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Not realizing that he already flanked the Confederate obstacle that stood between him and Atlanta, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman went ahead with a frontal assault.
Not realizing that he already flanked the Confederate obstacle that stood between him and Atlanta, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman went ahead with a frontal assault.
Private Samuel R. Watkins of Company H, 1 st Tennessee Infantry of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, remembered how June 27, 1864, dawned upon Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, with a brilliance unmatched by other mornings. "The sun rose clear and cloudless, the heavens seemed made of brass, and the earth of iron," he wrote, "and as the sun began to mount toward the zenith, everything became quiet, and no sound was heard save a peckerwood on a neighboring tree, tapping on its old trunk, trying to find a worm for his dinner." But the peaceful nature of the morning belied the mighty struggle that was about to occur. "We all knew it was but the dead calm that precedes the storm," he remembered. On the hills opposite Kennesaw, figures in blue were rushing about. In a moment, artillerymen of the Union Army of the Cumberland would rain death upon the mountain. Watkins and his comrades crouched in their trenches waiting for the onslaught.
Three hard years of fighting had led up to this moment. While the American Civil War had been fought to a virtual stalemate in the East, many of the Union's aims had been fulfilled in the Western theater of operations. Southern armies had been steadily forced deeper and deeper into their own territory The amount of real estate to defend was shrinking. The Army of Tennessee had fought many battles. But thanks to the strategic ineptitude of its previous commander, General Braxton Bragg, even its successes, such as Perryville and Chickamauga, had counted for naught. Bragg had been replaced by General Joseph E. Johnston in December 1863, which helped lift the army's flagging morale, and in the spring of 1864 the Army of Tennessee was reinforced to 60,000 men. To the Southern high command, the war was far from decided.
A patient, insightful man, Johnston had a flair for organization that included particular attention to his troops' needs. "His soldiers...