nearer the doomed city, and strengthening every position he gained. General Hood saw that if he allowed General Sherman to continue his movement to the south, he would soon seize the Macon road, and then Atlanta would be inevitably starved into surrender. He therefore determined, at every risk, to break Sherman's line. On the 28th, he massed his forces for the desperate endeavor. About noon of this day, an immense force was hurled against the Fifteenth Corps; but the charge was so sternly received, and such volleys of death poured into their ranks, that the officers could no longer control the men, and they broke and fled.

Again and again were the routed rebels rallied by their desperate leaders. Six times, between twelve at noon and four in the afternoon, they were driven towards the frail intrenchments behind which the patriots awaited them, and six times they were scattered with terrific slaughter. Hood was apparently utterly reckless of the lives of his soldiers. He fought with the brute energy of a madman. On that bloody day General Logan's Corps won great renown. Almost alone they met the assault of these vastly superior numbers, thus desperately hurled upon them. Our loss was less than six hundred; that of the enemy, General Sherman says, could not have been less than five thousand. But for the obstruction of dense and tangled forests, which prevented the opportune arrival of General Davis's Division, the repulse would have been a disastrous rout.

Day after day passed with incessant skirmishes, while our troops were continually pushing their way towards the Macon road. The rebel lines. extended fifteen miles. They were enabled to do this, as the State militia had been called out to aid in the defence of Atlanta. The spread of the forests and the irregularities of the ground so concealed and protected them, that their weak points could not be discovered. On the 10th of August, four four-and-a-half-inch rifled guns arrived from Chattanooga. They were immediately put to work, night and day, throwing shells into the city, causing frequent fires and great consternation. But Hood seemed determined to hold his forts, whatever might be the fate of the town.

The rebel cavalry leader Wheeler now started, with a force of between six and ten thousand men, and struck our lines of communication at Calhoun, near Dalton. He broke up the road for some distance, and captured about six hundred cattle. "I could not," says General Sherman, "have asked any thing better; for I had provided well against such a contingency, and this detachment left me superior to the enemy in cavalry." He immediately ordered General Kilpatrick, one of the boldest riders of the army, to improve the opportunity in making another attempt for the destruction of the railroad at Macon.

On the night of August 19th, five thousand horsemen leaped into their saddles, and passed swiftly away on their mission. The rebels anticipated the movement. They soon encountered a formidable force. General Kilpatrick, after a bloody battle, dispersed them. Pressing rapidly on at Jonesboro', he encountered another rebel force, which he also scattered. For five hours his men worked at Jonesboro', tearing up the railroad. They were interrupted by the arrival of a rebel brigade, greatly outnumbering them. His men, refusing battle against such odds, sprang upon

their horses, and turned in the direction of Lovejoy's Station. Here he again encountered the enemy in great force, and in such a position that he could not avoid a battle. The foe made a furious' assault upon his exhausted men, and soon surrounded them. They could only surrender, or desperately cut their way through the swarming lines by which they were enveloped. Visions of imprisonment, starvation, and every outrage which savage barbarity could inflict, nerved the hearts of his gallant band. In the scene which ensued, General Minty was conspicuous alike for good generalship and impetuous bravery. The men were formed in column for a charge. At the word of command, with a shout they dashed against the foe. Fences were leaped, ditches cleared, and with rattling sabres the impetuous squadron reached the barricade of rails where the foe awaited them. They leaped the barrier, and, with keen-edged swords, cut right and left, as they rode over the astounded rebels. The yells of the horsemen were mingled with the shrieks of the wounded and the groans of the dying. The sabre was the only weapon the patriots used. A hundred rebels were cut down, as the Spartan band hewed a path for their escape. Merited success rewarded the bold deed. The men, having broken through the hostile lines, were rallied together. After a ride of four days, during which they had but three meals of coffee and hard tack, and only one night's rest, they reached their lines at Atlanta in safety.

