The Confederacy had only to hold its lines intact until the first Monday in November and the Northern voters would end the war.
The one point of mortal danger to the South lay in the mental structure of Joseph E. Johnston, the man whom Davis had been persuaded, against his better judgment, to appoint to the command of one of the greatest armies the Confederacy had ever put into the field.
Johnston had been sent to Dalton, Georgia, and placed in command of sixty-eight thousand picked Confederate soldiers with which to attack and drive Sherman out of the lower South.
Lee with sixty-four thousand had defeated Grant's one hundred and forty thousand. Richmond was safe, and the North was besieging Washington with an army of heart-broken mothers and fathers who demanded Grant's removal.
No effort was spared by Davis to enable Johnston to stay Sherman's advance and assume the offensive. The whole military strength of the South and West was pressed forward to him. His commissary and ordnance departments were the best in the Confederacy. His troops were eager to advance and retrieve the disaster at Missionary Ridge—the first and only case of panic and cowardice that had marred the brilliant record of the Confederacy.
The position of Johnston's army was one of commanding strength. Long mountain ranges, with few and difficult passes, made it next to impossible for Sherman to turn his flank or dislodge him by direct attack. Sherman depended for his supplies on a single line of railroad from Nashville.
Davis confidently believed that Johnston could crush Sherman in the first pitched battle and render his position untenable.
And then began the most remarkable series of retreats recorded in the history of war.
Without a blow and without waiting for an attack, Johnston suddenly withdrew from his trenches at Dalton and ran eighteen miles into the interior of Georgia. He stopped at Resaca in a strong position on a peninsula formed by the junction of two rivers fortified by rifle pits and earthworks.
He gave this up and ran thirteen miles further into Georgia to Adairsville. Not liking the looks of Adairsville he struck camp and ran to Cassville seventeen miles.