1 CLOSING THE VISE A brass-laden brigade band blared forth a spirited rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the blue-clad soldiers of the Army of the Tennessee marched westward toward Atlanta, the objective point of an arduous and angst-filled campaign. The army had begun that trek in Chattanooga seventy-five days and 100 miles earlier. Since then they had crossed three rivers; fought three battles and skirmishes nearly every day between them; all the while enduring hardships from both anticipated and unexpected sources. Six days earlier, 15 men in one division were killed or wounded by a single lightning strike during a violent storm blanketing the Chattahoochie River valley, a freakish bolt that did not discriminate between foot soldiers, artillery men, or mule drivers. Thousands more fell dead or wounded from Confederate lead, iron, and steel over the two months prior to that deadly storm. But on Wednesday morning, July 20, 1864, Atlanta and ultimate victory stood just 6 miles away from the surviving Union soldiers.1 The army was not surprised to be so close to its campaign destination. Named for a major river-as were most Union armies in the field-the Army of the Tennessee, in the haughty words of one of its members, expected "nothing but victory" at the completion of its campaign.

The soldier trumpeted that boast the previous autumn, a prediction borne out by ultimate success in the field. It was a statement that proved true in every major campaign in which the army participated before that: at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Corinth in 1862; and at Vicksburg and Chattanooga in 1863. This was the army previously commanded by the two most important generals in the Union: Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. With only a smattering of setbacks on battlefields and two and a half years of continuous victories in military campaigns-including the surrender of Confederate armies at Fort Donelson, Tennessee, and Vicksburg, Mississippi-the collective opinion of soldiers within the Army of the Tennessee was that the capture of Atlanta was inevitable. They expected nothing less, for they laid claim to be the most successful army on the continent.2 In Georgia the Army of the Tennessee was not operating alone. Since the fall of 1863 it moved and fought as a collective unit called the Military Division of the Mississippi.

The district was named for a major river as were the three armies under its umbrella-the Army of the Tennessee, the Army of the Cumberland, and the Army of the Ohio. Major General William T. Sherman led that army group, a command of seven infantry corps, nearly two corps of cavalry, and 250 cannons. It was a formidable Union force approaching 100,000 officers and men.3 Sherman had taken over many of the duties left by Ulysses S. Grant, who had departed during March of 1864 to head east as a lieutenant general in charge of all the Union armies in the field. Sherman's promotion carried him from the immediate command of the Army of the Tennessee, a position he had taken once Grant was chosen to head the armies in the Western theater in the fall of 1863, to overall command of the Military Division of the Mississippi. Consequently, throughout the Atlanta campaign of the spring and summer months of 1864, command of the Army of the Tennessee belonged to Sherman's replacement-Major General James Birdseye McPherson.

McPherson was the darling of all the Union armies in the field-at least in the eyes of the two men who mattered the most: Grant and Sherman. He came to Grant's army in the winter of 18611862 (several months before it was officially called the Army of the Tennessee) and served initially as his chief engineer. By the end of 1862 McPherson had risen from lieutenant colonel to major general and held the helm of Grant's XVII Corps. The corps was active and successful throughout the Vicksburg campaign and even though "Mac" was overlooked for promotion after Grant was elevated, he was awarded command of the Army of the Tennessee upon Sherman's ascension to Grant's position in March of 1864. The command of an army was the appropriate reward and a seemingly perfect fit for McPherson, the ultimate "A" student of the Army of the Tennessee. McPherson had graduated first in his West Point class of 1853, a class including the likes of Major General John M. Schofield (in charge of the Army of the Ohio), Major General Philip Sheridan (soon to be in charge of the Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley), and Confederate General John Bell Hood, who stood in his path to Atlanta. Schofield claimed that McPherson was not overly inventive, but "his was the most completely balanced mind and character with which I have ever been intimately acquainted.

…" The stress of war had begun to prematurely gray the beard of the thirty-five-year-old Ohioan, but McPherson was otherwise the model of health and fitness. McPherson fit his uniform well. He stood erect, close to the 6'' mark, fully bearded with a pleasant face. McPherson was attractive in intellect, personality, and appearance.4 He was also taken. McPherson was engaged to Emily Hoffman, a Baltimore belle whom he met at a party in San Francisco during the spring of 1859. Miss Hoffman was twenty-five years old when he met her, young and beautiful, blessed with dainty features and striking blue eyes. It appears that they fell in love at first sight, but the war postponed their wedding, which they had planned for 1861.

Just three days after he sailed away from her in August of that year, McPherson poured his heart and soul out to her. "You cannot imagine how much I miss you, though each hour is adding to the distance which separates us," he wrote en route to New York from San Francisco. "But I thank Heaven every day and hour of my life, dearest Emily, that there are invisible cords stronger and more enduring than any ever made by hands which bind me to you; cords which will withstand the fury of the tempest, the rude shock of battle, and the allurements of an active, exciting life, and cause me to return to you with a heart overflowing with love and devotion."5 Active campaigning kept the two lovers apart for nearly three years. McPherson confessed to Sherman his love for her while the generals wrapped up affairs in Vicksburg late in the winter of 1864. In an effort to help out his friend, Sherman arranged for McPherson "to steal a furlough" late in March of 1864. McPherson arranged to travel to Baltimore to the Hoffman home where he planned to marry Emily. That was a coup in itself because the Hoffman family-particularly Emily's mother-were passionate Southern sympathizers who swallowed their aversions to allow a Union army commander into their home to wed one of their own.

But telegrams sent by Sherman interrupted McPherson's plans while traveling north-one announcing his promotion to army command and the other ordering him to northern Alabama to help plan the Georgia campaign. When the frustrated and heartbroken McPherson arrived from the postponed wedding, Sherman empathized. "Mac," he told him, "it wrings my heart but you can't go now." Sherman followed up by personally writing to Emily Hoffman to smooth over the ruffled feathers and to assure her that McPherson was worth the wait.6 The problem for McPherson was that his performance at the initiation of the Atlanta campaign did not exemplify a confident commander. McPherson's letters home reveal his own self-doubts at the time, confessing to his mother, "I have a much greater responsibility than I desire."7 His overbearing sense of caution captured him at a moment when the Union needed a risk taker for a swift and victorious end to the campaign. That was exhibited at the opening of the campaign, just west of the town of Resaca on May 9.

Instructed to hustle his army through Snake Creek Gap and cut the rail line in the rear while Sherman's other two armies demonstrated in the gaps of Rocky Face Ridge against General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee (Confederates named their armies for regions, not rivers), McPherson marched the Army of the Tennessee (at that time consisting of two corps totaling 25,000 men) through the mountain pass and placed the men within striking distance of the Western & Atlantic Railroad and the town of Resaca, several miles south of Johnston's Confederates and guarded by only 4,000 troops. McPherson had at least 6,000 men deployed on the hills overlooking that poorly defended locale. If McPherson deployed and charged his men upon Resaca that day, brushing away the overmatched force there and taking control of the railroad and the town, the Southerners would have been trapped in a vise closing upon them from the north and south without a good avenue for escape. The campaign could have-and perhaps should have-ended with McPherson's offensive, but he vacillated and eventually gave in to his caution, pulling his men back several miles into the gap rather than charging them one mile upon the town. It was a very costly decision, for General Johnston was able to use the railroad and pull his Confederate army unimpeded down to Resaca where they fought three hard days to keep possession of the town from May 1315. He escaped southward to fight again and again, playing the game of maneuver with Sherman all the way to the outskirts of Atlanta. General Sherman realized McPherson's error even before the battle began.

"Well, Mac," said Sherman upon greeting McPherson three days after the latter's cautious decision and one day before the battle, "you.