The army was not content with besieging Kenesaw, but kept trying to work its way around that mountain. Disquieted by these events, the enemy sought to check them on June 22d, by a sharp attack upon Hooker at Kulp's farm, which was repulsed with heavy losses. Five days later, the 27th of June, Sherman ordered an attack to be made just South of the mountain, by Thomas, and a supporting movement by McPherson northward. They were both repulsed with heavy losses, and Sherman then decided to waste no more lives in direct attacks, but to turn the enemy's position, as he had done several times before. So on July 1st, McPherson marched toward Turner's Ferry, there to cross the Chattahoochee. The movement was effective. Johnston immediately abandoned Kenesaw, and retreated five miles, to Smyrna Camp Ground.
That Fourth of July Sherman was exultant. He did not believe the enemy would make another stand that side of the Chattahoochee. But Howard thought otherwise, and soon proved, by sending out a double line of skirmishers, that he was right. Johnston had intrenched himself strongly, and threatened to dispute Sherman's further progress toward Atlanta. Schofield made a strong demonstration across a neighboring ferry, however, and Johnston soon fell back to the Chattahoochee bridge, Thomas following closely. The river was deep and swift, but Sherman determined to cross it. Schofield went over first, near the mouth of South Creek; then McPherson further up at Roswell; Thomas built a bridge at Power's Ferry and crossed over, nearest of all to the Rebel lines; and thus, by July 9th, they had crossed the river at three points and commanded three good roads to Atlanta. And the Rebel position was once more turned. Forthwith Johnston hurried across the river, burning the bridges behind him.
"At Smyrna," says General Howard, "Atlanta was in plain sight. Johnston had bothered us long. He had repelled direct assaults with success except, perhaps, at Muddy Creek where Baird and Harker had ditched and covered their men, in the open, at one of his angles, and then had run squarely over his barricades. But Sherman, by that unceasing flanking operation of his, persistently undertaken and accomplished, while Hooker, Palmer, and Howard were hammering away at the centre motes, which had no approaches and no drawbridges, and now at last pressed Johnston back, back across the Etowah and across the Chattahoochee. Johnston had planned a final terrible blow for him at Peach Tree, when, fortunately for Sherman and his army, Jefferson Davis, favoring, as he claimed, the indications of Providence, relieved the able Johnston from command, and put in charge the hardy but rash Hood. He at once, as was expected, took the offensive. He came on, as at Gettysburg, from the close wood into the valley, to welcome us in his charming way, several miles out from Atlanta. His blows were so sudden and his onslaught so swift, that at first it disturbed Hooker's breathing, made Williams talk fast, and Geary suspend his favorite Kansas stories and tales of the Mexican war. In the language of the football men, the Unions for a few hours, 'had a hard tussle.' They lost heavily, but managed to keep on the Atlanta side of the Peach Tree. Newton planted his big cross, made of soldiers, at the east end of Thomas's line, and Newton, though no doubt badly terrified, was as always, too obstinate to go back. Thomas's modesty put in additional reserve batteries and kept pieces of iron rattling among the chaparral and alders of those low-land intervales. So Thomas and Newton preserved that weak left flank from capture. Hood had put forth his tremendous energy, but was baffled and turned back to his cover within the fortified lines of Atlanta."
By this time the people of Georgia were fully roused from their old feeling of false security. They had seen the Union Army march triumphantly over the mountain barrier at the northwest. They had seen their favorite commander, Johnston, and his great army, driven from point to point and forced to surrender positions which had been deemed impregnable. And now Sherman's conquering hosts, flushed with success, had crossed the Chattahoochee and lay only eight miles from Atlanta. Consternation prevailed throughout the State, and the people of Atlanta itself were panic-stricken. Nor were they allowed to gain new courage by a respite. Sherman's advance upon the city suffered no delay. A strong cavalry force was pushed forward from Decatur, Alabama, to Opelika, and thence to Marietta, completely cutting off Johnston's army from all sources of supply and reinforcement in that direction. Sherman also brought up fresh stores from Chattanooga. July 17th a general advance was made.
