Booknotes - The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Sherman's Campaign to the Outskirts of Atlanta

New Arrival:

• The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Sherman's Campaign to the Outskirts of Atlanta by David A. Powell (Casemate, 2024).

Dave Powell's The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Sherman's Campaign to the Outskirts of Atlanta is part of the Casemate Illustrated series. As it now stands, the series is heavily focused on WW2 topics but an 1862 Maryland Campaign installment was recently published, and Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Overland Campaign volumes are scheduled for this coming summer. As will be the case with Vicksburg, Powell's Atlanta coverage comes in two parts.

The course of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign is commonly divided into two major phases, the natural transition point being the arrival of both armies at the Chattahoochie River and the replacement of Confederate Army of Tennessee commander Joseph E. Johnston with John Bell Hood. Powell's pairing adopts that same concept.

From the description: "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."

Covered in this part one are Dalton, Resaca, Cassville, New Hope Church, Pickett's Mill, Dallas, Kolb's Farm, Kennesaw Mountain, and the Chattahoochee River Line. Visually oriented, the general format hearkens back to the classic Osprey style of overview presentation. So in addition to the tight narrative text there is a campaign timeline, orders of battle, color maps, photographs (both period and modern), classic artwork and illustrations, and army/leader profiles and sidebars.

Knowing that Powell is in the middle of writing a grand series of tomes that will do for the 1864 Atlanta Campaign what was done in three hefty volumes for the Chickamauga Campaign, the text here should provide some hints at lines of thinking that will be more fully developed in the future.