(From April to August, 1864.)

COMPOSITION OF THE ARMY.-BATTLE OF ROCKY FACE.-CAPTURE OF DALTON.-BUZZARD GAP.BATTLE OF RESACA.-FLIGHT OF THE REBELS.-INDIANA TROOPS.-CONFLICT AT ADAIRSVILLE.— PURSUIT TO CASSVILLE.-RURAL SCENES.-CONFLICT AT MARIETTA.— -ANECDOTE.-TOILS OF THE CAMPAIGN.-HEROIC EXERTIONS OF THE PATRIOTS.-DEATH OF BISHOP POLK.-KENESAW.-PINE MOUNTAIN.-ADVANCE TO ATLANTA.-COMMENCEMENT OF THE SIEGE.

EARLY in April, 1864, General Sherman received orders from his commander-in-chief, General Grant, to make immediate preparations for a campaign through Georgia. The genius of General Grant had planned, even to its minute details, this bold and majestic movement, which was to be the beginning of the end of the desolating war then raging from Virginia to the Gulf. With characteristic energy, General Sherman immediately commenced collecting a large army. He was about to penetrate the heart of a hostile country, well defended by resolute men. He was exactly the man for the enterprise. Rapidly his soldiers were gathered from near and from far.

All through Kentucky and Tennessee, the veterans who had fought with Buell and Rosecrans were scattered in small detachments, protecting railroads and garrisoning forts. These were summoned to the front, and newly-conscripted men took their places. Horses were collected, men recruited, organized, armed, drilled. General Sherman was here, there, and everywhere. By the 1st of May a grand army was collected, numbering ninety-eight thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven men and two hundred and fifty-four guns.

These troops were marshalled in three divisions. The Army of the Cumberland, under Major-General Thomas, numbered a little over sixty thousand men, nearly four thousand of whom were cavalry. Their artillery, of over two thousand, drew one hundred and thirty guns.

The Army of the Tennessee was commanded by Major-General McPherson. It numbered over twenty-four thousand, with six hundred and twenty-four cavalry, and ninety-six guns.

The Army of the Ohio, with nearly fourteen thousand men, seventeen thousand cavalry, and twenty-eight guns, was led by Major-General Schofield.

On the 6th of May, these armies were assembled at their appointed places of rendezvous-General Thomas at Ringgold, General McPherson at Gordon's Mill on the Chickamauga, and General Schofield at Red Clay, on the Georgia line, a little north of Dalton. The rebel army of about

sixty thousand men, including a very superior force of ten thousand cavalry, was also in three divisions, under Hardee, Hood, and Polk; the whole force being under the supreme command of General Joe Johnston. They were strongly intrenched in and around Dalton.

The first object of the campaign was to secure Atlanta, one of the most important towns in the State of Georgia. Here railroads from every direction centred. Immense manufactories of the matériel of war were also established here. It was the grand dépôt for grain, powder, and ammunition. It was more important to the Rebel Government that they should hold this place than any other town in Georgia. Most of the cloth manufactured for the rebel army was woven here. The vital importance of the post caused it to be strongly fortified and garrisoned. The path to Atlanta lay through Dalton. The country, full of mountains, ravines, forests, and interlacing rivers, was peculiarly adapted for defensive warfare. The tough vines of the muscadine and wild grape, festooned from tree to tree, and swinging low through the underbrush, often rendered the woods quite impenetrable. The spring was already far advanced, the buds of tree and shrub having already expanded into luxuriant leaf and flower.

The bloom of the laurel and the yellow jasmine filled the ravines, and the hill-sides were embroidered with a gorgeous display of the wild honeysuckle and woodbine; while the violet, the myrtle, and the Indian creeper looked up lovingly from the green grass, forming a carpet too beautiful to be soiled and rent beneath the tramp of hostile armies.

The weather was delightful. The troops, in good health and with buoyant spirits, under their gallant leaders, were eager for the march into the heart of the sunny South. They had full confidence in their dauntless chieftain, and were aware that the eyes, not only of their countrymen, but of nearly the whole civilized world, were fixed upon them. It was on the 6th of May that the first move in this sublime campaign was commenced. Senator Toombs, of Georgia, as he tried to provoke this conflict, said contemptuously, "War is nothing. There is never more than one-fifth of the population under arms." Georgia was now to learn that war is something!

