Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield

In the spring of 1864, Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, recently promoted to military commander-in-chief, ordered a concerted offensive by all Union armies. In the west, he ordered Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, then at Chattanooga, Tennessee, to march into Georgia, crush the Confederate Army of Tennessee and take Atlanta, the railroad hub and manufacturing and storage center for the southeastern Confederacy.

Opposing Sherman and his 100,000 men was a Confederate army of 65,000, commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Throughout the month of May the two armies fought each other in engagements at Resaca, New Hope Church, Pickett's Mill, and Dallas. In each instance the Confederates were forced to retreat in the face of Sherman's relentless drive. Using his superior forces to maximum advantage, Sherman was repeatedly able to outflank Johnston.

By mid-June, the two armies faced each other at Kennesaw Mountain where the Confederates had erected a formidable line of entrenchments. Sherman extended his lines to the south to get around the Confederate flank, but Johnston countered by shifting 11,000 men under Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood to meet the threat. At Kolb's Farm on June 22, Hood struck the Federals in a fierce but futile attack. At the end of the day the Union army held the line, but their southward move had been temporarily halted.