18641776 Club
Sherman's men charge up Kennesaw Mountain and are thrown back; 3,000 Union casualties in a single morning
Dense thickets, steep slopes, and enfilading fire hold the Confederate breastworks, and Sherman concedes the mountain is a vast fort he cannot take by storm.
By late June 1864, Sherman had been pushing the Confederate Army of Tennessee southward through Georgia for two months, threading around Johnston's entrenched lines rather than hitting them head-on. Logistics finally forced his hand. On June 27, 1864, Union troops charged up Kennesaw Mountain into withering fire from Confederate breastworks — dense thickets, steep slopes, and enfilading volleys Sherman himself called "a vast fort." The assault cost roughly 3,000 Union casualties against fewer than 1,000 Confederate. Within days, Sherman returned to flanking, Johnston retreated toward Atlanta, and the defeat changed nothing about where the campaign was headed…
