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General Sherman’s field hat, with bullet holes in its brim, now in the Smithsonian Institute. The Battle of Smyrna Camp Ground offers a dramatic instance of the transformative potential of such chance occurrences. It is one of the fundamental beliefs of this writer that the fabric of history is very loosely woven, and that chance occurrences often alter, sometimes quite fundamentally, the course of history. Skirmishing in the woods on the Smyrna Line The Federals sustained heavy casualties in these two sharp encounters, 410 killed and wounded, and were temporarily stymied. They also attacked the Confederates on a ridge along Nickajack creek near Ruff’s Mill at the western end of this front, with similar disappointing results. Union forces first attacked this entrenched Confederates line near the old Smyrna Camp Ground and the W&A rail line on the east, in the vicinity of present day Roswell Street in Smyrna, but failed to break through. Here the Confederates, who had hastily constructed a line of strong fieldworks, mounted a spirited resistance in an effort to slow down the Union advance, eventuating in the twin Battles of Smyrna Camp Ground and Ruff’s Mill, fought at the eastern and western ends of this front. Sherman did not expect the stiff resistance his forces encountered a few miles south of Marietta on Jon a six mile wide front, the Smyrna Line, extending from Nickajack Creek on the west to Rottenwood Creek on the east. Sherman had no idea that the enemy, in the previous two weeks, had constructed a formidable set of fortifications on the river’s northern shore-a defensive barrier afterwards referred to as the Chattahoochee “River Line.” Sherman goal was to outpace the Confederates, seize the various bridges, ferries, and fords, and defeat Johnston as he attempted to get over the Chattahoochee. Sherman had assumed, incorrectly, that Johnston’s army was making a headlong dash for the Chattahoochee River that Johnston intended to make his next stand, not at the river, but in the trenches under construction on the outskirts of Atlanta.
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The Confederates moved forward in hasty retreat, the Federals in hot pursuit, and with minimal resistance Union forces occupied the City of Marietta, a scant 20 miles north of Atlanta, on the morning of July 3.
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After several days of heavy rain, drier weather rendered the roads to the south more easily passable. Moreover, after the Confederate withdrawal from Kennesaw Mountain, conditions again favored rapid movement.
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Only once, however, at Kennesaw Mountain, had Sherman taken the bait, resulting in the greatest Confederate victory of the entire campaign, but Sherman took the lesson of Kennesaw Mountain to heart, and afterwards studiously avoiding attacks on entrenched positions, thereafter maneuvering Johnston into a series of withdrawals that served both to undermine Confederate morale and the Davis administration’s confidence in that general’s capacity to stop the Union juggernaut. General Joseph Johnston, by contrast, cleaved to a purely defensive strategy of placing the bulk of his forces, whenever possible, in strong and well-fortified positions in the hope of enticing the larger Union army to attack. In the aftermath of the bloody Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, in which the Union army suffered 3,000 casualties, General Sherman’s larger and better equipped army returned to the strategy of flanking the Confederate army and thereby forcing it to retreat. This conclusion is reflected, for example, in the succinct title one historian, Gary Ecelbarger, gave in his recent history of that battle, “The Day Dixie Died.”Ĭould the Union army under General Sherman have been stopped, or at the very least significantly delayed in its progress toward Atlanta by a more aggressive Confederate defense at the Chattahoochee River? Many historians contend that the fall of the “Gateway City,” sealed the fate of the Confederacy. The Chattahoochee River was the most important physical barrier confronting the Federals in their drive to conquer the City of Atlanta. The article takes an in-depth look at the middle phase of the Atlanta Campaign, from the withdrawal of General Joseph Johnston’s Confederate army from the battlefield at Kennesaw Mountain on the night of July 2, 1864, to the largely uncontested crossing of the Chattahoochee River by General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union forces at Sope’s Creek on July 8, 1864, less than a week later. Johnston (left) and Union General William Tecumseh Sherman (right) The commanders during the Atlanta Campaign, Confederate General Joseph E.