On June 27, 1864, Union soldiers were ordered to line up and march into battle across these fields, where Confederate guns only yards away turned the ground into a death trap. Advancing straight into enemy fire with only scattered pine trees for cover, Union soldiers fell by the hundreds. Military historians regard General Sherman's order for a linear frontal assault here as one of the last of its kind, because by 1864 faster, better-aiming weapons had made this older style of fighting dangerously outdated. Even so, the Union's frontal assault achieved what Sherman had stubbornly pursued for months by pushing the Confederates back toward Atlanta. Private Jabez Cannon of the 27th Alabama Infantry recalled that the Union soldiers kept their lines as perfectly as if on drill while grape, canister, and minie balls mowed them down like grain before the sickle, yet they pressed forward until the front line was within a stone's throw of the breastworks.