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The Atlanta Campaign #1
The Atlanta Campaign: Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864
The Atlanta Campaign in 1864 was second only to Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia for scope and drama. Once Grant decided to personally lead the Federal armies in Virginia against Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, he chose William T. Sherman to do the same in Georgia against Joseph E. Johnston and his ill-starred Army of Tennessee. Sherman’s base was Chattanooga, while Johnston’s was Atlanta. The ball opened on May 1, 1864. It would prove a most grueling campaign.
While Grant and Lee grappled one another like wrestlers, Sherman and Johnston parried and feinted like fencers. The outnumbered Johnston eschewed the offensive while hoping to lure Sherman into headlong assaults against fortified lines. Sherman disliked the uncertainty of battle and preferred maneuvering; the blows he struck were careful and measured. When Johnston dug in, Sherman sought his flanks and turned the Confederates out of seemingly impregnable positions in a campaign dubbed “the Red Clay Minuet” by noted Civil War historian Richard M. McMurry.
Contrary to popular belief Sherman did not set out to capture Atlanta. His orders from Grant were to “to move against Johnston’s army, to break it up and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country . . . inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.” No Civil War army could survive long without its logistical base, and Atlanta was also vital to the larger Confederate war effort. As Johnston retreated, Southern fears for the city grew. As Sherman advanced, Northern expectations inexorably increased.
The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 by award-winning author David Powell relies on a mountain of primary source material and extensive experience with the terrain to examine the battles of Dalton, Resaca, Rome Crossroads, Adairsville, and Cassville—the first phase of the long and momentous campaign. While none of these engagements matched the bloodshed of the Wilderness or Spotsylvania, each witnessed periods of intense fighting. The largest, Resaca, produced more than 8,000 killed, wounded, and missing in just two days. In between these actions the armies skirmished daily in a campaign its participants would recall as the “100 days’ fight.”
Like Powell’s award-winning The Chickamauga Campaign trilogy, this multi-volume study of the campaign for Atlanta breaks new ground and promises to be this generation’s definitive study of one of the most important and fascinating confrontations of the entire Civil War.
While Grant and Lee grappled one another like wrestlers, Sherman and Johnston parried and feinted like fencers. The outnumbered Johnston eschewed the offensive while hoping to lure Sherman into headlong assaults against fortified lines. Sherman disliked the uncertainty of battle and preferred maneuvering; the blows he struck were careful and measured. When Johnston dug in, Sherman sought his flanks and turned the Confederates out of seemingly impregnable positions in a campaign dubbed “the Red Clay Minuet” by noted Civil War historian Richard M. McMurry.
Contrary to popular belief Sherman did not set out to capture Atlanta. His orders from Grant were to “to move against Johnston’s army, to break it up and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country . . . inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.” No Civil War army could survive long without its logistical base, and Atlanta was also vital to the larger Confederate war effort. As Johnston retreated, Southern fears for the city grew. As Sherman advanced, Northern expectations inexorably increased.
The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 by award-winning author David Powell relies on a mountain of primary source material and extensive experience with the terrain to examine the battles of Dalton, Resaca, Rome Crossroads, Adairsville, and Cassville—the first phase of the long and momentous campaign. While none of these engagements matched the bloodshed of the Wilderness or Spotsylvania, each witnessed periods of intense fighting. The largest, Resaca, produced more than 8,000 killed, wounded, and missing in just two days. In between these actions the armies skirmished daily in a campaign its participants would recall as the “100 days’ fight.”
Like Powell’s award-winning The Chickamauga Campaign trilogy, this multi-volume study of the campaign for Atlanta breaks new ground and promises to be this generation’s definitive study of one of the most important and fascinating confrontations of the entire Civil War.
624 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2024
17 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
David A. Powell
27 books30 followersGraduated from the Virginia Military Institute with a B.A. in history. He has spent years studying the Battle of Chickamauga and wrote several books on the campaign. His book Failure in the Saddle: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Joseph Wheeler, and the Confederate Cavalry in the Chickamauga Campaign won the 2011 Richard Harwell Award for the best book on a Civil War topic published in the last year. In addition to his books, he has written articles for the magazines North & South and Gettysburg Magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 26, 2025
I've just finished the first volume of David Powell's projected five-volume series on the Atlanta campaign. The Kindle edition is 608 pages made up of 33 chapters along with an Order of Battle and a decent Bibliography. There are 19 maps in total, and the first volume covers the start of the campaign, from Dalton to Cassville, during the period of May 1-19, 1864.
