284 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS September 1, captured Atlanta, one of the chief manufacturing and railroad centres of the south, and later in the autumn organized and executed a magnificent march to the seaboard, which proved that the military power of the Confederacy had been concentrated at a few points on the frontier, and that the interior was little more than an empty shell. He reached the sea-coast early in December, investing Savannah on the 10th, and capturing the city on the 21st. He then marched northward with the intention of assisting Gen. Grant in the closing scenes of the war. The army under Gen. George H. Thomas, who had been left in Tennessee to hold Hood in check while this movement was going on, after severely handling the Confederates in the preliminary battle of Franklin, November 30, in flicted upon General Hood a crushing and final de feat in the battle of Nashville, December 16, rout ing and driving him from the state. During the summer, while Grant was engaged in the desperate and indecisive series of battles that marked his southward progress in Virginia, and Sherman had not yet set out upon his march to the sea, one of the most ardent political canvasses the country had ever seen was in progress at the north. Mr. Lincoln, on June 8, had been unanimously renominated for the presidency by the Republican convention at Baltimore. The Democratic leaders had postponed their convention to a date unusually
