mountain in the Atlanta campaign. It is based on extensive research in archival collections and published primary sources. The work of previous historians who have written on the campaign is also incorporated for context. Special attention is devoted to the engagements at Kolbs Farm on June 22 and Shermans assault on June 27. The battlefield itself presented a valuable resource for understanding the action around Kennesaw in late June and early July 1864. Although the area where Shermans right wing tried to find and flank Johnstons left has been developed, the ground within the park is well preserved. The locations of the three attacks on June 27 are in a natural state, even if the site of the battle of Kolbs Farm is a mix of natural landscape and housing development.

The aim of this book is not only to describe the actions along the Kennesaw Line but to explain the significance of the Kennesaw phase of the Atlanta campaign and understand the outcome of operations along the line. By necessity, it is a study of high-command problems, decisions, and triumphs on both sides of no-mans-land. But it is also a story of common soldiers enduring and adjusting to the special rigors of continuous contact with the enemy, living within holes while spring weather did its worst overhead. The endurance of the Federal rank and file was most severely tested by the order to approach well-constructed earthworks filled with Confederate soldiers, and the attack of June 27 serves as an excellent case study of the experience of battle. The use of field fortifications on the minor tactical and the larger strategic level is a major feature of this story, and the failure of column formations to give the Federals an advantage in their risky assault is highlighted. Shermans recurrent fights with newspaper correspondents came into play during the Kennesaw phase of the Atlanta campaign, and neither he nor Johnston could ever forget that higher-level authorities in Washington and Richmond kept watch over their every move. For Sherman, Kennesaw was a dangerous phase of his career, a time when he feared that weather conditions and Confederate fortifications had slowed his advance so much that Johnston might send reinforcements to General Robert E. Lees army in Virginia. For Johnston, Kennesaw represented the best evidence he could muster to prove that his Fabian tactics were working to slow the Union advance into Georgia and were punishing the enemy with heavy casualties. There was much to be gained or lost for both commanders, depending on how this phase of the struggle for Atlanta came out.