The idea of five volumes on this one campaign may seem quite daunting at first, but the author's writing makes the reading experience enjoyable and has me looking forward to starting the second volume already. The author provides a highly researched account of the campaign between William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston which is easy to read and ably supported by numerous maps, although I would actually prefer a few more.
The book is full of first-hand accounts, from privates to generals and from both sides of the conflict. The author covers the battles of Dalton, Resaca, Rome Crossroads, Adairsville, and Cassville and provides all the ins & outs of the moves and countermoves from both sides as well as the conflicts that arose between the two commanders and their subordinates
Not only are the skirmishes and cavalry and infantry engagements covered but also the logistical issues affecting both armies as they manoeuvre around Georgia with one army seeking a decent defensive position while the other is trying to flank it.
On the logistics of the campaign:
"Sherman estimated that he would field 100,000 men and 35,000 draft animals, not counting garrisons north of the Tennessee River. By regulation, this meant three pounds of food per day per man, twenty-six pounds per day per horse, and twenty-three pounds per day per mule, or 578.75 tons per day for man and beast (assuming an equal number of horses and mules) with the animals requiring almost three-quarters of that total. This, in turn, required nearly 58 rail cars per day. Although Sherman intended to stockpile a large cache of supply in Chattanooga in case of rail interruptions, he needed more than just bare subsistence. Further, the troops assigned to garrison the railroad and other strategic points also needed supplies. Then there were all the other necessary categories: ammunition, medical supplies, clothing, shoes, tents, and miscellaneous equipage of all kinds. Even paper had to be accounted for if the army was to be administered properly."
The one thing that always stands out for me when reading about the Civil War is the courage of rhe colour-bearers, like this incident:
"The 103rd’s color guard, equally bold, suffered severely. Color Sgt. Martin Streibler, a giant of a man at six feet, four inches, was both a veteran of the French army and “had served six years in the regular [(US)] dragoons” before the war. A bullet struck him in the forehead. As he fell, he “folded his arms around the colors, saturating them with his blood.” The rest of the guard struggled to keep the flags erect, but eventually nine men became casualties: Streibler and two others dead, the remaining six wounded, four of them severely."
The author highlights that even though this conflict was not as deadly as the fighting in Virginia at the time, it was still deadly enough for those involved:
"Although the fighting at Resaca has thus far garnered curiously little attention from historians, the clash was no minor skirmish. The confrontation involved 140,000 men—80,000 Federals and at least 60,000 Confederates. The much bloodier struggle between Gens. Grant and Lee in Virginia overshadowed Resaca, but the fighting in northern Georgia was bloody enough, with roughly 9,300 men falling in two days of fighting."
Overall, this is an excellent start to the series covering the Atlanta campaign and has the potential to be the 'go-to' book/s on this campaign. I am sure this book and those following will be found in many Civil War libraries.
The idea of five volumes on this one campaign may seem quite daunting at first, but the author's writing makes the reading experience enjoyable and has me looking forward to starting the second volume already. The author provides a highly researched account of the campaign between William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston which is easy to read and ably supported by numerous maps, although I would actually prefer a few more.
The book is full of first-hand accounts, from privates to generals and from both sides of the conflict. The author covers the battles of Dalton, Resaca, Rome Crossroads, Adairsville, and Cassville and provides all the ins & outs of the moves and countermoves from both sides as well as the conflicts that arose between the two commanders and their subordinates
Not only are the skirmishes and cavalry and infantry engagements covered but also the logistical issues affecting both armies as they manoeuvre around Georgia with one army seeking a decent defensive position while the other is trying to flank it.
On the logistics of the campaign:
"Sherman estimated that he would field 100,000 men and 35,000 draft animals, not counting garrisons north of the Tennessee River. By regulation, this meant three pounds of food per day per man, twenty-six pounds per day per horse, and twenty-three pounds per day per mule, or 578.75 tons per day for man and beast (assuming an equal number of horses and mules) with the animals requiring almost three-quarters of that total. This, in turn, required nearly 58 rail cars per day. Although Sherman intended to stockpile a large cache of supply in Chattanooga in case of rail interruptions, he needed more than just bare subsistence. Further, the troops assigned to garrison the railroad and other strategic points also needed supplies. Then there were all the other necessary categories: ammunition, medical supplies, clothing, shoes, tents, and miscellaneous equipage of all kinds. Even paper had to be accounted for if the army was to be administered properly."
