Major-General William T. Sherman, commanding three Federal armies outside the vital city of Atlanta, began to move his forces from east and north of the city to west and south, around the strong fortifications manned by General John Bell Hood’s Confederate Army of Tennessee. This involved shifting the Federal Army of the Tennessee, commanded by Major-General Oliver O. Howard, from the left (east) flank of Sherman’s line to the right (west). Howard’s mission was to seize the intersection of two railroads (the Atlanta & West Point and the Macon & Western) at East Point.
Hood learned of Howard’s movement and developed a plan to ambush his army while it was in motion and isolated from the rest of Sherman’s Federals. Hood selected the crossroads at Ezra Church, west of Atlanta, to launch his surprise attack. Lieutenant-General Stephen D. Lee’s Confederate corps was posted behind breastworks near the crossroads, facing north.
Skirmishing began as Major-General John A. Logan’s Fifteenth Corps of Howard’s army approached the Confederate works. Sherman rode with Howard, who noted the enemy shells hitting the trees above and said, “General Hood will attack me here.” Sherman did not expect Hood to attack again after sustaining such heavy casualties in the battles the previous week, but Howard, who had known Hood since West Point, knew better. As his Federals approached the Ezra Church crossroads, they were ordered to quickly build makeshift defenses, just before Lee launched his attack.
The Confederates assailed what they thought to be Howard’s vulnerable right flank, only to find it strongly defended by Logan’s corps. Logan positioned his Federals at a right angle to the rest of Howard’s line to better defend against the assaults. The Federals repelled three charges, inflicting heavy casualties in the process.
Lieutenant-General Alexander P. Stewart’s Confederate corps then came up on Lee’s left and tried turning the Federal right to no avail. Both Stewart and Major-General William W. Loring, commanding a division in Stewart’s corps, were wounded. Howard feared that he would soon be outnumbered and called for reinforcements, but the Confederates disengaged before they arrived.
Had Sherman counterattacked the Confederate left, he could have destroyed the force and left Hood with just one last corps to defend Atlanta. However, Sherman did not recognize this opportunity due to an erroneous map. The engagement ended in resounding Federal victory nonetheless. Sherman wrote of Hood:
“His advance was magnificent, but founded on an error that cost him sadly; for our men coolly and deliberately cut down his men, and, spite of the efforts of the rebel officers, his ranks broke and fled. But they were rallied again and again, as often as six times at some points; and a few of the rebel officers and men reached our lines of rail-piles only to be killed or hauled over as prisoners.”
Sherman added:
“Our men were unusually encouraged by this day’s work, for they realized that we could compel Hood to come out from behind his fortified lines to attack us at a disadvantage. In conversation with me, the soldiers of the Fifteenth Corps, with whom I was on the most familiar terms, spoke of the affair of the 28th as the easiest thing in the world; that, in fact, it was a common slaughter of the enemy; they pointed out where the rebel lines had been, and how they themselves had fired deliberately, had shot down their antagonists, whose bodies still lay unburied, and marked plainly their lines of battle, which must have halted within easy musket-range of our men, who were partially protected by their improvised line of logs and fence-rails. All bore willing testimony to the courage and spirit of the foe, who, though repeatedly repulsed, came back with increased determination some six or more times.”
Prior to this battle, Federals in the Army of the Tennessee were not sure what to make of Howard as their new commander, as they had hoped that Logan, having temporarily taken command, would have stayed on as their new leader. But an officer noted that by the end of the battle, Howard had “won the respect and esteem of the officers and men of the Army of the Tennessee.” As a result of this battle (and the progress he had made since the campaign began), Sherman was authorized to promote eight colonels to brigadier-general.
Like the battles at Peachtree Creek and east of Atlanta, the Confederates sustained heavy losses that they could not replace. Hood lost as many as 5,000 men (and an estimated 18,000 since taking command), while Howard lost just 562. Hood’s other corps commander, Lieutenant-General William Hardee, later said, “No action of the campaign probably did so much to demoralize and dishearten the troops engaged in it.”
Another desperate Confederate assault on an isolated Federal army had failed, but Hood at least prevented Howard’s Federals from reaching the Atlanta & West Point Railroad for now. Having lost up to a third of his army, Hood could now only act on the defensive, and he ordered his troops to withdraw to the fortifications outside Atlanta. From these defenses, the Confederates temporarily stopped Sherman’s drive down the west side of the city.
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