BATTLE OF JONESBOROUGH BEGINS

Battle of Jonesborough begins

On August 31st, 1864, after months of maneuver and fighting around Atlanta, William Tecumseh Sherman turned his army’s weight against the rail junction at Jonesborough. The Macon and Western Railroad passing through that town was the last major line feeding Confederate forces in Atlanta with supplies and reinforcements. Union corps swung south and east, smashing into Confederate defenders along fields, woods, and muddy roads as they tried to cut the tracks. The fighting was fierce and costly on both sides, but the pressure on the railroad line could not be ignored. Within days the loss of Jonesborough’s rail connection forced Confederate General John Bell Hood to evacuate Atlanta, giving the Union a long-sought victory. The fall of the city in early September transformed Northern morale and helped secure Abraham Lincoln’s political position at a critical moment in the Civil War.