Fire on the Mountain Kennesaw Mountain from a period photograph Rising up from the Georgia Piedmont to a height of 1800 feet are the twin peaks of Kennesaw Mountain.  The densely forested slopes covered in boulders create a crescent shaped ridge that was a natural defensive obstacle between Sherman and his object of Atlanta.  Occupying the ground between the two was the Army of Tennessee which had once again, put pick and shovel to great use digging 8 miles of reinforced tren

War of the pick and shovel Captured Confederate earthworks defending Atlanta. This photo taken in 1864 is an excellent detail of the sophisticated level of fortifications that faced General Sherman and his men as they drove into Northern Georgia. As Sherman’s Atlanta campaign lurched to life in May of 1864, Johnston’s task was to not only defend Atlanta, but all the countryside at his back along with all the supporting lines of transport and communication that would keep his

War of the Iron Horse Drawing of The General, a train engine in service on the Western & Atlantic Railroad made famous in the 1862 Great Locomotive Chase. For the men of the Army of Tennessee, several of whom hailed from the Columbia and Mount Pleasant area of Maury County in Middle Tennessee, 1864 had been a time of extraordinary endurance and sacrifice.  No less exposed to the rigors of war were their Northern opponents, although with the exception of the recent siege in C

War on a Grand Scale The Burnet House Hotel in Cincinnati. Grant and Sherman met here in March of 1864 to plan the campaign for Atlanta. What has become known most widely as the American Civil War, began as all other wars have in the age of linear tactics, with formal confrontations, conducted on a day or two of combat, in an open set-piece battle, with the clear victor remaining in possession of the field while the vanquished moved away in retreat to friendlier ground suffe

Fighting to remember The Tennessee Historical Commission marker sets alongside Trotwood Avenue, the historical Mount Pleasant Pike. I imagine most, if ever they consider the term, think of the Gales of November as that violent phenomenon of weather closely associated with the Great Lakes, ever immortalized by the late great Gordon Lightfoot in his song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitsgerald". Still, if a gale is a violent tempest and November holds the last light of autumn, it