CHAPTER XVII. ATLANTA WON. ON the 23d, General Garrard, with his division of cavalry, returned from the expedition sent to Covington to break up the Augusta railway, and reported that, with the loss of only two men, he had succeeded in accomplishing that object, in such a manner as to render the road useless to the enemy during the pending operations, having effectually destroyed the large bridges across the Ulcofauhachee and Yellow rivers, which are branches of the Ocmulgee. The Macon railway, running at first almost due south, was now the only line by which the Confederate army in Atlanta could receive the supplies requisite to maintain the defence of the place. The problem before Sherman was to reach that road. Schofield and Thomas had closed well up, holding the enemy behind his inner intrenchments, and Logan, with the Army of the Tennessee temporarily under his command, was ordered to prepare to vacate the position on the left of the line and move by the right to the opposite flank, below Proctor's Creek, while General Schofield should extend up to and cover the Augusta road. General Rousseau, who had arrived from his expedition to Opelika, bringing about two thousand good cavalry, of course fatigued with its long and rapid march, was ordered to relieve General Stoneman in the duty of guarding the river near Sandtown, below the mouth of Utoy Creek. Stoneman was then transferred to the extreme left of the line, and placed in command of his own division and Garrard's, numbering in all about five thousand effective troopers. The new cavalry brought by General Rousseau, and which was commanded by Colonel Harrison, of the Eighth Indiana Cavalry, was added to the command of Brigadier-General Edward M. McCook, making with it a division of about four thousand. The plan now was that while the Army of the Tennessee should move by the right on East Point to seize the Macon railway, Stoneman and McCook, with their well-appointed columns, were to march in concert, the former by the left around Atlanta to McDonough, and the latter by the right on Fayetteville, and, on the night of July 28th, to meet on the Macon railway, near Lovejoy's, and destroy the road in the most effectual manner. At the moment almost of starting, General Stoneman addressed a note to General Sherman, asking permission, after fulfilling his orders and breaking the railway, to proceed with his command proper to Macon and Andersonville, and release our prisoners of war confined at those points, thirty thousand in number, suffering the extremities of starvation, and rotting by hundreds from the loathsome diseases that follow in its train. "There was something captivating in the idea," says Sherman, and deeming the execution within the bounds of probable success, he consented that after the defeat of Wheeler's cavalry and breaking the road, General Stoneman might make the attempt with his cavalry proper, sending that of General Garrard back to the army. Both cavalry expeditions started at the time appointed. General McCook, in the execution of his part of the movement, went down the west bank of the Chattahoochee to near 'Rivertown, where he laid a pontoon bridge with which he was provided, crossed his command, and moved rapidly on Palmetto station, on the West Point railway, where he tore up a section of track, leaving a regiment to create a diversion towards Campbelltown, which was successfully accomplished. McCook then rapidly moved to Fayetteville, where he found a large number of wagons belonging to the rebel army in Atlanta, killed eight hundred mules, and captured two hundred and fifty prisoners. He then pushed for the Macon railway, reached it at Lovejoy's station at the time appointed, burned the depot, tore up a section of the road, and continued to work until forced to leave off to defend himself against an accumulating force of the enemy. He could hear nothing of General Stoneman, and, finding his progress east too strongly opposed, moved south and west, and reached Newman on the West Point road, where he encountered an infantry force coming from Mississippi to Atlanta, and which had been stopped by the break he had made at Palmetto. This force, with the pursuing cavalry, hemmed him in and forced him to fight. He was compelled to drop his prisoners and captures and cut his way out, losing some five hundred officers and men ; among them Colonel Harrison, Eighth Indiana Cavalry, a valuable officer, who was taken prisoner while fighting his men as skirmishers on foot. McCook succeeded, however, in cutting his way out, reached the Chattahoochee, crossed the river, and got to Marietta without further loss. Sherman says in his official report : "General McCook is entitled to much credit for thus saving his command, which was endangered by the failure of General Stoneman to reach Lovejoy's. But on the whole, the cavalry raid is not deemed a success, for the real purpose was to break the enemy's communications, which, though done, was on so limited a scale that I knew the damage would soon be repaired." Pursuant to the general plan, the Army of the Tennessee drew out of its lines on the left, near the Decatur road, during the night of July 26th, and on the 27th moved behind the rest of the army to Proctor's Creek, the extreme right beyond it, to prolong the line due south, facing east. On the same day, by appointment of the President, Major-General Oliver O. Howard assumed command of the Army of the Tennessee, relieving General Logan, who had exercised the command with great ability since the death of McPherson on the 22d, and who now returned to the immediate charge of his own Fifteenth Corps. Dodge got into line on the evening of the 27th, and Blair came into position on the right early on the morning of the 28th, his right reaching an old meeting-house, |