Dalton to Atlanta
Sherman vs. Johnston
May-June 1864
by Allen Parfitt
On November 28, 1863 the Confederate Army of Tennessee lay in camp at Dalton, Georgia, discouraged and defeated. It had been only 76 days since the army, reinforced by Longstreet's Corps from the Army of Northern Virginia, had finally won a long-sought victory over the Yankees at Chickamauga Creek. But their enigmatic commander, General Braxton Bragg, had frittered away the victory, electing to besiege rather than assault the beaten Federals in Chattanooga, then with President Jefferson Davis' misguided encouragement, sending General Longstreet and his corps away on a fool's errand to capture Knoxville. President Abraham Lincoln sent his beleaguered and starving army in Chattanooga a reinforcement of one. It was enough: General Ulysses S. Grant, fresh from his triumph at Vicksburg. Grant moved in like a whirlwind, exploited Braggs' faulty dispositions to open up a supply line, brought in reinforcements, then won a stunning victory over the Rebels on November 25th, featuring an "impossible" assault by General George Thomas' Army of the Cumberland up the slopes of Missionary Ridge.
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