Booknotes: The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1

New Arrival:

• The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie, 2024).

Albert Castel's 1992 tome Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 remains a classic operational study, but, truth be told, giving the North Georgia campaign of that year the full treatment it deserves was always going to require multiple volumes. The question was who, if anyone, was going to be willing to take up the banner and charge ahead with it. Recent years have gifted us with a stream of excellent Atlanta Campaign battle studies that have filled in details, provided persuasive answers to long-debated questions, and raised new ones. Now David Powell, he who never disappoints, is going to put it all together in a planned five-volume series, the first of which is The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864.

During the period covered in the book, it quickly became clear that the character of the fighting in Georgia between Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate Army of Tennessee and William T. Sherman's Union army group would be very different from the no holds barred match up between Grant and Lee in Virginia. From the description: "Johnston eschewed the offensive while hoping to lure Sherman into headlong assaults against fortified lines. Sherman disliked the uncertainty of battle and preferred maneuvering. When Johnston dug in, Sherman sought his flanks and turned the Confederates out of seemingly impregnable positions in a campaign noted Civil War historian Richard M. McMurry dubbed “the Red Clay Minuet.”"

Dancing analogy aside, there was certainly some serious fighting going on during the campaign's early moments. More: "This first installment of The Atlanta Campaign 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 and key decision-making. The largest fight, 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.”" It will definitely be interesting to read Powell's takes on the most debated aspects of those events, including McPherson at Snake Creek Gap and the Cassville Affair (the latter the subject of a highly illuminating recent book—see here).

As expected, the volume's nearly 550-page main narrative is supported by a strong map set of differing scales (19 in number). May 1 orders of battle are provided, too. Also, rather than compiling a single big bibliography for the entire project and placing it in the final installment, it looks like each volume will have its own. This is one of the big releases of 2024, and I'm looking forward to getting into it soon.