Today in History:

27 Series I Volume XXXVIII-III Serial 74 - The Atlanta Campaign Part III

Page 27 Chapter L. REPORTS, ETC.- ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE.

Corps. His assault is described by the officers engaged as the fiercest and most persistent engagement of the day. The attack was made from the east. The enemy formed in, and moved through, the woods, which covered their approach at some points within twenty yards of our breast- works. The men again fought from the reverse of their works. under a movst dstructive fire from the Fourth Division and two detached regiments from the Third Division, the enemy moved directly up to our works, and a deadly battle took place. Regimental commanders, with their colors, with such men as would follow them, would not infrequently occupy one side of the works, and our men the other. Many individual acts of heroism occurred. The flags of opposing regiments would meet on the opoosite sides of the same work, and would be flaunted by their respective bearers in each other's faces; men were bayoneted across the works, and officers, with their swords, fought hand to hand with men with bayonets." The colonel of the Forty- fifth Alabama waqs pulled by his coat collar over the works and made a prisoner. This terrible contest lasted for three- quarters of an hour, and the divisin still held nearly the whole of its ground. About 6 another force advanced from the directin of Atlanta. General Smith had scarcely chabnged position to the east side of this works, when the enemy opened upon his left and rear a heavy fire of musketry and artillery, alnd he was compelled to abandon another portionof his works. Falling back a short distance, he formed a line perpendicular to his line of works. The column moving from the west enfiladed this line, and he was compelled to swing his right still farther back. Generl Leggett moved out his Second Brigade in a line parallel to that which Generl Smith then held. Colonel Wngelin's brigade, of the First DIvision of the Fifteenth Corps, moved forward, and a new line was formed witht the Second Brigade of the Third Division, Seventeenth Corps, on the right, the Fourth Division of the Seventeenth Corps the center, and the Tird Brigade of the First Division of the Fifteenth Corps on the left. This was the line which I had indicaterd in my orders to General Blair. It extended to the crest of Bald Hill, which two regiments of the Seventeenth Corps, the Eleventh Iowa and Sixteenth Wisconsin, held behind an angle of the works, the enemy holding the same works a little below four of their colors planted within a stone's throw of the colors of the Eleventh Iowa. Upon this line the enemy made an attack in very heavy force. The battle was very severe. Colonel Wangelin moved his left around, advanced upon the enemy's flank, and gave the enemy a decided check. The battle at this point closed after dark, and our troops held the field. The enemy retired in the night, after removing the greter art of their wounded. Their dead were left on the field.

General Hood's tactics seem to have been to concentrate during the aftenoon and night of the 21st the corps of Hardee and Cheatham ner the position of the Army of the Tennessee, and at an early hour in the morning to withdraw from the works in its front to his main intrenchments, and, while the Army of the Tennessee, and at an early hour in the morning to withdraw from the works in its front to his main intrenchments, and, while the Army of the Tennessee was being advanced to his abandoned line, land before the works could be reversed, to attack our left and rear with one corps, and with the other one right from the front. That he did not succeed was due, in my judgement, to the lateness of the hour at which the attack was made, a lack of concert in his movements, the opportune presence of a portion of the Sixteenth Corps in the rear of the left


Page 27 Chapter L. REPORTS, ETC.- ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE.