Review - "A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 2: Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station and the Capture of Atlanta" by David Allison

[A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 2: Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station and the Capture of Atlanta by David Allison (Author, 2025). Paperback, 3 maps, photos, endnotes, appendix section, index. Pages main/total:vi,242/438. ISBN:9798273780811. $19]

David Allison's A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1 concluded with the outermost maneuver elements of William T. Sherman's sweeping "Grand Movement" establishing a strong bridgehead south of Atlanta on the east bank of the Flint River. There, advance units from the three corps of O.O. Howard's Army of the Tennessee were poised to launch a final lunge toward Jonesboro and the Macon & Western Railroad that passed through the depot town on its way north to Atlanta. Allison's A Summer of Battles - The Final Weeks of the Civil War's 1864 Atlanta Campaign, Volume 2: Jonesboro, Lovejoy's Station and the Capture of Atlanta continues the narrative through the closing stages of the campaign. [Note: Before going further please visit (or revisit) the site review of Volume 1 [here], paying close attention to its general observations in regard to the book's research, writing, and presentation. Those also apply to this second volume, and not all parts of that discussion will be repeated].

From his Atlanta headquarters, Confederate Army of Tennessee commander John Bell Hood charged his ranking subordinate, William J. Hardee, with driving back the federal advance, and he placed two corps (Hardee's own, temporarily commanded by Patrick Cleburne, and that of S.D. Lee) at Hardee's disposal. Aimed at crushing the Union bridgehead before it could be strongly fortified, the launch time of Hardee's attack west of Jonesboro on August 31, 1864 ended up being considerably delayed until mid-afternoon, when the rearmost contingent of Lee's rushed reinforcements from Atlanta finally arrived on the battlefield. That critical breathing space allowed Howard's troops along the east bank of the Flint River to fully establish an entrenched line of defense backed by well-positioned artillery support. Those circumstances alone dimmed Confederate chances for success considerably, but Allison also convincingly finds poor command and control at the highest levels (a common failing in the Army of Tennessee's battles) to be a major factor behind the Confederate repulse on the 31st. Cleburne/Hardee's Corps, which scattered the Union cavalry in its front during its initial assault, ended up derailing its own attacking momentum. Instead of regrouping after initial success and wheeling into the southern flank of the Union line, the corps dispersed its effort by allowing one division to fruitlessly chase the defeated Union cavalry across the river. The division returned, but the opportunity to strike the Union flank with a concentrated blow had already passed. To the north, S.D. Lee's Corps attacked frontally in two strong lines. The veteran Union defenders on Lee's front were unlikely to be overrun by such a direct attack, but Allison also points out that the lack of coordination between Lee's two battle lines badly disorganized and disrupted the assaulting formations. Both Confederate corps were rather easily repulsed by the Union defenders across their respective fronts.

Declining Confederate fighting morale likely also played a role in the failure of their attacks. High-ranking officers on both sides claimed that the Confederates at Jonesboro lacked their usual attacking spirit, and those claims support the conclusion of Gary Ecelbarger that the lopsided results of the earlier battle at Ezra Church heavily impacted Confederate offensive morale at Jonesboro. In their respective Ezra Church battles studies, both Ecelbarger and Earl Hess convincingly mark that battle as the last point during the campaign in which the Confederates were still capable of endangering Union movements through offensive action, and Allison's account of Jonesboro provides no dissuading evidence.

Whatever kind of Confederate victory that was possible at Jonesboro on the 31st would surely have done little to prevent the evacuation of Atlanta. To the north, three Union corps were able to strike the Macon & Western Railroad between East Point and Jonesboro against little to no opposition, in the process establishing practically unassailable blocking positions and tearing up the tracks. In describing this dramatic turn of events, the author contrasts Sherman's hyperactive presence at the front, where he was able to quickly respond to events as they happened, to Hood's static and detached command direction from Atlanta, where he was cut off from accurate information about what was going on to the south.

