The battered armies of the Confederate States of America faced near-certain defeat by autumn 1864. General Robert E Lee, commanding the Army of Northern Virginia, was besieged in the Richmond-Petersburg sector by the Army of the Potomac under the watchful eye of General Ulysses S Grant, whom President Abraham Lincoln had made the commander of all Union armies in March 1864.
The Army of Tennessee under the command of General Joseph Johnston had been steadily retreating through northern Georgia since Major General William T Sherman began his offensive to capture Atlanta in March 1864. Sherman had a grand army composed of three formerly regional armies named after the Ohio, the Cumberland and the Tennessee rivers that totalled 112,000 troops.
Sherman had reached the Chattahoochee River just north of the city in early July Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who was disappointed with 57-year-old Johnston’s performance, sacked him on 17 July and replaced him with the much-younger General John Bell Hood.
Hood, a 33-year-old Kentuckian who had graduated in West Point’s Class of 1853, had a reputation as a fighter from his days commanding a brigade and later a division in the Army of Northern Virginia. While Hood’s fighting spirit was undiminished, his body had been ravaged by injuries suffered in battle.
Initially Hood had 60,000 troops with which to fight off Sherman’s legions. He attacked various parts of the
