sent Sherman to assail Bragg’s right flank and ordered Hooker to attack his left flank.  Sherman and his men advanced until he was stopped by a deep ravine.  At the other end of the line Hooker fought right up the side of Lookout Mountain, until the battle raged above the clouds.  In the center were Thomas’s men.  Eager to avenge the slaughter of Chickamauga, they carried the first Confederate line of defenses.  Then, without orders, they rushed up the hillside over the inner lines.  They drove the Southerners from their guns and seized their works.  Bragg retreated as well as he could.  Longstreet was besieging Knoxville.  He escaped through the mountains to Lee’s army in Virginia.

CHAPTER 41

THE END OF THE WAR, 1864-1865

[Sidenote:  Grant in chief command.]

[Sidenote:  Sherman commands in the West.]

422.  Grant in Command of all the Armies.—­The Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns marked out Grant for the chief command.  Hitherto the Union forces had acted on no well-thought-out plan.  Now Grant was appointed Lieutenant General and placed in command of all the armies of the United States (March, 1864).  He decided to carry on the war in Virginia in person.  Western operations he intrusted to Sherman, with Thomas in command of the Army of the Cumberland.  Sheridan came with Grant to Virginia and led the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac.  We will first follow Sherman and Thomas and the Western armies.

[Illustration:  GENERAL SHERMAN.]

[Sidenote:  Sherman’s army.]

[Sidenote:  The march to Atlanta.]

[Sidenote:  Hood attacks Sherman.]

423.  The Atlanta Campaign, 1864.—­Sherman had one hundred thousand veterans, led by Thomas, McPherson, and Schofield.  Joseph E. Johnston, who succeeded Bragg, had fewer men, but he occupied strongly fortified positions.  Yet week by week Sherman forced him back till, after two months of steady fighting, Johnston found himself in the vicinity of Atlanta.  This was the most important manufacturing center in the South.  The Confederates must keep Atlanta if they possibly could.  Johnston plainly could not stop Sherman.  So Hood was appointed in his place, in the expectation that he would fight.  Hood fought his best.  Again and again he attacked Sherman only to be beaten off with heavy loss.  He then abandoned Atlanta to save his army.  From May to September Sherman lost twenty-two thousand men, but the Confederates lost thirty-five thousand men and Atlanta too.

[Sidenote:  Problems of war.]

[Sidenote:  Plan of the March to the Sea.]

424.  Plans of Campaign.—­Hood now led his army northward to Tennessee.  But Sherman, instead of following him, sent only Thomas and Schofield.  Sherman knew that the Confederacy was a mere shell.  Its heart had been destroyed.  What would be the result of a grand march through Georgia to the seacoast, and then northward through the Carolinas to Virginia?  Would not this unopposed march show the people of the North, of the South, and of Europe that further resistance was useless?  Sherman thought that it would, and that once in Virginia he could help Grant crush Lee.  Grant agreed with Sherman and told him to carry out his plans.  But first we must see what happened to Thomas and Hood.