You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome to the 530th episode of our Civil War podcast. I'm Rich.

And I'm Tracy. Hello, y'all. Thanks for tuning into the podcast.

As you guys will recall, with the last episode, we did a bit of a postmortem on the Battle of

Kennesaw Mountain. But with this show, we, like the armies, are leaving Kennesaw behind

and moving on to the next chapter in the story of the Atlanta campaign.

The Federal's frontal assaults at Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, 1864, in which the Yankees

suffered some 3,000 casualties, compared to just over 1,000 for the Confederates, were

William Tecumseh Sherman's biggest blunder of the campaign.

But his characteristic optimism resurfaced when he

received word on July 3rd that the rebels had abandoned their lines at Kennesaw.

As you guys know, the Confederate commander, Joe Johnston, had pulled the Army of Tennessee

out of its lines at Kennesaw Mountain because of the threat

posed by Sherman's flanking maneuver to the south, beyond the rebels' left flank.

After the failed frontal attacks at Kennesaw, Sherman had returned to his preferred strategy

of maneuver, and on July 3rd, he got the news he'd succeeded in turning

the Confederates out of their position at Kennesaw Mountain.

Sherman believed that Joe Johnston would now hustle his forces south in order to get across

the Chattahoochee River as quickly as possible, and this Sherman anticipated, would present the

Federals with the opportunity to strike the rebels, quote, in the confusion of crossing the river.

And so, on Sherman's orders, George Thomas, with the Army of the Cumberland, swept into

Marietta from the west and turned southward in pursuit of the Confederates.

Fourteenth Corps in the center followed the tracks of the Western and Atlantic Railroad,

...