Kennesaw Mountain

This week, I saw this picture.

How many of you guys know where Kennesaw Mountain is? It's not a mountain, just so you guys know.

Sorry that California comes out of me.

It's a knoll.

It's not even a hill, it's a knoll.

Yeah.

But it's a hill, it's a mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, north side of Atlanta.

It's a place I actually run frequently.

others insist that antietam was the key event and still others are equally sure that gettysburg and vicksburg marked the watershed of military activities regardless of when the tide turned there can be little doubt that the federal drive on atlanta launched in May 1864, was the beginning of the end for the Southern Confederacy.

And Sherman's combination assault flanking operation of June 27 at Kennesaw Mountain may very well be considered the decisive maneuver in the thrust toward Atlanta.

For when Joseph E. Johnston found it necessary to pull his forces back across the Chattahoochee, the fate of the city was sealed.

the atlanta campaign had an importance reaching beyond the immediate military and political consequences it was conducted in a manner that helped establish a new mode of warfare from beginning to end it was a railroad campaign in that a major transportation center was the prize for which the contestants vied and both sides used rail lines to marshal shift and sustain their forces yanks and rebs made some use of repeating rifles and confederate references to shooting down moving bushes indicate resort to camouflage by sherman's soldiers the union commander maintained a command post under signal tree at guinnesson mountain and directed the movement of his forces through a net of telegraph lines running out to subordinate headquarters men of both armies who early in the war had looked askance at the employment of pick and shovel now as a matter of course promptly scooped out protective ditches at each change of position the campaign was also tremendously important as a human endeavor and one of the most impressive features of richard mcmurray's account is the insight much of it gleaned from unpublished letters and diaries into the motivations experiences and reactions of the participants the officers and men who endured the heat and mud of what must have been one of the wettest seasons in the history of georgia and who lived in the shadow of death day after day for four months of as arduous campaigning as occurred during the whole conflict stand out as flesh and blood human beings this time of severe testing led to the undoing of some of the generals including joseph e johnston and john bell hood others notably william tecumseh sherman capitalized on the opportunities afforded by the campaign to prove their worth and carve for themselves lasting niches in the military hall of fame still others had their careers cut short by hostile bullets among them leonidas polk a leader whose civil war experience makes inescapable the conclusion that he should never have swapped his clerical robes for a general's stars in marked contrast stood james b mcpherson great both as a man and a combat commander whose premature passing elicited moving statements of grief from leaders on both sides human aspects of the campaign found most vivid and revealing expression in the letters of the lesser officers and the men whom they led robert m gill a mississippi lieutenant promoted from the ranks poured out in full and frequent letters to his wife his homesickness his hopes his fears and his spiritual concern in so doing he revealed his virtues and his frailties and his ups and downs of morale until a yankee fusillade snuffed out his life at jonesboro on june twenty two eighteen sixty four he wrote from near marietta i saw a canteen on which a heavy run was made during and after the charge i still like whiskey but do not want any when going into a charge for i am or at least was drunk enough yesterday without drinking a drop lieutenant gill tried very hard to live up to his wife's admonitions against the sins of the camp but he had great difficulty with profanity especially in the excitement of battle after the action at resaca he wrote apologetically the men did not move out to suit me and i forgot everything and began to curse a cowardly scamp who got behind six weeks later he reported another lapse and following the battle of atlanta he wrote i done some heavy swearing i'm told i try to do right but it seems impossible for me to keep from cursing when i get under fire i hope i will do better hereafter i do not wish to die with an oath on my lips gill's morale remained relatively good until after the fall of atlanta shortly after that event he wrote i think this cause a desperate one there is no hope of defeating lincoln i wish i could be sanguine of success john w hoggan a stalwart sergeant of johnston's army in poorly spelled words and awkwardly constructed paragraphs addressed to his wife demonstrated the character and strength of the lowly men who were the backbone of both armies From near Marietta on June 17, 1864, Hagen wrote, The Yankees charged us, and we finally drove them back.

For several days there was heavy skirmishing in which the Federals captured Pine Mountain and made gains at other points.

Bishop General Polk was killed on Pine Mountain by a Union artillery shell on june fourteenth when he foolishly exposed himself to enemy fire major general william w loring commanded polk's corps for several weeks until a permanent replacement lieutenant general alexander p stewart took command by the sixteenth schofield's advance had been so successful that the southerners were forced to give up lost mountain For several days, Johnston tried to hold a new line that ran west from Brush Mountain and then turned southward.

This line was infillated by the Federal artillery, however, and during the night of June 1819, the Confederates abandoned it and took up a new position, extending along the crest of Kennesaw Mountain and off to the south.

Hardy's Corps held the left of this line, Loring was in the center, and Hood's was on the right.

And my brother had stayed there and, and knew their kid, but it was a huge, huge, uh, acreage, nine-hole golf course on property, and he bought that and made it his own.

Then he had another big house in, like, uh, I wanna say in Marietta area that they say when you're up on Kennesaw Mountain, you can look and you can see just his house.

It just sticks out 'cause there's so much, you know, trees cut down, and there's this mansion.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and, and you can tell which suite we are.

Uh, suite seven, and we're, like, almost right across from Kennesaw Mountain.

Okay.

And it's in Marietta.

Casher's regiment, uh, participated in over 40, uh, engagements of battles in, in the war.

Um, they were part of the Army of the Tennessee, and that included the Siege of Vicksburg, uh, the Red River Campaign, battles in Kennesaw Mountain and Jonesboro, Georgia, very near where we are here in Atlanta, and also the Battle of Nashville.

And he survived.

In fact, he also, uh, there's a story that isn't very detailed, but he supposedly was captured at one point, and he more or less just was a badass and, like, knocked over his captor and ran on foot all the way back to his, his camp and escaped.

Cashier's regiment participated in over 40 engagements, battles in the war.

They were part of the Army of the Tennessee, and that included the Siege of Vicksburg, the Red River Campaign, battles in Kennesaw Mountain in Jonesboro, Georgia, very near where we are here in Atlanta.

and also the Battle of Nashville.

And he survived.

I'm Kelsey.

And I'm Megan, and this week we'll be investigating the Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield in Kennesaw, Georgia.

[suspenseful music] Happy fall, y'all.

[gasps] Yes.

Let's talk about, uh, why we came here, the Kennesaw Battlefield.

The history I'm gonna cover first is coming from nps.gov.

It says that Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park is a 2,965 acre national battlefield that preserves a Civil War battleground of the Atlanta campaign.

Opposing forces maneuvered and fought here from June 19th, 1864, until July 2nd, 1864, so three weeks.

... there's going to be conflict when there's two humans in something that goes on." And so to your point, like part of communication is I find that people that say they don't like con- conflict, again, it's back to their question before about, like, how do you teach this to younger pe- uh, to people that are younger? Well, you walk them through the temporal bit of it, and you go, "Well, look, let's see.

If there's a decision to be made, imagine that we're out hiking in the woods and we're trying to go to Kennesaw Mountain, which is 12 miles that way."

Mm-hmm.

"And I think we need to go this way, and you think we need to go that direction or this path or, or the, this, uh, path, split in the path.