The Atlanta Campaign: Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 ( David A. Powell-CWC)

by David A. Powell For scope, drama, and importance, the Atlanta Campaign was second only to Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia. Despite its criticality and massive array of primary source material, it has lingered in the shadows of other campaigns and has yet to receive the treatment it deserves. Powell’s The Atlanta Campaign, Volume 1: Dalton to Cassville, May 1–19, 1864, the first in a proposed five-volume treatment, ends that oversight. Once Grant decided to go east and lead the Federal armies against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, he chose William T. Sherman to do the same in Georgia against Joseph E. Johnston and his ill-starred Army of Tennessee. Sherman’s base was Chattanooga; Johnston’s was Atlanta. The grueling campaign opened on May 1, 1864. While Grant and Lee grappled with one another like wrestlers, Sherman and Johnston parried and feinted like fencers. Johnston eschewed the offensive while hoping to lure Sherman into headlong assaults against fo