On the fifth of May, 1864, at precisely the same time when Grant moved into the Wilderness, Sherman set out on his march to Atlanta. With the true instinct of a fighting commander, he had stripped himself and his army of all encumbering baggage and other superfluities. He had no tent, even for himself. And he boasted in after years that he changed his underclothes only once between Chattanooga and Atlanta. He required all his officers, high and low, except General Thomas, whose health was impaired, to follow his own example of unencumbered movement.
The distance from Chattanooga to Atlanta, as the crow flies, is almost exactly a hundred miles. Johnston's position at Dalton was about fifteen miles southeast of Chattanooga. The country is a hilly and broken one, traversed by many streams which afford good defensive positions to a retiring army, as do also the various gaps among the hills which must be crossed by an army advancing offensively. Johnston was strongly fortified at Dalton and Sherman, not venturing to assail him in his works there, sent McPherson to make a détour, and strike the Confederate lines of communication at Resaca, ten miles or so farther south.
There McPherson found Johnston's men behind earthworks, and wisely or unwisely shrank from attacking them in their defenses. If he could have carried the works at Resaca Johnston's position would have been one of extremest danger from which he could escape only by fighting on all sides at once, and forcing his way through opposing lines, strongly posted and well fortified. But in McPherson's judgment an attack at that point with such force as he had with him was unadvisable. He therefore refrained from attack, and fell back to a secure position in the hills to await the approach of reinforcements. Sherman promptly moved to McPherson's position, only to find that Johnston had also retired from Dalton to Resaca, and had concentrated his entire army there in a strong defensive position.
Even with all his army present Sherman, himself, hesitated to attack Johnston in his works—a fact which seems a sufficient answer to that criticism of McPherson which has been freely exploited in writings concerning this campaign.
Sherman, however, had so greatly the advantage of Johnston in numbers that he could afford to send large detachments against the Confederate general's communications, while still holding a threatening position of his own in front. This he did with consummate skill, forcing Johnston with his small army to retreat southward following the railroad, and destroying as he went.
Johnston left Resaca on the night of the fifteenth of May, and on the nineteenth took position at Cassville, where he seemed to offer battle to his enemy. But after some sharp skirmishing the Confederate general retreated again during the night of the twentieth to a point south of the Etowah river and to Alatoona.
After a few days of rest and reprovisioning, Sherman moved again, not directly against his antagonist, but by the flank, so as to threaten Marietta and Atlanta itself, which lies only a few miles south of Marietta. By this movement Sherman hoped to force Johnston to abandon his strong position at Alatoona Pass, where he securely held the railroad over which Sherman had need to bring his supplies in any further advance that he might make southward.
Promptly recognizing the purpose of this movement, Johnston marched westward to assail his enemy in flank. The two armies met at New Hope Church, a point a few miles west of Marietta, and a few miles northwest of Atlanta. Here for six days there was continuous and very bloody fighting, both armies doing their work in a fashion that rivaled even that of the contending forces in Virginia.
By virtue of his superior numbers, Sherman was able to make strong detachments to assail the communications and the flanks of Johnston's army, and thus to compel him to fall back again to a strong defensive position on the railroad above Marietta, on Kenesaw, Lost and Pine Mountains.
Against this position Sherman advanced with caution, strongly entrenching himself in its front. There the fighting was continuous and costly of human life on both sides. There it was that General Leonidas Polk, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, who had been educated at West Point for the military service, but who had afterwards risen to the highest place of honor in his church as a Bishop, and had at the outbreak of the war entered the Confederate service in which he had risen to the rank of major general, was instantly killed by a cannon shot which Sherman himself had directed to be fired into a group of Confederate officers of whom he caught sight on a hill. This was on June 14.