The Battle of Jonesborough

Sherman has cut every line into the city but one. He swings his armies south to break the Macon & Western near Jonesborough, and Atlanta cannot be held without it.

Hood (South) sends Hardee (South) to drive the Federals off the railroad. The charge breaks against Howard’s (North) entrenchments at roughly ten-to-one cost, and the men will not charge again.

Stretched thin with half his force recalled, Hardee’s (South) salient gives way. The XIV Corps under Jefferson C. Davis (the Union general, not the Confederate president) swallows Govan’s (South) brigade whole.

With the last railroad cut, Hood (South) abandons the city in the night. Sherman’s four-word telegram detonates the case against the war and turns the 1864 election.

Jonesborough opened the road to the March to the Sea and the largest emancipation event in U.S. history, and to Ebenezer Creek, where the same Davis (North) left hundreds of the freed to drown.