On this very day the Rebel government at Richmond committed an act that was worth three victories to the Union Army. There had long been antagonism between Joe Johnston and J. P. Benjamin, the Rebel Secretary of War, and Jefferson Davis had sympathized with the latter. Benjamin had now been removed from office, but his successor, Seddon, had inherited the antagonism to Johnston. So now, on July 17th, a dispatch came to Johnston from Richmond, saying that since he had failed to check Sherman's advance the government had no confidence in his ability to do so, and ordering him immediately to surrender his command to General Hood. This did great injustice to Johnston, but it also did greater injury to Rebel cause. Hood was a brave general, but rash and not competent to direct the operations of a great army in an important campaign. Indeed he himself felt most deeply his unfitness to continue Johnston's work, although he of course resolved to do his best.
In response to the harsh criticisms made upon him for not fighting a decisive battle with Sherman, Johnston said:
"Defeat would have been our ruin. Our troops, always fighting under cover, had trifling losses when compared with the enemy, whose numerical superiority was thus reduced daily and rapidly. We could, therefore, reasonably expect to cope with him on equal terms by the time that the Chattahoochee was passed. Defeat on our side of that river would have been his destruction. We, if beaten, had a refuge in Atlanta too strong to be assaulted, too extensive to be invested. I also hoped, by breaking the railroad in his rear, that he might be compelled to attack us in a position of our own choosing, or to a retreat easily converted into a rout. After we crossed the Etowah, five detachments of cavalry were successively sent with instructions to destroy as much as they could of the railroad between Dalton and the Etowah; all failed, because too weak. We could never spare a sufficient body of cavalry for this service, as its assistance was absolutely necessary in the defence of every position we occupied. Early in the campaign the statements of the strength of cavalry in the Departments of Mississippi and East Louisiana given me by Lieutenant-General Polk, just from that command, and my telegraphic correspondence with his successor, led me to hope that a competent force could be sent from Mississippi and Alabama to prevent the use of the railroad by the United States army."
The Rebel army was now about 51,000 strong, and was strongly posted at Peach Tree Creek, four miles northwest of Atlanta. The place had been selected by Johnston for a decisive battle, and he had expected that the Union Army, in spreading out to flank him, would weaken its centre so that he could make an effective attack. Exactly this thing occurred, and on the afternoon of July 20th, the Rebel blow was struck. Hood's troops came rushing down the hillside against the Union lines with just such fury as Stonewall Jackson's columns used to display. But they were met by strong resistance, and after a bloody conflict, were driven to their intrenchments. Thus the first of Johnston's plans which Hood tried to execute, failed. The second plan and effort was to withdraw the main army from Peach Tree Creek far to the right, leaving Atlanta almost undefended, and then fall upon Sherman's left flank as his army advanced upon the city.
When Sherman came up and found the works on Peach Tree Creek abandoned, he thought Atlanta also had been evacuated, and he marched right up to within two miles of that city. Then after an all night circuit the Rebel attack was made upon his left and rear. For four hours the battle raged furiously. The Union lines were broken and some guns captured. Sherman watched the struggle from a point between Schofield and McPherson, John A. Logan and other officers performed prodigies of valor, and finally the Rebels were checked and driven back, leaving more than three thousand dead upon the field, together with other thousands of wounded and about one thousand prisoners. Their total loss must have been at least eight thousand, while Sherman's entire loss, in killed, wounded and prisoners, was 3,722. But in this battle almost in the outset the Union Army suffered an irreparable loss in the death of the gallant and accomplished McPherson, who was shot by Rebel skirmishers as he was hastening from Dodge's Corps to Blair's through the woods, i.e., the left flank of the army, to meet there the Rebel attack which first struck his rear.
Who should succeed McPherson in command was a question that caused some perplexity. Logan succeeding to McPherson in the battle had done well, but was junior to several corps commanders, and had, as Sherman thought, some other disabilities, as a rivalry between him and Blair, and political aspirations. At last Sherman and Thomas agreed upon the appointment of General O. O. Howard, a choice which was promptly approved by the Government at Washington. This offended Hooker, Howard's senior in rank. He had aspired to succeed McPherson, and so at once asked to be relieved of the command of the Twentieth Corps. His wish, as before Gettysburg, was granted, and General Slocum came from Vicksburg to take his place.