A fully illustrated narrative of the initial stages of the Atlanta campaign, 1864. The campaign for Atlanta was pivotal to the outcome of the American Civil War. Roughly 190,000 men waged war across northern Georgia in a struggle that lasted 133 days. Today a national park at Kennesaw commemorates this titanic fight, and there are a surprising number of physical reminders still extant across the state. The struggle for Atlanta divides naturally into two stages. The first half of the campaign, from May to mid-July, can be defined as a war of maneuver, called by one historian the ?Red Clay Minuet.? Under Joseph E. Johnston the Confederate Army of Tennessee repeatedly invited battle from strong defensive positions. Under William T. Sherman, the combined Federal armies of the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the Ohio repeatedly avoided attacking those positions; Sherman preferring to outflank them instead. Though there were a number of sharp, bloody engagements during this phase of the campaign, the combats were limited. Only the battles of Resaca and Kennesaw Mountain could be considered general engagements. Johnston's repeated retreats and the commensurate loss of terrain finally forced Confederate President Jefferson Davis to replace him with a more aggressive commander-John B. Hood. This work will portray the first half of the Atlanta Campaign in text and images, using both historic sketches and photographs, as well as post-war and modern images. Extant trenches, rifle pits, redoubts, shoupades, and other works, as well as the battlefields, will be covered, as well as surviving historic structures and the monuments and cemeteries that commemorate the campaign. AUTHOR: David A. Powell is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute (1983) with a BA in history. He has published numerous articles in various magazines, and more than fifteen historical simulations of different battles. For the past decade, David's focus has been on the epic battle of Chickamauga, and he is nationally recognized for his tours of that important battlefield. The results of that study are the volumes The Maps of Chickamauga (2009) and Failure in the Saddle (2010), as well as The Chickamauga Campaign trilogy. The Chickamauga Campaign: A Mad Irregular Battle was published in 2014, The Chickamauga Campaign: Glory or the Grave appeared in September 2015, and the final volume, Barren Victory, was released in September 2016. David and his wife Anne live and work in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. He is Vice President of Airsped, Inc., a specialized delivery firm. 100 illustrations
