Review - "The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 2: From the Etowah River to Kennesaw Mountain, May 20 to June 27, 1864" by David Powell

[The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 2: From the Etowah River to Kennesaw Mountain, May 20 to June 27, 1864 by David A. Powell (Savas Beatie, 2025). Hardcover, 21 maps, photos, orders of battle, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xv,484/602. ISBN:978-1-61121-757-5. $39.95]

Since its 1992 publication, Albert Castel's Decision in the West's status as the standard single-volume history of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign has not been seriously challenged. Nevertheless, it has always been clearly recognized that any attempt to cover that four-month operation in North Georgia, with its sweeping large-scale maneuvers, near constant fighting, and numerous major battles, at a depth beyond what might be classified as a campaign overview would require multiple volumes. Tackling that very task with his typical gusto is David Powell, who, fresh off completion of an instant classic three-volume Chickamauga Campaign study, is no stranger to monumental military history projects with a western theater focus. In both research and writing, Powell always sets a high standard for himself, and the first installment of his planned five-book set, 2024's The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864, fully met expectations. Not given to resting on their laurels, Powell and publisher Savas Beatie were then able to give us, just one year later, The Atlanta Campaign - Volume 2: From the Etowah River to Kennesaw Mountain, May 20 to June 27, 1864.

Volume 2 begins with the tale of another squandered opportunity by Confederate Army of Tennessee commander Joseph E. Johnston to strike William T. Sherman's advancing army group while the Federals were briefly divided and beyond mutual support during another complicated flank march and river crossing combination. In Powell's keenly developed estimation (fully explained in Volume 1), the inability to attack Sherman's forces in detail as they were crossing the Oostanaula River was Johnston's "first and best lost opportunity" (pg. 36) of the campaign. Now, in passing below the Etowah River and with the greater part of Sherman's forces striking out into the wilderness west of their Western & Atlantic Railroad lifeline, the part of Sherman's army group constituting its left (Twenty-Third Corps/Army of the Ohio) found itself temporarily isolated and vulnerable. In response, the generally risk-averse Johnston yet again adopted a passive approach to facing Sherman's approaching columns, which were burdened by the heavy subsistence trains necessary for supporting extended operations away from the railroad. These brief openings were representative of precisely the types of situations that Johnston envisioned as his only means of effectively countering Sherman's superior forces, yet in both cases the general demonstrated little of the mental flexibility that would have allowed him to even recognize them as exceptional windows of opportunity.

As Sherman's army group lumbered forward along a wide arc intended to envelop the left of Johnston's smaller force, James B. McPherson, the inexperienced new commander of the celebrated Army of the Tennessee, repeatedly failed to meet his superior's expectations. On both May 25 and 26, Sherman's orders for McPherson to vigorously attack were not carried out. For the 27th, the opposite flank was approached. The resulting Battle of Pickett's Mill was a clear Union defeat, but Powell provides compelling reasons to suggest that Confederate defensive success was a closer run thing than most other accounts are willing to concede. Regardless, Johnston's freedom to reinforce his right to better meet the attack on the 27th would not have been possible without McPherson's inexplicable lethargy. Though work by Powell and others has done much to take the edge off of history's sharpest charges against McPherson for Snake Creek Gap, that supposed blunder and the other events of May 1864 suggest that the talented young major general from Ohio was not yet up to the job of army command.

While Johnston himself may have been unduly pessimistic about his army's offensive prospects, corps commander John Bell Hood continued to seek out ways to strike back. After Pickett's Mill, it was thought (first suggested by Hood) to take advantage of McPherson's hesitancy and the temporary disarrangement of the Union left to launch an attack of their own. Powell credits Johnston for a skillful rearrangement of nearly his entire army directly in the face of Sherman's host, a delicate process that freed up Hood's corps for the proposed flank march and attack on the east end of the federal line on the 28th. This proved to be yet another aborted offensive countermove, as Hood received disheartening intelligence claiming that the previously open enemy flank was now drawn back and strongly entrenched. The attack was called off, the fizzle on the 28th providing yet more fodder for the later war of words between Johnston and Hood. Powell sees little truth behind Johnston's version of events as published in 1874 and 1887, those writings being extremely critical of Hood, accusing the corps commander of inexcusable lateness and hesitation. While Powell's research leads him to believe that the Union left was more vulnerable than Confederate cavalry reported to Hood, he also persuasively outlines the difficulties Hood would have faced in deploying his three divisions in the area's rough terrain and coordinating their attack in a way that could achieve the desired result of crippling the opposition along that sector of the front.

The increased weight attached to the Confederate right left William Bate's lone division to face McPherson's entire army for three days. That McPherson proved incapable of exploiting that vulnerability during that extended time irked Sherman. In the end, Union inactivity on that end of the line led to Bate being ordered to develop the enemy-held position, wrongly assumed to be weakly held, in his front. The Union lines were found to be strongly posted and the assault cancelled, but a communication mishap resulted in two brigades attacking anyway and suffering heavy casualties to no positive result for the Confederates. Even so, The Battle of Dallas conclusively signaled that Sherman's grand western sweep away from the railroad was stymied for good. Over the first half of June, Sherman's logistically strained army group sidled back to the east, eventually regaining possession of the railroad (which was daily becoming more necessary for relief) and again pressing Johnston southward. Noteworthy events from this time include the death of popular Confederate corps commander Leonidas Polk at Pine Mountain and the fighting at Gilgal Church.