After the first day of fighting ended at Jonesboro, Lee's Corps was ordered to return to Atlanta, leaving Hardee isolated with only his own corps to continue to hold Jonesboro and protect the army's supply and munitions trains. Now having to also cover the northern approaches to Jonesboro, Hardee deployed his corps in a single, thin L-shaped line, the shorter east-west leg of which extended as far as was possible across the Macon tracks. Allison recounts the fighting on September 1 in great micro-tactical detail. The attack and defense of key sectors of the battlefield, particularly at the 'angle' formed by the elbow in Hardee's L-shaped line and along the far right of the Confederate position astride the railroad, are explored at a depth not found elsewhere. A great multitude of insightful firsthand accounts from both sides pepper the text, and there is even an entire chapter devoted to the assault of a single regiment (the 17th New York). The Fourteenth Corps's attack at the angle, which placed the defenders there under a murderous crossfire, unhinged the Confederate line, although local counterattacks stemmed the breakthrough and restored enough stability until nighttime cover allowed Hardee to safely withdraw his men and trains. Alleged Fourth Corps tardiness in coming up on the Fourteenth Corps's left was blamed by some for Hardee's escape, but the Confederates are also credited for having the foresight to extend their far right flank just enough that it could not be effectively turned by arriving Fourth Corps units until after nightfall. Rough terrain east of the railroad also played a role in hindering rapid Union deployment along that section of the battlefield. In Allison's studied view, Sherman's ill-considered decision to not rush David Stanley's Fourth Corps and John Schofield's Twenty-Third Corps/Army of the Ohio forward at all possible speed earlier in the day, but rather have them continue to wreck rails as they progressed south (only belatedly ordering them to make haste in the afternoon), was primarily responsible for Hardee surviving the September 1 fighting with his corps largely intact.

Regardless of where the credit or blame lies surrounding Hardee's escape, the overall Confederate situation was still far from secure. The success of Sherman's Grand Movement forced the evacuation of Atlanta, which was then occupied by Henry Slocum's Twentieth Corps on September 2. The book follows the course of Slocum's reconnaissance probes that secured Atlanta's surrender, also addressing competing claims in regard to which unit could best lay claim to being the first to enter the city. The biggest remaining question was whether Sherman's army group could finish the job and destroy Hood's scattered forces before they could reunite and cause further mischief. One corps needed to be left at Jonesboro to guard the rear, but Sherman had five corps concentrated for further operations.

As Allison explains, Sherman did little more than test Hardee's fortified defenses north of Lovejoy's Station late on the 2nd. He also directed Schofield to pass around the Confederate right to block the road that Hood would presumably use to reunite his army. However, once he received certain confirmation late in the day that Slocum's men occupied Atlanta, Sherman seemingly lost all remaining desire for continuing the offensive. To Sherman, the big prize of the campaign (Atlanta itself) was already won and any further attacks against entrenched defenders would only result in needless casualties. A.P. Stewart's and Lee's strung out corps were allowed to join Hardee without interference, and the Army of the Tennessee was back together at Lovejoy's late on the 3rd. The merits of Sherman's decision to not go for the killing blow but instead withdraw his armies back to Atlanta for rest and recuperation would be hotly debated ever since.

Jonesboro casualties for both days of the battle are examined separately in the appendix section, which offers extensive breakdowns of losses as well as numerous individual stories of pain and suffering. The last, and most thought-provoking, appendix revisits contemporary finger-pointing and later ink and print warfare surrounding who should be assigned principal blame for Hardee escaping destruction at Jonesboro. The bulk of the text reviews the opinions and writings of the key generals involved in the controversy. In it, Sherman's point of view takes a bit of a battering, and Stanley (so often framed by his contemporaries, especially Sherman, as the battle's scapegoat) emerges from the fray with a strong defense of his conduct. Addressing Sherman's alleged missed opportunity after Jonesboro to defeat Hood's temporarily scattered army in detail, analysis is mostly limited to Army of the Ohio commander John Schofield's pointed critique. The author himself does not adopt a hardened stance toward any single target, nor does he involve commentary from modern historians in the examination of these issues, mostly leaving readers to weigh these matters for themselves.

The state of the book's map coverage is similar to what it was in the previous volume. There is a good situation map of the area between Atlanta and Jonesboro, and a pair of fine maps show the August 31 and September 1 fighting at Jonesboro. The Jonesboro battle maps depict the action at brigade scale. While that doesn't match the regimental-level tactical detail presented in the text, it does at least give the reader a general understanding of the battlefield terrain and relative positions of the formations involved.

In providing a fine, in-depth account of the long-neglected Battle of Jonesboro as well as the follow-on confrontation at Lovejoy's Station, this volume is the first of its kind. More coverage is on the way. Two highly anticipated standalone studies of Jonesboro (one from Earl Hess and the other co-authored by Gary Ecelbarger and Scott Patchan) are presumably still in the works, and these closing events of the Atlanta Campaign will of course also be examined in due time by David Powell's ongoing series (the third volume of which will be published later this year), so it will be interesting to read and compare everyone's findings when the time comes. In the meantime, it is recommended that every serious student of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign pick up a copy of this groundbreaking two-volume set from David Allison, which is available in hardcover and paperback editions (both very attractively priced).