After the inconclusive fighting at Resaca, Union General William T Sherman and Confederate General Joseph Johnston continued their “two-step”, with Johnston moving to block the Federal Army’s path in a way that avoided a pitched battle, and Sherman attempting to go around him and find a way to attack. “As fast as we gain one position,” Sherman complained to Grant, “the enemy has another all ready.” After six weeks of this, Sherman was still 20 miles away from Atlanta.
Johnston had now formed a strong defensive line on Kennesaw Mountain, and was once again blocking the Union advance. On June 21, after eleven days of rain, Sherman made preparations for a maneuver around the left end of the Confederate lines which would force Johnston into a retreat off the mountain. But Johnston detected the signs of the impending move and placed a corps of troops under General John Bell Hood to extend his left flank.
Hood’s orders had been to simply block any attempt by the Federals to advance and turn Johnston’s flank. But Hood was an impetuous and aggressive commander with a reputation for undue haste, and on June 22, acting on his own without orders from Johnston, he launched an assault at the Federal lines around Kolb’s Farm held by troops under Generals Joseph Hooker and John Schofield. It was a disaster. The Confederates marched across an open field straight into at least 40 Federal guns, which cut them to pieces. But although Hood’s impulsive attack had cost the Southerners over 1,000 casualties, it had succeeded in disrupting Sherman’s attempt to outflank Johnston. Both sides now held their ground.
But now Sherman thought he saw an opportunity. By moving Hood’s troops, he concluded, Johnston had overextended his lines—now stretched out in an arc over seven miles long—which he did not have enough men to defend. By launching feints at both ends of the Confederate lines, Sherman reasoned, he could force Johnston to move some of his troops to reinforce them, thereby weakening his own center and making it vulnerable. And so, despite the dangers of assaulting uphill against an entrenched enemy, Sherman decided on a full-out attack. After weeks of fruitless maneuvering, it would, he concluded, allow the Federals to finally force the Confederates into an open fight, and, after their defeat, lay open the way to Atlanta.
The carefully-planned attack began on the morning of June 27. General Schofield’s troops were sent to take Pigeon Hill, while General James McPherson was sent towards Kennesaw Mountain. General George Thomas would then follow up with a crushing assault.
But Sherman had miscalculated. While the feints at each end of the Confederate line had forced Johnston to pull out men from his center, the Southerners had constructed an extensive series of fortifications which made up for their weakness in numbers. The Union troops, in turn, made the mistake of attacking across open fields with little cover. The Confederates, under the command of General Ben Cheatham, stopped the Federal advances and inflicted some 3,000 casualties. One regiment from Illinois became trapped in front of the Confederate lines, in a position that became known as the “Dead Angle”. As the rest of the Federals retreated, the Illinois regiment was pinned down by rifle and cannon fire. For the next five days, they were unable to either retreat or advance.
Finally a truce was called to allow both sides to collect their wounded. Sherman was making plans to renew the assault, but General Thomas convinced him that it would be a futile waste of life. The battle came to an end.
The Confederates had won a tactical victory and had inflicted 3500 casualties while losing only 500 of their own. But Sherman, with his much larger army, still held the strategic offensive, and on July 8 he was able to send a corps of troops across the Chattahoochee River, the last geographic barrier between the Union Army and Atlanta. The Confederates were forced to withdraw from Kennesaw Mountain and Johnston established a new defensive line at Smyrna.
But the most important effect of the fighting was political. The Confederate General Johnston, despite being heavily outnumbered and chronically short of supplies and replacements, had done a masterful tactical job of giving ground to Sherman’s Federals while at the same time delaying and blocking their advance as much as possible, and he had won a morale-boosting victory at Kennesaw Mountain. But now Confederate President Jefferson Davis decided that Johnston’s delaying tactics were not working. Declaring, “You have failed to arrest the advance of the enemy to the vicinity of Atlanta,” Davis fired Johnston and placed General Hood in command of the Confederate forces in Atlanta. Sherman, meanwhile, was planning his assault on the city.
In 1899, a native of Illinois named Lansing J. Dawdy, who had participated in the fighting at the Dead Angle, purchased 60 acres of the Kennesaw Mountain battlefield, centered on the site, as a memorial to his fallen friends. Five years later he donated the land to the Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield Association, a local citizens group which was lobbying Congress to preserve the battleground, and in 1914 the Association put up a stone memorial to the Illinois troops.
In 1916, the land was donated to the Federal government as part of a planned Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, but various difficulties meant that the park was not established until 1935.
Today, the protected area has grown to around 3,000 acres, and it is the largest protected green area inside the city. The Visitors Center has a small museum display, and walking trails give access to Kennesaw Mountain and Pigeon Hill. Cheatham Hill, some two miles away, is accessible through county roads that run through the park.
However, some areas of the park are being limited by the encroachment of suburban Atlanta, and some historically significant areas still lie outside the park boundaries. The Civil War Trust has placed Kennesaw Mountain on its list of “Ten Most Endangered Battlefields”.
Some photos from the battlefield.
For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and am traveling around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I have visited. :)