CLIMAX ON CHEATHAM HILL
Interlocking Defenses
Artillery redoubts protected part of Major General Patrick R. Cleburne's Confederate division, where Southern trenches zigzagged to the left and right for miles, with cannon batteries placed at key positions. These defense lines could produce a devastating crossfire, more destructive than direct frontal fire.
The Texas brigade that built these earthworks exchanged skirmish fire with Federal troops for a week before the battle. One Texan wrote in his diary, "The bullets go zip zip over our breastworks day and night, making the men bow their heads." The Union attacked the center of the Confederate defenses a 1/2-mile to the left of here on Cheatham Hill, to try to split the Confderate army. The assault failed. (nps)
Camouflaged Cannons
Tennessee cannoneers positioned two 12-pounder howitzers within this redoubt on Cheatham Hill. Maj. Gen. Cheatham ordered these artillery crews to camouflage the earthen mounds with cut underbrush and to hold their fire unless attacked. For the next week, they kept under cover as Union bombardments tried to weaken the Confederate lines.
On the morning of June 27, 1864, a Union barrage proceeded close-packed Federal attackers. The Rebel gunners waited silently as blue-clad columns pushed throught the dense forest despite Conf. small-arms fire. Finally, at point-blank range, the cannon crews opened fire. Flying canister stunned the Fed. lines and according to one Conf. officer, "did great execution."
[Facts:] Confederate artillery crews normally consisted of a gunner in charge of seven cannoneers...Well-trained crews could reload and shoot four times a minute. (nps)
Colonel Dan
Col. Daniel McCook, Jr., a former law partner of Sherman's before the Civil War, saw the adverse odds facing his troops and recited an ancient Greek poem, Horatio's Speech, to his men before the attack:
Then out spoke brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late,
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
for the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods.
--Thomas Macaulay
Leading an 1800-man brigade up the slope to the Confederate earthworks on Cheatham Hill, "Colonel Dan", as his men called him, fell mortally wounded in front of the Conf. earthworks. Carried to the rear, he was returned home to Steubenville, Ohio, where he died on July 17, 1864, the day after being promoted to Brigadier General. (nps)
Confederate defenders here defeated the main Union assault...
On June 27, 1864, more than 8,000 Union infantrymen led by Brigadier General John C. Newton's division of the IV Corps and Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis's division of the XIV Corps assailed the Confederate positions against what had become Johnston's center. (Castel 28) The troops attacked an equal number of well-entrenched Confederates along this low-lying hill. One Tennessee veteran compared the assault to "ocean waves driven by a hurricane...sweeping on as if by irresistible impulse." (nps)
The Confederates repulsed the first Federal charges. While attempting to rally his eight Union regiments, 27-year-old Brig. Gen. Charles G. Harker was shot off his white horse and was mortally wounded (in previous battles, Harker had four horses killed under him but he escaped injury). Although one Federal brigade reached the Confederate lines, Union troops soon retreated in disarray. (nps)
About 1/4-mile to the left, two other Union brigades charged toward an angle in the Confederate defenses, what later became known as "The Dead Angle." (nps)
Newton's troops, despite a determined effort, failed even to reach the Rebel works, and although a few of Davis's men, thanks to favorable terrain, managed to scale the enemy ramparts on what henceforth would be known as Cheatham's Hill (named after the commander of the Confederate troops who held the hill, Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham), they either were killed or captured and their surviving comrades forced to take cover just below the crest of the hill. (Castel 28-29)
It was all over in less than an hour, during which the Federals suffered nearly 3,000 casualties whereas the Confederate loss came to no more than 700 men, most of them pickets overrun in the initial Union rush. Such were the results of Sherman doing what he had told Halleck he would not do--"run head on" against fortifications. (Castel 29)
The Assault Falters
Beaten Federals enrenched within 30 yards of the Conf. earthworks...
As the Union attack stalled, two surviving Fed. Colonels heavily discussed retreat. Realizing that withdrawing under heavy fire would invite more bloodshed, they decided to dig in along the brow of the hill not covered by fire from the Confederates' earthworks only 30 yards away.
While half of the Feds fired toward the earthworks, the rest furiously scooped shallow trenches with their bayonets and tin cups. After nightfall, the Feds brought up tools from the rear and built two lines of entrenchments.
For the next six days, both sides exchanged sniper fire, expecting an attack at any moment. Only a seven-hour truce to bury the dead on June 29 interrupted the tense stalemate.
As the standoff continued, the Feds started a tunnel, intending to blow up the Southern earthworks on July 4. But during the night of July 2, the Confederates quietly slipped away, forced to retreat as Sherman's Union army outflanked them again. A small stone arch, erected in 1914, marks the tunnel entrance. (nps)
Sources
National Park Service
Castel, Albert. "The Campaign for Atlanta," National Park Civil War Series,' published by Eastern National Park & Monument Association. 1996.
