The Extended Siege Lines

Some of the few Civil War entrenchments still visible in Atlanta were dug during the summer of 1864 by Confederate soldiers and African-American slaves as part of an approximate eight-mile fortified line running generally southwest from the main defensive earthworks around Atlanta to protect the railroads supplying the city from Macon and Montgomery. This section was later manned by Confederate Brigadier General Marcellus A. Stovall's brigade. After the Battle of Atlanta was fought east of downtown in late July, Union Major General William T. Sherman shifted part of his forces west of Atlanta to destroy those rail connections. At the Battle of Ezra Church on July 28, Confederates attacked three miles north but failed to stop that movement, and they then began digging an extended siege line to protect the railroads. Confederate Major General J. Patton Anderson wrote that his men began the digging on the night of July 28 and that entrenching continued vigorously day and night. African-American slaves contributed much to the construction, and General John B. Hood, commanding the Confederate army defending Atlanta, telegraphed across Georgia for more laborers, including a request to Governor Joseph E. Brown on August 7 for about two thousand Negroes to complete the works quickly. A Federal officer in the 23rd Corps observed bastioned forts and carefully constructed earthworks in front of his lines and judged that only a regular siege would overcome them. Sherman never fully tested the Confederate extended siege line with an all-out assault, but instead gradually extended his own siege line. In one extension, Union Major General John M. Schofield's 23rd Corps moved farther west and then marched south in an attempt to reach the railroads, leading to sharp skirmishes in early August and the principal Battle of Utoy Creek on August 6 when Schofield's corps encountered additional entrenched Confederates.

Atlanta, Georgia · United States