The one thing that always stands out for me when reading about the Civil War is the courage of rhe colour-bearers, like this incident:
"The 103rd’s color guard, equally bold, suffered severely. Color Sgt. Martin Streibler, a giant of a man at six feet, four inches, was both a veteran of the French army and “had served six years in the regular [(US)] dragoons” before the war. A bullet struck him in the forehead. As he fell, he “folded his arms around the colors, saturating them with his blood.” The rest of the guard struggled to keep the flags erect, but eventually nine men became casualties: Streibler and two others dead, the remaining six wounded, four of them severely."
The author highlights that even though this conflict was not as deadly as the fighting in Virginia at the time, it was still deadly enough for those involved:
"Although the fighting at Resaca has thus far garnered curiously little attention from historians, the clash was no minor skirmish. The confrontation involved 140,000 men—80,000 Federals and at least 60,000 Confederates. The much bloodier struggle between Gens. Grant and Lee in Virginia overshadowed Resaca, but the fighting in northern Georgia was bloody enough, with roughly 9,300 men falling in two days of fighting."
Overall, this is an excellent start to the series covering the Atlanta campaign and has the potential to be the 'go-to' book/s on this campaign. I am sure this book and those following will be found in many Civil War libraries.
May 7, 2026
Sometimes you read a book for pleasure, sometimes you read to learn something, and ideally it turns out to be a bit of both. This book, I read not for the storytelling or characters or drama, but purely for informational purposes, as though it was a 500+ page encyclopedia entry.
That’s not to knock the book at all. But living as I do near several Civil War sites, and having visited many of them, I can sometimes have a hard time placing them into a larger context - what exactly happened where, which happened before the other, and which events proved to be the most pivotal.
So I’ve read some books about the Atlanta campaign, but many of them seem to be in a rush to get to the Battle of Atlanta itself, and everything that happened along the way in Northwest Georgia goes by so fast it doesn’t really sink in.
As the first in a proposed five(!) part series on the Battle of Atlanta, this book certainly provides the level of detail I was looking for. It covers the first two and a half weeks of the campaign, as Gen. Sherman’s forces reached roughly the halfway point between Chattanooga and Atlanta. The only significant battle during this time was the Battle of Resaca, which itself is little known, while plenty of smaller clashes occurred as Gen. Johnston tried to stop Sherman from maneuvering his way toward the capital.
So the book is not a buildup to a big event, but a slower-moving story of maneuvering, fighting, advancing and retreating. “While Grant and Lee grappled with one another like wrestlers” in Virginia, Powell observes, “Sherman and Johnston parried and feinted like fencers.”
Roughly the first half of the book is background and setup, as the armies got into position and occasionally skirmished ahead of their first major clash. Until Resaca, about two weeks into the campaign, “the Federals had shown little inclination to assault entrenchments, preferring maneuver over direct attack,” Powell writes. And “Sherman was equally uncertain whether Johnston would fight or fall back.”
At Resaca, he chose to fight. While the battle has earned “curiously little attention from historians,” Powell observes, “the clash was no minor skirmish,” with a combined total of 140,000 combatants and 9,300 casualties. “The much bloodier struggle between Gens. Grant and Lee in Virginia overshadowed Resaca,” Powell writes, “but the fighting in Northern Georgia was bloody enough.”
After that, it’s back to skirmishing and maneuvering for most of the rest of the book. There’s a good supplementary chapter on how Sherman managed his supply lines, how he seized, repaired and guarded railroad tracks in order to transport supplies, and how he examined local records to determine the best foraging routes for his troops. I would have liked even more chapters of context like this, to help break up the blow-by-blow accounts of troop movements and skirmishes.
But before you know it, the book nears its end with a big Confederate offensive that wasn’t. Johnston was prepared for a major offensive at Cassville, only to retreat after Sherman outmaneuvered him once again.
The book ends with growing concerns about Johnston’s actions among Confederate leaders, citizens and troops alike. Powell quotes one frustrated Confederate soldier who wrote “I cannot yet understand when they flank us, why we cannot flank them.” In a brief assessment that ends this volume, Powell points out some of Sherman’s mistakes, but largely praises him for his successes, while observing that Johnston “failed to anticipate Sherman’s likeliest moves and to devise counters.” By focusing too much on defense, he ultimately “seemed to think of little else than retreat.”
At just one volume into a five-volume history, there’s a long way to go. I don’t think a casual reader would pick this up, which is just as well, because it’s not casual reading. While the writing is good, nothing particularly stood out to me as being excellent. But as an extremely well-researched, purely informational read about what happened where and how it all fit together, this turned out to be just what I was looking for.