It was now the 25th of August. General Sherman had been before the city for nearly five weeks, and still the rebel flag floated defiantly from its ramparts. Yet every day some advance was made, and now the hour had come for decisive action. All the sick, all surplus wagons, and all encumbrances of every kind, were sent back to the Chattahoochie. General Williams, with his corps, was stationed there as a guard. The whole remaining army was then put in motion on the night of the 25th and 26th. General Schofield, by menaces, bombardments, and fierce assaults, held the rebels. at their guns. The siege of Atlanta was to be raised, and, instead of attacking its intrenchments, the whole strength of the army was to be hurled against its only remaining lines of communication. The minute and complicated details of the movement by which the army, abandoning its intrenchments, marched to Jonesboro' on the Macon road, can be made interesting only to military readers, who will carefully study the account, aided by diagrams. The well-planned and admirably executed enterprise would have done honor to Napoleon. It must ever give General Sherman rank among the ablest of military commanders. A force was first sent, who destroyed twelve miles of the West Point Railroad. The ties were burned, the rails heated and twisted, the cuts filled up "with trees, logs, rocks, and earth, intermingled with loaded shells, prepared as torpedoes, to explode in case of an attempt to clear them out." The three columns of the army moved on the morning of the 29th, under the commands of Generals. Thomas, Schofield, and Howard. The rebels, under Lee and Hardee, fell impetuously upon General Howard's column. After a very sternly contested battle of two hours' duration, the discomfited foe withdrew, with the loss of four hundred dead, and two thousand five hundred wounded. As soon as the troops struck the Macon Railroad, they were to commence vigorously

the work of destruction. The occupancy of these roads by the patriot army would send starvation into the streets of Atlanta, and seal its doom.

The rebels made one last desperate endeavor to prevent this movement, which, being successfully accomplished, would drive them fugitives from Atlanta. General Sherman had marched more than a hundred miles over the hills and through the beautiful valleys of Northern Georgia. He had, day after day, in uninterrupted victory, driven the whole rebel army before him. And now the capture of the "Gate City," with its arsenals, its magazines, its manufactories, its vast amount of military stores, would open to him an unobstructed path, through the very heart of the State, to the sea. He had fought his way through dense forests, and mountain gorges, and rocky crags. He was now to enter upon a level country, where no serious impediment could block his path. The rebels understood this perfectly, and stiffened their sinews for a last despairing effort.

When General Howard arrived within half a mile of Jonesboro', about noon of the 31st of July, the rebels plunged upon him, inspired by all the energies of fury and despair. General Logan received the first onset. He was just the man for the place and the hour. General Kilpatrick had gained an important eminence, from which his guns dealt destruction to the foe. In accumulated masses the surging rebels rolled up the hill. In a moment there was a portentous silence, until the serried host were within a few feet of the guns. Then came flash and roar, peal upon peal, volley after volley. The range was perfect. There was no need for deliberation or aim. The gunners worked with superhuman rapidity; shells, grape, canister, swept through the ranks of the foe like hail. Fifteen minutes passed. A puff of wind swept away the billowy smoke. The column had vanished. The ground was red with blood, and covered with the mangled, ghastly victims of war-some still in death, many writhing in mortal agonies.

It was with the rebels a case of life or death. Defeat now was remediless ruin. A second column was forced up the hill. A second burst of war's terrific tempest swept them to destruction. And thus the battle raged till night. Hardee, the rebel leader at that point, seemed utterly reckless of the lives of his men. The wretched victims of the rebellionthe "poor whites," who, by the most merciless conscription, had been forced into the war-were driven to certain slaughter with the most fanatic disregard of life. The Union troops were safe behind a parapet of logs. The rebel dead were piled up before this parapet, in some places four deep.