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The roads from Ringgold and Red Clay meet at Dalton, a strongly fortified town. The rebels had prepared to defend this place to the utmost. It was, however, essential to General Thomas's plans that it should be taken. The town is on the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, one hundred miles northwest of Atlanta, and thirty-eight miles from Chattanooga. is rather a pretty Southern village, nestling among the hills which surround it on every side. Rebel cannon bristled upon every eminence; and batteries with their strong redoubts were thickly planted along the sides of the mountains.

Directly in front of Dalton, and in the line of General Sherman's march, there was a ridge of hills, called Rocky Face. This range was about five hundred feet high, very rugged, with boulders, ravines, and ledges; the summit presenting but a line of broken rocks and abrupt inequalities, scarcely in any place wider than a wagon-road, and so rough and gullied, that no one could traverse it on horseback. Upon the highest point of this ridge the rebels were intrenched in a castle of Nature's con

struction, while, from the rocky battlements reared all along its sides by the same architect, shot and shell could sweep the road by which alone any army could advance.

A little to the west of Rocky Face is Tunnel Hill, another of Nature's fortresses, like Gibraltar, and which the rebels had skilfully armed with bristling artillery from base to summit. Between these two hills there is a gap, along which the railroad and the common road run to Dalton. This pass, not very euphoniously called "Buzzard Roost Gap," was very narrow, and well defended by abatis along its front, while from the hills on each side, the cannon of the rebels were arranged to sweep the gorge with a storm of destruction which no mortal man could face. Thus the approach to Dalton by the direct route from Ringgold on the west seemed impossible.

The northern route by which the town was approached from Red Clay was equally well fortified. A little creek ran near the town. On both sides of this the rebels had thrown up redoubts and earthworks. These posts were thoroughly manned, and well supplied with guns and ammunition. On the morning of May 7th the three divisions of the army were in active motion. General McPherson, who was at Gordon's Mill on our extreme right, and a little south by west of Dalton, was pushing vigorously down into the very heart of the hostile territory, to strike the railroad at Resaca. The task assigned to him was to break up the railroad, and then, marching directly north along its track, to intrench himself upon the southern banks of Snake River, which the railroad crossed, there to await the arrival of the rebels, as they should be driven before the forces of Generals Thomas and Schofield, and cut off their retreat.

At the same time, General Thomas moved from Ringgold, driving the enemy's cavalry before him into the throat of Buzzard Roost Gap; General Schofield pushed down upon Dalton, from his position at Red Clay Hill in the north. The movements of these two divisions, whose forces were led by such intrepid and earnest generals as Howard, Hooker, and Geary, so harassed the enemy with bombardments, and musketry-fire, and charges, as to alarm and bewilder them, and so fully to engross their attention as to enable General McPherson to approach within a mile of Resaca almost unopposed.

The fighting here, through the gorge of Buzzard Gap and up the sides of Rocky Face, merits even minute description. On the south side of a small piece of level ground, through which the road ran, there were large corn and wheat fields, crossed by two or three ravines. These fields were skirted by low bushes. The north side was bounded by a ridge forty feet high, with a ditch lining its base. On the west there was a steep, grassy bluff, crowned with earthworks. In whatever commanding position a cannon could be placed, the rebels planted one. Along the ridge of Rocky Face and on its projecting spurs palisades were planted, and trees felled and arranged into sharp-pointed abatis. Over this plain, towards these frowning batteries, the patriot skirmishers advanced, followed at the double-quick by regiments from Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Kentucky. The rebel guns opened fiercely upon them. The Eightieth Indiana were then under fire for the first time, but, like all the Indiana troops, they con

ducted like heroes. Steadily, by stern fighting, the patriot line pushed the rebels back towards their intrenchments. It was slow and deathly work, this advance exposed to the fire of so many batteries. A charge was ordered. With a cheer the troops rushed up the grassy bluff, and the rebel line vanished before their gleaming bayonets. The foe, however, soon rallied and formed another line. The patriot officers were in the thickest of the fight, leading wherever they wished their men to go. Nearly every regimental commander was wounded. The position, however, which they had attained was found untenable, and they were compelled to retire to their former position at the mouth of the gorge.

The Sixtieth Illinois Volunteers had pushed up one slope of Rocky Face, till they found themselves by some mishap in a gully with rebel riflemen over their heads, in front and on both sides of the almost perpendicular cliff. The rebels now began to hurl down crashing stones upon their assailants, who kept so close under the shelter of the cliffs that musketry or cannon fire could scarcely harm them. A corporal of the Sixtieth hallooed to the rebels that if they would stop firing stones, he would read to them President Lincoln's amnesty proclamation. With shouts of laughter they agreed to comply. There, in that wild ravine, where the tempest of war had for a moment lulled, the humane proclamation of the kind-hearted President was read in tones loud and clear. The rebels listened attentively, with occasional interruptions of applause or derisive laughter. When the corporal had finished he cried out, "Now at your rocks again, if that does not suit you." And at it the implacable rebels went, with shouts and yells.