Throughout the five and a half week period covered in the book, Sherman lamented opportunities missed by subordinate sluggishness. Powell persuasively maintains that many ill-tempered complaints directed by Sherman toward George Thomas should have been instead laid at the feet of beloved Grant/Sherman protege James McPherson, whose behavior on June 25-27 at Dallas was most deserving of Sherman's ire. Sherman also needled Thomas throughout the campaign for the latter's desire to preserve his own creature comforts and maintain an extensive army headquarters tent village. In defense of Thomas, Powell notes that Sherman assigned the bulk of the entire army group's administrative apparatus to Thomas's Army of the Cumberland headquarters, justifying to a large degree the seemingly excessive number of tents, furniture, and wagons attached to it. Additionally, Thomas's prewar back injury and his desire to avoid commandeering private residences are cited by Powell as justifiable reasons behind the general's avoidance of 'roughing it' in the field over the duration of a long campaign.

As Johnston fell back through successive positions to a more compact front covering Marietta, Sherman's army group continued to press forward closely, adopting, as Powell describes it, 'bite and hold' tactics to establish forward outposts that could then utilize Union superiority in artillery firepower to prompt further Confederate retreats. Kolb's Farm was a costly Confederate attempt to alter the situation. Powell describes the battle and revisits the ways in which it contributed to growing animosity between Twentieth Corps commander Joseph Hooker and Sherman while also being another source of future rancor between Johnston and Hood. The author is sympathetic to Hooker's frustrations in relation to how much offensive burden his corps was forced to assume thus far in the campaign, but Powell also directs reader attention toward yet another of McPherson's shortcomings. When Hood's corps was replaced on the front line by Wheeler's cavalry preparatory to the former's shift to the opposite flank (the movement that produced the fighting at Kolb's Farm), reconnaissance inactivity from McPherson's corps on June 21-22 meant that the dangerously thinned line manned by enemy cavalry in his front lay undetected in its vulnerability. With Johnston's army returning to a defensive posture, the stage was now set for a change in Sherman's offensive tactics.

Earl Hess's Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign is the most complete history of that battle to date, and both he and Powell make clear the ways in which the natural landscape and Confederate defensive improvements (the quality and strength of the latter further enhanced by the delays incurred from Union front line reshuffling) shaped the battle. Historical criticisms of Sherman's Kennesaw Mountain assaults often center around the tactical formations employed during the Cheatham Hill assaults. There, the assaulting brigades of General Howard's Fourth Corps were directed to mass themselves on very narrow, very deep frontages (regiments forming up in closed column of divisions, each regiment stacked directly behind the other). Powell contends that many critics operate under the misunderstanding that Howard intended his attack to rapidly pass over enemy lines with the advancing regiments remaining in column. Citing the writings of participating officers, Powell persuasively argues instead that each regiment would only have maintained column formation during initial deployment and passage to the front, the expectation being for all regiments to quickly redeploy into line for the final assault. With little time for pre-battle reconnaissance after nighttime reshuffling of the attacking divisions, principal fault, in the author's view, lay in the false impression that the rapid columnar movement to the front could achieve tactical surprise, that redeployment into line could be quickly achieved, and that the Confederate defensive lines were not as thickly held as they were.

The fighting on the 27th is recounted over several chapters, making the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain the most deeply covered event in the book. As always, Powell excels in both providing big picture context for the battle as well as detailed tactical treatment at the small-unit level. As it does for the rest of the narrative, the author's vast collection of firsthand sources gleaned from his extensive manuscript research allows the reader to gain a vivid picture of the Kennesaw fighting from the perspectives of its most intimately involved participants, the lower-ranking officers and common soldiers. The action at Kennesaw is also the most thoroughly mapped of the many military encounters described in the book. With 21 total maps supporting a nearly 500-page military history narrative, and the period encompassing Volume 2 consisting of nearly continuous marching and fighting, it is probably inevitable that there would be gaps in coverage. In those cases, the descriptive quality of the text helps visualize events that could not be accompanied by maps, but it is also the case that future readings will undoubtedly benefit from the campaign atlas that is planned.

In the wake of the costly failure of the Kennesaw assaults he ordered, Sherman remained unhumbled. Insisting the attacks on the 27th were necessary—to break his well-established operational pattern of conducting wide flanking movements, to keep Johnston from sending reinforcements to Lee in Virginia, and also to convince Johnston (and perhaps even his own army) that direct assaults remained a viable option that still must be accounted for—was one thing, but blaming his men as being principally behind the failure was a petty accusation not in accord with the measured verdict of history. Neither Powell nor Hess find Sherman's justifications convincing. Nevertheless, the attacks did not result in crippling Union casualties (though several brigade commanders might beg to differ), and the successful advance by the Army of the Ohio against the Confederate left, which was held only by screening cavalry, meant that Union forces were well-positioned to force yet another retreat by Johnston's army (this one with the Chattahoochee River at its back and Atlanta itself sixteen miles away just over the horizon). Thus ends Volume 2.

In terms of supplements, the orders of battle found in the appendix section, representing the organizational state of the Union and Confederate armies on June 1, are more informative than most. Battery compositions are listed for both armies, and the Union side even has regimental strength figures for most units. With two volumes finished, the scale of what Powell's pentalogy intends to accomplish has become more clear. Exhaustive campaign micro-history on the level of the author's previous single-battle trilogy would require a dozen or more volumes, so perhaps the best way to describe the series is detailed operational history with strong micro-tactical elements reserved for describing the most significant battlefield events (examples of that pattern being this book's treatment of the battles of Pickett's Mill and Kennesaw Mountain). In achieving those ends, both books excel.

On to Volume 3!