Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/270

256 man. In these balances the Confederacy was weighed in July, 1864. There was yet a possibility of acquiring independence, and because of that possibility the administration at Richmond, the armies in the field, and the people in their homes resolved in the summer of 1864 on the continuance of the contest.

Hood, succeeding Johnston, struck one of Sherman's corps north of Atlanta on the 2oth, and the entire army on the 22d, and still again on the z8th of July. Afterward Sherman's movements necessitated the battles of Jonesboro and Lovejoy's Station, in which the Federals gained advantages that caused the evacuation of Atlanta and opened it for occupation by the Federal army. General Hood, advising with the Richmond administration, planned a bold movement northward to destroy Sherman's communications and to draw him out of Georgia into the former battle grounds of Tennessee. The movement temporarily drew a considerable part of the Federal army into northwest Georgia, and was attended with several small Confederate victories; but in September, Sherman, returning to Atlanta, wantonly burned the city as thoroughly as he could, and leaving it smoking behind him, marched southward, with little opposition, using the destructive agencies of fire and pillage along his broad route to Savannah.

While Sherman and Hood were contesting the ground in Georgia in July and September, E. Kirby Smith and Gen. Dick Taylor were holding the enemy in check in the Trans-Mississippi department; Lieut.-Gen. S. D. Lee, commanding the department of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana, had there vigorously engaged the Federal forces until he was transferred to command with Hood at Atlanta, while a great number of skirmishes and small engagements took place in Tennessee and Kentucky. General Forrest, under orders from Gen. S. D.