While the fight was going on at the base of the mountain, General Hooker with his brigade climbed to the top of the ridge, at a distance out of range of the enemy's guns. His men dragged the guns by hand up the rugged road. The top of the ridge was so narrow that but four men could walk abreast. From this eminence an assault was ordered upon the position of the foe. The conflict which then ensued upon the summit of Rocky Face was indeed an Alpine battle. Blue coats and gray coats met hand to hand, and fought among the stony gorges; cannon boomed, shells screamed, and, as if man had not made the scene grandly terrible enough, a thunder-tempest rose with flash and reverberating peal. The black cloud settled upon the heads of the troops, and, in the midst of the blended gleam and roar of the elemental war and man's fierce fight, the patriot troops, led by "fighting Joe," pushed forward their banner of victory.

It was thus that Johnston and his rebel bands were kept occupied, while General McPherson was on his rapid march to take possession of the rail'road at Resaca. As we have said, he reached within a mile of the town. almost unopposed. But he found Resaca too strongly fortified to be carried by assault with the force then at his disposal. He therefore fell back to a small defensive position near Snake Creek Gap. This was a disappointment. General Hooker's Corps, with their fresh laurels, followed by other large bodies of troops under General Palmer, were sent to aid in the attack upon Resaca. General Howard was left with the Fourth Corps to threaten Dalton upon its western front. By the 11th of May nearly the whole army, except General Howard's Corps, were rendezvoused at Snake Creek

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Gap for the all-important attack upon Resaca. On the 12th they moved to the assault. The cavalry of the chivalric General Kilpatrick led, followed by General McPherson and his army of infantry and artillery. The forces of the enemy sent out to meet them, were speedily repulsed and driven back to their intrenchments. Unfortunately, General Kilpatrick was wounded, and the command of his brigade passed into the able hands of Colonel Murray. The cavalry, when within about two miles of Resaca, wheeled to the right and left, that the infantry and artillery might march between them and front the foe.

The rebel General Johnston found the force menacing Resaca too strong for him to resist with the force he had there. He was, therefore, compelled to evacuate Dalton, and rush down with all his troops to prevent the patriot army from getting a position in his rear, which would effectually cut off all possibility of retreat, and which would probably compel the surrender of his whole command. Thus Dalton, fortified by all the resources of nature and of art, fell into the hands of General Sherman, with comparatively little shedding of blood. It was a beautiful strategic operation, evincing the highest military qualities. Such is the difference between mere blind bull-dog fighting and accomplished generalship.

As Johnston in his hurried retreat rushed from Dalton towards Resaca, General Howard vigorously pursued him, pelting from every eminence his vanishing columns with shot and shell. Nothing but the wonderful facilities of the broken, mountainous country for defensive warfare prevented the destruction or capture of the whole rebel army. Thus by the 14th of May we had driven the foe a distance of eighteen miles, and again they were intrenched in their "last ditch" at Resaca. They were strongly posted behind a creek, in numerous formidable forts and upon inaccessible hills. Here, again, a direct attack would insure fearful slaughter; but General Sherman was in a condition now of prosecuting a series of flank movements which the foe could by no possibility prevent.

A few miles south of Resaca was the town of Calhoun, upon the railroad, and about twenty miles below was the town of Kingston, where the railroad from Rome forms a junction with the East Tennessee road. The same manœuvre was employed as before. When General Sherman vigorously engaged the attention of the enemy at Resaca, raining down upon them a smothering storm of war's missiles, General Sweeney was sent with a division of the Sixteenth Corps to threaten Calhoun, while at the same time a squadron of cavalry was sent under General Gerrard to break the railroad between Calhoun and Kingston. McPherson, Thomas, Hooker hurled war's thunderbolts with such terrible energy into the midst of the ranks of the intrenched rebels, and with such deafening clamor, that the foe had but little disposition to think of any thing but their own immediate safety.

The Coosawattie River makes a sharp bend at Resaca, and the little town lies just in the curve. On both banks of the river the rebels had strong defences, and the hills on each side of the town bristled with cannon from base to summit. The whole rebel army, having rushed down from Dalton, now crowded these lines. A small stream, swoller by recent