On to Atlanta: With the 27th Indiana Infantry Through Georgia

In the spring of 1864, the Union armies stood ready to bring the war to a close, through the use of its overwhelming numerical superiority. General Ulysses S. Grant’s plan was to exert pressure on the Confederate armies simultaneously by coordinated campaigns in different parts of the country. Grant himself would accompany the Army of the Potomac as it engaged Robert E. Lee’s army in Virginia. The second major component of Grant’s overall plan involved William T. Sherman’s western army capturing the important supply and manufacturing center of Atlanta, Georgia. The focus of this book is on the latter campaign, and Union efforts to seize the Gate City of the South. Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston opposed Sherman’s advance; the two officers maneuvered their respective armies in a martial dance across northwestern Georgia, as each commander looked for a strategic advantage over the other. When Johnston was replaced in command by General John Bell Hood, Sherman was finally able to achieve an advantage when Hood abandoned the fortifications of Atlanta to fight Sherman’s numerically superior army in the open field. On to Atlanta: With the 27th Indiana Infantry Through Georgia tells the story of this important campaign through the first-hand reports of John Tomey, a member of the 27th Indiana. Tomey’s diary entries give the reader an opportunity to experience the horror of battle and the tedium of camp life through the eyes of a soldier who fought and lived in the ranks of a famed fighting regiment of the war. It gives the reader a chance to examine this critical campaign as the soldier saw it, with all the innocence of a sergeant in the ranks who was merely doing his duty and following orders.