'A GREAT DEAL OF HARD FIGHTING'
Union commander Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s decision in late August 1864 to abandon the Siege of Atlanta ultimately resulted in the fight at Jonesboro. While leaving a single corps to guard a bridgehead over the Chattahoochee River, Sherman ordered the bulk of his army—six corps, numbering roughly 60,000 men—to march west and south of Atlanta and cut the last rail lines into the city. On August 28, 1864, Union troops reached the Atlanta & West Point Railroad at two points, tearing up a stretch of the line the following day. Confederate Army of Tennessee commander Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood, having sent the majority of his cavalry on a raid under Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler, was unsure at this point of Sherman’s ultimate intentions.
The Macon & Western, the final railroad leading into Atlanta, became the next Union target, the Federals hoping to reach the line and wreck it by August 31. By the evening of August 30, Maj. Gen. O.O. Howard’s troops had crossed the Flint River and begun entrenching on a ridgeline only a half-mile east of the Macon & Western. When Hood learned that a Federal force had crossed the Flint, though he wasn’t sure what unit, he ordered Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee to move south with two corps and drive Howard back across the river.
Captain Phillip K. Smith’s regiment, the 24th & 25th Texas Cavalry (Dismounted), was part of Brig. Gen. Hiram B. Granbury’s Brigade, in Hardee’s Corps. After marching overnight, Granbury’s men reached the vicinity of Jonesboro on the morning of the 31st. Troops from Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee Corps, also part of Hardee’s command, arrived later, and it was roughly 3 p.m. before Hardee
