Atlanta Campaign 1864: Snake Creek Gap, Kennesaw and 81 Exploding Rail Cars

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With Ulysses S. Grant coordinating offensives across the Confederacy, William T. Sherman moved south from Tennessee in May 1864 with nearly 100,000 men against Joseph E. Johnston's roughly 50,000. At Rocky Face Ridge Sherman feinted at Buzzard's Roost and Dug Gap while a smaller force slipped through Snake Creek Gap toward Resaca on the Western and Atlantic Railroad, forcing Johnston to fall back to protect his supply line. The pattern repeated at places like Dallas and New Hope Church, and Union soldiers boasted that Sherman could flank the devil out of hell. In late June, with the roads turned to mud, Sherman made a frontal assault at Kennesaw Mountain and lost about 3,000 men to roughly 1,000 Confederates.

On July 17 Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston with John Bell Hood, which Sherman welcomed. Hood attacked at Peachtree Creek on July 20 and, two days later at the Battle of Atlanta, sent a corps on a 15-mile night march to strike the Union flank, a fight in which James B. McPherson was killed. After further failed assaults at Ezra Church and Utoy Creek, and cavalry raids whose damage Confederate crews repaired within days, Sherman swung six of his seven corps to the Macon and Western Railroad at Jonesboro. Hood evacuated Atlanta on the night of September 1, blowing up 81 rail cars of ammunition, and Union troops entered the next day. The fall of the city boosted Lincoln's reelection prospects and preceded the March to the Sea.

• An army of 100,000 men with about 35,000 horses and mules needed hundreds of tons of supplies a day, tying both sides to the railroad.
• Hood had served under Stonewall Jackson and modeled his July 22 flank attack on Jackson's methods.
• The Union suffered about 31,600 casualties and the Confederates about 35,000.
• Hood left Atlanta with barely 30,000 combat-ready troops, while Sherman retained over 81,000.
• Special Field Orders No. 67 ordered the evacuation of roughly 1,600 remaining civilians before Sherman destroyed the city's rail yards and shops.