The next morning the battle was renewed. Nearly the whole of General Thomas's Division was now at hand, to aid the Army of the Tennessee. After standing on the defensive for a few hours and bloodily repelling several charges, the patriots, in their turn, commenced making assaults. General Davis, with Major Edith, made one of the most gallant of these charges. Rebel and patriot struggled hand to hand over the barricade. The starspangled banner and treason's flag intertwined their folds. The Eighth Illinois, under Colonel Anderson, performed illustrious deeds. After a fight of four hours the whole rebel line was carried, and their battery of twenty-four guns was captured. The vanquished foe retreated in confu

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sion. The gloom of the night, the dark, pathless forest, and the rugged nature of the ground prevented pursuit.

Scouts probably conveyed to Hood, in Atlanta, the disastrous intelligence. About two o'clock in the morning heavy explosions were heard in the city, about twenty miles distant. Hood was blowing up his magazines, in preparation for flight. The next morning, July 2d, General Slocum, who was watching the movements of the rebels at Atlanta, discovered their retreat. They were escaping by roads which led eastward towards Augusta. He immediately entered the city in triumph. The black population received him as their deliverer. No tongue can tell the enthusiasm of their greeting. There were a few Union inhabitants in the place, "faithful found among the faithless." For their persistent patriotism they had suffered untold outrages. With tears which could not be restrained, and prayers of thanksgiving inarticulate through emotion, they welcomed the return of the National flag.

General Sherman, with a brilliant cavalcade, soon entered the city. The Stars and Stripes were unfurled from every spire, and over every rampart. Along the wires the joyful telegram was flashed to Washington : "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

FROM ATLANTA TO SAVANNAH

(October, November, and December, 1864.)

EXPULSION OF THE INHABITANTS FROM ATLANTA.-CORRESPONDENCE WITH REBEL AUTHORITIES. ATTEMPT UPON OUR LINES OF COMMUNICATION.-ALLATOONA PASS.-RETREAT OF THE FOE.DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTA. THE LINE OF MARCH.-ANECDOTES AND INCIDENTS.-CAPTURE OF MILLEDGEVILLE.--MACON AND AUGUSTA THREATENED.-SERVICES OF GENERAL KIL PATRICK. THE CONTRABAND.-ARRIVAL AT SAVANNAH.-STORMING FORT MCALLISTER.THE TRIUMPHANT ISSUE.

As soon as General Sherman had entered Atlanta, his first care was for the weary veterans who had so patiently and heroically borne the toilsome march from Chattanooga. While General Kilpatrick, with his tireless riders, scoured the country to guard against surprise, our soldiers were encamped within and around the captured town. Rapidly a city rose, of fifty thousand inhabitants, in whose lowly dwellings, constructed mainly of the timber of deserted houses, the bravest and noblest of human hearts throbbed. General Sherman, conscious that his grand enterprise was not finished, only auspiciously commenced, was devoting his apparently exhaustless energies of mind and body in preparation for his onward march. It was necessary for the furtherance of his plans that Atlanta, for a time, should be converted into exclusively a military post, where there should be no spies to watch his movements, and no idle mouths to consume the food which must be brought over his long lines of transportation. He therefore issued an order that all non-combatants should leave the place, allowing those whose sympathies were with rebellion to seek the protection of the rebel army; while those whose hearts were patriotic were to be transferred to the Union lines. The torch was also applied to all those public buildings which, upon the evacuation of Atlanta by the patriot troops, the rebels could again occupy for their traitorous purposes.

A wail of anguish now rose from the unfortunate inhabitants. They had endured the peril and suffering of the siege. Now came expulsion from their homes. "War is nothing," flippantly exclaimed Toombs of Georgia. "War," exclaimed the people of Atlanta, in tones of heartpiercing anguish, "is the most dreadful of all earthly calamities." The rebel General Hood, assuming that it was General Sherman's duty to retain thousands in his camp who would act as spies, and eat the food of his soldiers, sent a remonstrance, in the name of God and humanity, against the expulsion of the inhabitants, as "an unprecedented and studied act of eruelty." General Sherman, in a reply as impetuous and resistless as the sweep of his columns, reminded Hood of the invariable course of the