Alpharetta, Georgia

By the summer of 1864, almost everything the Confederacy shipped moved through one city. Four railroads crossed at Atlanta, feeding men, food, and munitions to Southern armies, and General William T. Sherman meant to take it. After his costly repulse at Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, 1864, Sherman went back to the move that had worked all spring: instead of charging the trenches head-on again, he slid his larger army around the Confederate flank, always reaching for the railroad in their rear. General Joseph E. Johnston kept falling back to escape the trap, from Kennesaw to a new line at Smyrna, then down behind the Chattahoochee River, but each time Sherman simply marched around him again. Jefferson Davis had seen enough retreating, and in mid-July he handed the army to the aggressive John Bell Hood, a man who had already lost the use of an arm at Gettysburg and a leg at Chickamauga. Hood attacked, hard, at Peachtree Creek and then east of the city, and was beaten both times. When the last railroad fell at Jonesboro on the final day of August, the city was doomed. Hood slipped out on September 1, and Atlanta surrendered the next day. Sherman wired Washington four words: 'Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.' The victory steadied a war-weary North and helped re-elect Lincoln that fall. (Source: American Battlefield Trust; Georgia Civil War Heritage Trails.)