Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/375

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General Hardee and the Military Operations Around Atlanta.
363


by General McPherson to take position on my extreme left, made its appearance in rear of my position on a road known as the Clay road, and at right angles with the McDonough road, along which my corps was entrenched.

"Just as this division halted, about five hundred yards in rear of my line, heavy skirmishing commenced on the extreme left of my line.  .   .   .

"The division of the Sixteenth corps, to which I have alluded, in a very minutes became heavily engaged, and I became aware of the fact that my whole position had been turned, and that the enemy were pressing with full force upon the rear and flank of my position. General McPherson had been killed in attempting to reach my line, on a road over which we had ridden away from the line a short time before in full belief that the enemy were in retreat.

"I was only able to reach the line by making a detour to the right, and reached it at a point where it joined the Fifteenth corps, to find the whole of my line fighting from the reverse of my entrenchments.  .   .   .

"Late in the day I drew out my forces from the line which they had occupied, and took up a new position, extending from the hill where my right had formerly rested and extending towards the position in which I have described the Sixteenth corps to have occupied in my rear.

"We had barely time to throw up a very tight rifle-pit before the enemy attacked us in our new position, and when night closed in the fighting still continued, and the lines were so close that it was impossible for a person looking on to tell one line from the other, except from the direction of the fire from the muzzles of the guns.

"On the next morning at 10 o'clock we had a truce for burying the dead. As we had given up the greater part of the ground over which the battle had been fought the day before, most of our dead were within their lines. We had suffered very severely  .   .   . , but as we had fought behind entrenchments all the time, the Confederate loss had necessarily been much greater than ours.  .   .   .

"The position taken up accidentally by the Sixteenth corps prevented the full force of the blow from falling where it was intended to fall."

I have before me a map of "The Battle of Atlanta," as this action is called by Federal writers, prepared by General Hickenlooper (McPherson's Chief of Artillery) and attached to the proceedings of "The Army of the Tennessee" (Federal) for 1878. This map gives the position of their forces on the 22d of July, and among other things shows that the Fifteenth corps, fronting Atlanta, extended two division lengths south of the Decatur road, and the Seventeenth corps, on the left of the Fifteenth, extended south over and beyond the McDonough road. General McPherson was killed