Sherman Moves on Atlanta

This book is award winning historian David Powell’s first installment of a planned five-volume study of the Atlanta Campaign, from May of 1864 through the capture of the city in early September. His goal is to review and update the scholarship of Albert Castel’s excellent Decision in the West (1992), incorporating newly available primary sources, particularly diaries and letters, as well as more recent interpretations and insights. His account permits him to add more human-interest stories, allowing soldiers to speak, so we can “see” their thoughts and experiences as well as those of Sherman, his lieutenants, and senior Confederate offices.

Powell makes several new observations about the campaign. For example, he argues that William T. Sherman didn’t think that U. S. Grant should move to Washington, when he became commanding general of the Union forces, because it would break up the command team. Apparently, Sherman did not desire to command the western armies by himself.

Powell focuses a lot on logistics during the fighting over several months for Atlanta. He did everything possible to keep his army fed and supplied, drawing on the Union’s greater resources. He does a similar good job with Confederate logistics, and how its limitations constrained Johnston’s plans to fight offensively, as Davis and Bragg wanted.

Powell makes the case that “Sherman used space, and geography to his advantage.” (p. 543), and “his maneuvers were effective and greatly allowed him to be victorious and forced Johnston to retreat, which should be viewed as a mistake especially at Cassville” (p. 545).

Powell also makes the interesting observation that President Lincoln stayed out of Sherman’s and Grant’s everyday decisions throughout the last two years of the war, in contrast to Jefferson Davis, who was very active in advising his generals, not always with successful results.

One very useful aspect of the book it that in his dramatis personae, Powell doesn’t just identify the various generals, but makes some useful comments about them. For example,

· “Grant, while not directing Sherman in person, does direct decisions that took place in North Georgia from the D.C.-Virginia” (p. xiii).

· “Sherman did not always have the killer instinct.” (p. xiv).

· “Joseph Johnston’s corps commanders did not always know his intentions during the campaign.” (p. xv).

· “Braxton Bragg did everything possible to undermine Johnston when acting as Jefferson Davis’s military advisor in the field with the Army if Tennessee.” (p. xv).

· “While Leonidas Polk was not always agreeable when a subordinate of Bragg’s, he did follow Johnston’s orders to send him a majority of his soldiers over the objections of Davis and Bragg.” (p. xvi).

Powell concludes that “Sherman out generaled Johnston.” (p. 543).

This is an informative, unique, interesting and often insightful book, one worth the reader’s time. This reviewer recommends it highly and looks look forward to the follow-on volumes.

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Note: The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1, Dalton to Cassville is also available in e-editions.

StrategyPage reviews are published in cooperation with The New York Military Affairs Symposium

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