Climax at Cheatham Hill

On June 27, 1864, more than 8,000 Union infantrymen attacked an equal number of well-entrenched Confederates along this low-lying hill, where Confederate defenders defeated the main Union assault. A Tennessee veteran compared the assault to “ocean waves driven by a hurricane…sweeping on as if by a irresistible impulse.” The Confederates repulsed the first federal charge. While attempting to rally his eight Union regiments, 27 year old Brig. Gen. Charles G. Harker was shot off his white horse and fell mortally wounded nearby while yelling, “Come one, boys!” to his troops. Although one Federal brigade reached the Confederate lines ¼ mile to the right, Union troops soon retreated in disarray. About ¼ mile to the left, two other Union brigades charged toward an angle in the Confederate defenses, and this area of the Confederate earthworks was later named “The Dead Angle.” Confederates under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Franklin Cheatham, CSA, grimly defended the hill that would eventually bear his name.

Marietta, Georgia · United States