That’s not to knock the book at all. But living as I do near several Civil War sites, and having visited many of them, I can sometimes have a hard time placing them into a larger context - what exactly happened where, which happened before the other, and which events proved to be the most pivotal.
So I’ve read some books about the Atlanta campaign, but many of them seem to be in a rush to get to the Battle of Atlanta itself, and everything that happened along the way in Northwest Georgia goes by so fast it doesn’t really sink in.
As the first in a proposed five(!) part series on the Battle of Atlanta, this book certainly provides the level of detail I was looking for. It covers the first two and a half weeks of the campaign, as Gen. Sherman’s forces reached roughly the halfway point between Chattanooga and Atlanta. The only significant battle during this time was the Battle of Resaca, which itself is little known, while plenty of smaller clashes occurred as Gen. Johnston tried to stop Sherman from maneuvering his way toward the capital.
So the book is not a buildup to a big event, but a slower-moving story of maneuvering, fighting, advancing and retreating. “While Grant and Lee grappled with one another like wrestlers” in Virginia, Powell observes, “Sherman and Johnston parried and feinted like fencers.”
Roughly the first half of the book is background and setup, as the armies got into position and occasionally skirmished ahead of their first major clash. Until Resaca, about two weeks into the campaign, “the Federals had shown little inclination to assault entrenchments, preferring maneuver over direct attack,” Powell writes. And “Sherman was equally uncertain whether Johnston would fight or fall back.”
At Resaca, he chose to fight. While the battle has earned “curiously little attention from historians,” Powell observes, “the clash was no minor skirmish,” with a combined total of 140,000 combatants and 9,300 casualties. “The much bloodier struggle between Gens. Grant and Lee in Virginia overshadowed Resaca,” Powell writes, “but the fighting in Northern Georgia was bloody enough.”
After that, it’s back to skirmishing and maneuvering for most of the rest of the book. There’s a good supplementary chapter on how Sherman managed his supply lines, how he seized, repaired and guarded railroad tracks in order to transport supplies, and how he examined local records to determine the best foraging routes for his troops. I would have liked even more chapters of context like this, to help break up the blow-by-blow accounts of troop movements and skirmishes.
But before you know it, the book nears its end with a big Confederate offensive that wasn’t. Johnston was prepared for a major offensive at Cassville, only to retreat after Sherman outmaneuvered him once again.
The book ends with growing concerns about Johnston’s actions among Confederate leaders, citizens and troops alike. Powell quotes one frustrated Confederate soldier who wrote “I cannot yet understand when they flank us, why we cannot flank them.” In a brief assessment that ends this volume, Powell points out some of Sherman’s mistakes, but largely praises him for his successes, while observing that Johnston “failed to anticipate Sherman’s likeliest moves and to devise counters.” By focusing too much on defense, he ultimately “seemed to think of little else than retreat.”
At just one volume into a five-volume history, there’s a long way to go. I don’t think a casual reader would pick this up, which is just as well, because it’s not casual reading. While the writing is good, nothing particularly stood out to me as being excellent. But as an extremely well-researched, purely informational read about what happened where and how it all fit together, this turned out to be just what I was looking for.
September 13, 2024
a good beginning on the Atlanta campaign
I enjoyed the history, the author does get into the weeds of the campaign. Not so much what happened as describing each regiment and often each independent battalion. This is not a big picture kind of history. I did find it interesting and look forward to following volumes.
I enjoyed the history, the author does get into the weeds of the campaign. Not so much what happened as describing each regiment and often each independent battalion. This is not a big picture kind of history. I did find it interesting and look forward to following volumes.
October 16, 2024
excellent!
Bring on volume II!
Powell has done it again, excellent scholarship superbly written and documented.
Along with A. Wilson Greene, Gary Gallagher, Earl Hess, and Scott Hartwig, David A. Powell is a prodigious and must read contributor to Civil War Military History
Bring on volume II!
Powell has done it again, excellent scholarship superbly written and documented.
Along with A. Wilson Greene, Gary Gallagher, Earl Hess, and Scott Hartwig, David A. Powell is a prodigious and must read contributor to Civil War Military History
May 23, 2025
Excellent!
I am looking forward to the next books in this series. Mr. Powell does extensive research into the campaign and the book was excellent and I learned much.
I am looking forward to the next books in this series. Mr. Powell does extensive research into the campaign and the book was excellent and I learned much.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews