By Jack Krost

Oakhurst and the Battle for Atlanta

Second in a Series

Pictures from National Archives and Library of Congress. Position mouse of picture for caption.

As the Federal troops advanced on Atlanta, civilians gave them a wide berth. First Lieutenant Marcus Woodcock of the 9th Kentucky Infantry, noted in his memoirs, “The citizens were nearly all gone south, and on every side our eyes greeted abandoned homes and deserted fields of rich young corn and wheat, presenting a scene of desolation that was painful to witness.”

Woodcock was shot in the thigh and hospitalized during the approach to Atlanta, but he later rejoined his unit west of the city. Ironically, around the same time, a Confederate soldier from an opposing Kentucky unit, John Jackson of the 1st Kentucky “Orphan” Brigade, also was wounded and spent months recuperating after a minie ball, a bullet used in the muzzle-loading firearms of the Civil War, glanced off his head.

“I could not imagine, at first, what was the matter; the first thought that entered my mind was that my head was gone & I put my hand up to ascertain whether it was still on my shoulders,” he wrote. Both memoirs are available at the Decatur library.

Around this time, Jackson’s commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, had a problem. He ran afoul of an old nemesis, his boss, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, with whom he had had a strained relationship going all the way back to their days at West Point. It didn't help that Johnston was a friend of one of Davis' biggest critics in the Confederate Congress, Senator Louis Wigfall. So Davis, unhappy with the Confederate retreats, fired Johnston for performing as well as could be expected with inadequate resources. He replaced Johnston with a subordinate, his junior corps commander, General John B. Hood. The move “shocked and demoralized the army, bringing near mutiny among the troops,” according to “The Battle of Atlanta,” a book published by the Atlanta Cyclorama. And so, with a new man at the Confederate helm, the campaign for Atlanta ensued.

FEDERAL TROOPS MOVE ON OAKHURST

Atlanta was a relatively young city, having been founded only 17 years earlier, and had a population of 10,000. But it was an important railroad and industrial center for the Confederacy.( Reflecting its importance as a rail center, at one point the city was called Terminus.) The siege of Atlanta took place from July 22 to September 2. Some 12 miles of Confederate fortifications surrounded it. Sherman's forces were arrayed across roughly half the perimeter of the city. The fighting, of course, took place in the middle of summer. Many men, in the their hot, wool uniforms, suffered from heat prostration, when they didn't fall to bullets.
Hood's forces attacked the federal troops on July 22 in a desperate effort to save Atlanta. But after some early successes, they were defeated as Union troops regained their positions. Some 12,000 troops on both sides were killed, wounded or listed as missing after that bloody day.

The area now known as Oakhurst was involved in all this because it lay along the railroad line running east from Atlanta. This line followed the current freight line that runs along DeKalb and Howard Avenues, and it played a big role in the battle. The left wing of Sherman’s army, commanded by Major General James B. McPherson, was given the task of destroying the railroad. McPherson took half his forces and moved down from Roswell to strike at the railroad below Clarkston, near Stone Mountain. He sent the other half, the Army of the Ohio under General John Schofield, into Decatur to take the part of the railroad there. Schofield entered by way of what's now Clairmont Road and then dug in.

There’s some dispute about the Federal trenches, however, as a result of sketchy records. Caroline McKinney Clarke writes in her Decatur history that the Union trenches began along what’s now Adams Street, crossed the current Agnes Scott College and Candler Road and went down through woods to the present Columbia Drive. There, she says, they turned north, heading through the area around Glenwood Elementary School and on past the cemetery. But Dr. Albert Rauber, a local history buff who’s done extensive research from original documents, believes that many of the trenches were dug afterward, to seal the Union victory.

THE CONFEDERATE ATTACK
In any case, soon after the Union troops took up positions, the Confederates in General Joseph Wheeler's cavalry launched a surprise attack. They passed right by the site of the Scottish Rite building on their way to battle. Rauber says the first skirmishes took place on Ansley Street, and heavy fighting took place around Agnes Scott College. The Confederates dismounted, and there was hand-to-hand combat. There’s a small plaque about the fighting on a boulder on the campus, near McDonough Street and College Avenue.

The Confederates, however, came in for some surprises themselves. “They thought they only were going to encounter other cavalrymen, but they came across three Union infantry regiments and an artillery section,” Rauber says.

Despite this, Wheeler’s men drove the Union troops out of their positions and across town, past the old Decatur Cemetery. They captured about 250 prisoners and some supply wagons.

In another surprise, Wheeler’s men were supposed to be backed up by foot soldiers under General William Hardee. The rebel infantrymen had made a 15-mile march overnight south and east to Decatur, but they were not able to keep pace with Wheeler's mounted troops. So Wheeler was forced to give up his gains and go back to their aid.

“But Wheeler was lucky,” Rauber adds, “because if he had been allowed to go any farther, he would have run into the Army of the Ohio.”

The Confederate withdrawal, of course, meant the vital railroad was back in Federal hands, a railroad the Union troops proceeded to continue to destroy. A staple of that effort was the famous "Sherman's necktie" -- softening a railroad tie in a fire and twisting it, sometimes even wrapping it around a tree, so it could never be used again.

How did people in the Oakhurst area cope after the devastation of the battle for Atlanta? Read our next installment to find out about that, and also about a rather embarrassing experience that befell a Union soldier.