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The Atlanta Campaign

The State of Georgia was nearly untouched by the war in 1864 and served as an enormous bread basket for the Confederacy. The City of Atlanta had become a large manufacturing center, its’ rail yards linked the southern and western states in rebellion to the rest of the Confederacy.

Little Kennesaw Mountain from Big Kennesaw, Ga 

In the spring of 1864 William Tecumseh Sherman united several Union armies in the western theater for his coming operations in Georgia forming one of the largest armies in American History. Sherman and his 100,000 man army began to march toward Atlanta from their base in Chattanooga, later to be called the Atlanta Campaign.

Click the link below to see what remains of the Atlanta Campaign battlefields and images from the 150th anniversary reenactment of the Battle of Resaca, Georgia in May 2014.

The Atlanta Campaign

North Anna River to Cold Harbor

“As Grant began to disentangle his army from the lines at Spotsylvania and march by his left flank, he hoped to use some of his men to pin down Lee’s army while marching others to the North Anna River and the railroad line at Hanover Junction about 25 miles away.

Reenactors construct Civil War era earthworks in Mosley, Virginia 2014

If he could accomplish that by beating Lee’s army to those spots, he would have captured one of Lee’s most natural supply lines while depriving the Army of Northern Virginia from using the North Anna River as a defensive line.”*

North Anna to Cold Harbor

(*) The Overland Campaign – Charles River Editors

Bloody Spotsylvania

As the Union Army began to dig-in at Spotsylvania US Grant famously wired Washington saying, “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer”.

This statement sent shock waves through the North.  In three years of war one Union general after the next had been bested by Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. It seemed that Lee had finally met his match.

Morning fog shrouds the Bloody Angle on the Battlefield at Spotsylvania 2014

The fighting near Spotsylvania Courthouse in Virginia became known as Bloody Spotsylvania because of the fighting that happened there on May 12th 1864.  On that date 20,000 Union troops attacked the Confederate earthworks at Spotsylvania – 22 hours later the fight ceased in what became the longest stretch of combat in the entire Civil War.

See the link below for images and stories from Spotsylvania:

Bloody Spotsylvania