In recent decades, David A. Powell’s name has become a mainstay for military campaign studies of the Civil War in Georgia and Tennessee. Over the last decade, he has written several major books, including a trilogy on Chickamauga and lauded entries on both Tullahoma and Chattanooga.
Now, to accompany his recently published The Atlanta Campaign: Dalton to Cassville, May 1-19, 1864 (clocking in at more than 600 pages, it is the first in a projected five-volume set from publisher Savas Beatie), Powell has produced this slender title as an entry in the Casemate Illustrated Series.
The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Peach Tree Creek to the Fall of the City is visually appealing book that sacrifices nothing of the high-level strategic and tactical analysis demanded by seasoned aficionados. A helpful timeline sets the scene in the project’s opening pages. Then, Powell propels the reader through a day-to-day campaign and battle narrative.
Powell assumes that his intended audience possesses some prior knowledge of the war. Nonetheless, his crisp text never gets lost in the weeds, supplying adequate information to help the reader understand the armies’ various movements on the chessboard of war. Both the nature of the campaign and Powell’s writerly style afford ample opportunities to interpret command personalities and frictions; he covers the controversies that rankled both armies throughout the operation.
Powell offers blunt assessments of officers’ performances. William Tecumseh Sherman, he writes, “famously disliked battles, and for good reason: he wasn’t very good at fighting them.” Oliver Otis Howard “proved” too “cautious.” John Bell Hood’s “army could not execute the missions he wished it to, often because he asked the impossible.” Finally, Joseph E. Johnston “showed little sign of taking the initiative or even following the strategy he himself claimed was his plan all along” (122-123).
The book contains high-resolution images on nearly every page, including period and modern photographs, drawings, portraits, paintings, and visuals of battlefield landscapes—not to mention the always-essential campaign and battle maps (in this case by veteran battlefield cartographer David Friedrichs).
Throughout the narrative, which ranges chronologically from John Bell Hood’s assumption of command on July 18th through Henry Slocum’s entrance into the city of Atlanta on September 2, Powell supplies sidebars, many of which feature profiles of key personalities.
Powell includes a full Atlanta Campaign order of battle for the actions from Peach Tree Creek through Jonesboro, and he provides in-depth analysis of troop strengths and losses. Likewise, he aims to shatter some myths and misconceptions (including one reproduced on a “1950s-era historical marker,” which overestimated Confederate casualties at Ezra Church by at least 1,600 men [76], and another misnomer that, though “the campaign took on all the trappings of siege warfare,” the “quasi-siege of Atlanta…was never a real siege” [100]).
In this concise yet full modern account of one of the Civil War’s most consequential military campaigns, lay readers and enthusiasts alike will find much to admire. Indeed, The Atlanta Campaign, 1864: Peach Tree Creek to the Fall of the City will likely entice readers to turn to Powell’s ever-growing list of venerated masterworks.
Codie Eash serves as Director of Education and Interpretation at Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in American History at Gettysburg College through The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
