Memoirs of the Union's Three Great Civil War Generals eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,934 pages of information about Memoirs of the Union's Three Great Civil War Generals.

Memoirs of the Union's Three Great Civil War Generals eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,934 pages of information about Memoirs of the Union's Three Great Civil War Generals.
Killed and Missing      Wounded     Total
Loss in June Aggregate      1,790              5,740      7,530

Johnston makes his statement of losses from the report of his
surgeon Foard, for pretty much the same period, viz., from June 4th
to July 4th (page 576): 
                            Killed Wounded Total
         Total............ 468 3,480 3,948

In the tabular statement the “missing” embraces the prisoners; and, giving two thousand as a fair proportion of prisoners captured by us for the month of June (twelve thousand nine hundred and eighty-three in all the campaign), makes an aggregate loss in the rebel army of fifty-nine hundred and forty-eight, to ours of seventy-five hundred and thirty—­a less proportion than in the relative strength of our two armies, viz., as six to ten, thus maintaining our relative superiority, which the desperate game of war justified.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ATLANTA CAMPAIGN—­BATTLES ABOUT ATLANTA

JULY, 1864.

As before explained, on the 3d of July, by moving McPherson’s entire army from the extreme left, at the base of Kenesaw to the right, below Olley’s Creek, and stretching it down the Nickajack toward Turner’s Ferry of the Chattahoochee, we forced Johnston to choose between a direct assault on Thomas’s intrenched position, or to permit us to make a lodgment on his railroad below Marietta, or even to cross the Chattahoochee.  Of course, he chose to let go Kenesaw and Marietta, and fall back on an intrenched camp prepared by his orders in advance on the north and west bank of the Chattahoochee, covering the railroad-crossing and his several pontoon-bridges.  I confess I had not learned beforehand of the existence of this strong place, in the nature of a tete-du-pont, and had counted on striking him an effectual blow in the expected confusion of his crossing the Chattahoochee, a broad and deep river then to his rear.  Ordering every part of the army to pursue vigorously on the morning of the 3d of July, I rode into Marietta, just quitted by the rebel rear-guard, and was terribly angry at the cautious pursuit by Garrard’s cavalry, and even by the head of our infantry columns.  But Johnston had in advance cleared and multiplied his roads, whereas ours had to cross at right angles from the direction of Powder Springs toward Marrietta, producing delay and confusion.  By night Thomas’s head of column ran up against a strong rear-guard intrenched at Smyrna camp-ground, six miles below Marietta, and there on the next day we celebrated our Fourth of July, by a noisy but not a desperate battle, designed chiefly to hold the enemy there till Generals McPherson and Schofield could get well into position below him, near the Chattahoochee crossings.

It was here that General Noyes, late Governor of Ohio, lost his leg.  I came very near being shot myself while reconnoitring in the second story of a house on our picket-line, which was struck several times by cannon-shot, and perfectly riddled with musket-balls.

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Memoirs of the Union's Three Great Civil War Generals from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.