Description
Union Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman’s telegraph–“Atlanta is ours, and rather won”–had an enormous affect at the course of the Civil War. The culmination of a four-month campaign within the Western Theater, it propelled Abraham Lincoln to reelection.
Atlanta marked the beginning of the final Confederate struggle for survival. Union forces under Sherman lined up against Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee. Some of the best Union numbers forced the Confederates into a series of delaying actions from entrenched positions. When John Bell Hood replaced Johnston, the Confederates launched increasingly more attacking campaigns but were in the end forced to surrender the city as the Union troops smashed their supply lines, denying the Confederacy its principal granary and manufacturing districts.
Sherman was once left to embark on his famous March to the Sea.