Here were the great grain growing prairies which afforded the sustenance that an army requires.
In the heart of the state, the center of a net-work of manufacturing cities and villages, was Atlanta, from which the army was supplied with powder, shot—in fact, all the appurtenances of war.
Through Macon and Atlanta ran the great railroad lines between the eastern and the western Confederacy.
Georgia then was the Confederate stronghold.
To rend it asunder from mountain to sea as had been done in the Mississippi was the next work of the Northern troops.
The man called upon to undertake this herculian task was Sherman.
He had just performed his superb march of four hundred miles from Vicksburg to Chattanooga and added to this another hundred miles to Knoxville in season to relieve Burnside.
At the head of one hundred thousand men he was now at Ringgold, on the other side of the mountain, in direct line with Dalton and Atlanta biding his time of action.
To follow the fortunes of Cavalry Curt, however, we must go to the Confederate headquarters.
On the afternoon of the same day that witnessed the scout’s capture, General Johnston, in company with subordinate officers, was in his tent busily examining a lot of charts and papers that lay before him.