The front desk clerk at the Burnet House in Cincinnati, Ohio, must have done a double take when he looked up to see the two most famous generals in the Union Army standing before him one day in March 1864. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, newly installed as commander of all Northern forces in the field, and Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, his most trusted subordinate, needed a room for the night-forthwith, they got one.

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With sentries installed at the door to prevent unwanted intrusions, the two old friends, Midwesterners both, spread their battle maps across the room and sketched out the plan that would, within a year, bring the Confederate Army to the brink of doom. Twenty-five years later, Sherman revisited the Burnet House with a friend and pointed out the room he and Grant had shared. ‘Yonder began the campaign’ ‘ he said. ‘He was to go for Lee and I was to go for Joe Johnston. That was his plan….It was the beginning of the end.’

Grant’s plan, like most of his wartime formulations, had the surprisingly uncommon virtue of simplicity. While he directed the Army of the Potomac in Virginia, Sherman was to advance on the Confederate General Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, which was wintering at Dalton, Ga., 30 miles south of Chattanooga. The Rebel army’s defeat at Chattanooga the previous November had won Grant his third general’s star and given him the power to direct the Northern war effort as he saw fit.

Grant’s final written instructions to Sherman were flatteringly vague; he left the details to his friend’s discretion. Sherman was ‘to move against Johnston’s army, to break it up, and go into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as he could, inflicting all the damage he could upon their war resources.’ Sherman, typically, was more direct: ‘I am to know Jos. Johnston, and to do as much damage to the resources of the enemy as possible. ‘

In early May, Sherman began his assault on Johnston’s army and his ultimate objective, Atlanta, Ga. The Union drive would be made by three separate armies. In the center, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas and his solid Army of the Cumberland stood 60,000 strong. Sherman’s favorite soldier, his young friend Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson, with his Army of the Tennessee, was moving out of northern Alabama with 24,000 men on the Federal right. The 14,000-man Army of the Ohio, under Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, came swinging down from the east Tennessee mountains.

At Dalton, Johnston faced Sherman’s weathered and battlescarred veterans with 45,000 of his own. Johnston’s position was anchored by Rocky Face Ridge, which crested 800 feet above the valley floor. Behind it, the ridgeline coursed for 20 miles through boulder-strewn, heavily wooded countryside. Schooled well in the digging of entrenchments, the Southerners could throw up adequate breastworks in an hour. Given the weeks they had at their disposal before Sherman’s advance, Johnston’s Rebels worked martial wonders with their spades.

While Johnston was entrenching, Sherman was calculating his needs for the coming campaign. An erratic strategist, Sherman was nevertheless a master of military detail. The necessity of maintaining his army by rail dictated the tactics of the coming campaign. The rickety north Georgia rail system would not only become the Union army’s lifeline, but also the target of all its moves.

On May 7, Thomas attacked Rebel cavalry pickets at Tunnel Hill, two miles northwest of Rocky Face Ridge. After resisting stoutly for a time, the pickets fell back to their main line on Rocky Face. Schofield moved up and extended the pressure through Crow Valley until the entire Federal left was involved. Union Maj. Gen. David S. Stanley, whose men had spearheaded the assault at Tunnel Hill, stood atop a rock and shouted out, ‘The ball is open!’ It would be a ball danced to the rattle of muskets and the slam of artillery.

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