On 13 May 1864 William T. Sherman's Union armies came up against Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate Army of Tennessee at Resaca in north Georgia, opening the first major battle of the Atlanta Campaign. Most Union attacks over the next two days failed, but Union troops crossed the Oostanaula below the town, and Johnston withdrew on the night of 15 May.
Through Snake Creek Gap
In May 1864 Sherman marched with three Union armies from Tennessee into Georgia against Johnston's Army of Tennessee, which lay at Dalton. Sherman's report sets out their effective strength on 1 May, "about as follows": a grand aggregate of 98,797 troops and 254 guns, in the Army of the Cumberland under George H. Thomas, the Army of the Tennessee under James B. McPherson and the Army of the Ohio under John M. Schofield, and the American Battlefield Trust gives 98,787 Union troops engaged at Resaca. Johnston reported the effective artillery and infantry of his army, after the arrival of Mercer's brigade, at 40,900, and the effective cavalry at about 4,000; the Trust puts the Confederates engaged at Resaca at 60,000. Sherman later wrote that his army "about doubled his in size" and Johnston wrote of "the great numerical superiority of almost three to one".1
Rocky Face Ridge covered Dalton, and Sherman's main thrust was not to be made there: while his other armies pressed the ridge, McPherson was to go south through Snake Creek Gap and strike the railroad at Resaca, in Johnston's rear. McPherson came through the gap and close to Resaca, but found the place too strong and fell back toward the gap, as Sherman writes and the Trust also records.2
"I regret beyond measure"
Sherman wrote to McPherson from Buzzard Roost at 10.30 a.m. on 10 May: "I regret beyond measure you did not break the railroad, however little, and close to Resaca, but I suppose it was impossible". In his memoirs he judged that "at the critical moment McPherson seems to have been a little timid", though "he was perfectly justified by his orders".3
Sherman then sent most of his army through the gap after McPherson. Johnston pulled out of Dalton in the night of 12 to 13 May. Thomas reported on the 13th that the enemy had evacuated Dalton "at 9 p. m. yesterday"; Johnston's report says his artillery and infantry marched for Resaca at night on the 12th, and his Narrative has them withdrawn at about 1 a.m. on the 13th.4
13 May: face to face at Resaca
On the 13th Johnston's army formed its line from the Oostanaula to the Conasauga, and the Union troops probed it; Johnston reported "brisk skirmishing" in the afternoon. Sherman reported in June that "when on the 13th May I reached Resaca the enemy had evacuated Dalton and occupied Resaca in force".5
Whether the battle began that day depends on the source. The American Battlefield Trust dates it 13 to 15 May, and the Park Service's battle database says that on the 13th Union troops "tested the Rebel lines to pinpoint their whereabouts", with full-scale fighting the next day. The Official Records' summary of principal events lists a "Demonstration against Resaca" from 8 to 13 May and the "Battle of Resaca" on 14 and 15 May. A Park Service Civil War timeline gives 14 to 15 May, and a page of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park gives 14 May.6
Camp Creek, 14 May
On the 14th, Sherman reported, he found the Confederates in a strong position, and the Trust notes that Camp Creek ran across most of their front. The Trust describes Union attacks across the creek, "with quicksand in places and steep muddy banks", all thrown back; Johnston reported several attacks that day, the most vigorous on Hindman's division, and wrote that all were repulsed.7
Sherman reported that on the 14th he ordered a pontoon bridge laid at Lay's Ferry and Thomas W. Sweeny's division of the XVI Corps to cross and threaten Calhoun, and the Trust's account of 14 May also has Sweeny's division crossing at Lay's Ferry. The Park Service database names the crossing at Lay's Ferry as the move Johnston could not halt.8
The four guns
On the 15th, according to the Trust, John B. Hood instructed Carter L. Stevenson to bring a battery to bear on Union artillery. Stevenson reported that Captain Max Van Den Corput's battery went in "at the only available point, about eighty yards in front of General Brown's line"; the Trust puts the four guns 20 yards in front of the infantry. Union troops attacked at once and, in Stevenson's account, reached a ravine in front of the guns, so that, in his words, "while the enemy were entirely unable to remove it, we were equally so". The Trust writes that neither side could then take the guns, and that after dark troops sent by John Geary dug through the earthwork and dragged the four guns away with ropes.9
Sherman reported that Hooker "captured a 4-gun battery and many prisoners". Johnston later wrote that his army lost no material in the campaign "but the four field-pieces exposed and abandoned at Resaca by General Hood". That night Johnston's army crossed the Oostanaula and burned the bridges behind it.10
Counting the cost
Sherman wrote that his army's loss in the campaign, up to its entry into Resaca the next morning, was "about six hundred dead and thirty-three hundred and seventy-five wounded". A summary by A. J. Foard, medical director of the Army of Tennessee, printed by Johnston, gives 444 killed and 2,828 wounded, 3,272 in all, for the Armies of Tennessee and Mississippi from Dalton to the Etowah River, 7 to 20 May. For the battle, the Trust and the Park Service database give estimated casualties of 2,747 Union and 2,800 Confederate.11
The Trust calls the result inconclusive, the Park Service database indecisive. The Trust and an archaeological report quoted by Gordon County call Resaca the first major battle, or fight, of the Atlanta Campaign. What followed is told in our article on Sherman's March to the Sea, and Sherman's life in our biography of Sherman.12
Part of the field is now the Resaca Battlefield Historic Site, run by Gordon County: in February 2016 Georgia's Department of Natural Resources, having finished the site's amenities, returned it to the county, whose commissioners accepted it.13
Also on 13 May: the end in Tunisia, 1943
In 1943 the Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered. Harold Alexander wrote in his despatch that the army group commander, General von Arnim, surrendered on the 12th, and that General Messe delayed his surrender until the morning of the 13th, shortly after learning by radio of his promotion to Marshal. The US Army's official history, by George F. Howe, says Messe, commander of the First Italian Army, surrendered on 13 May as a field marshal, promoted that very morning: "Thus ended hostilities in Tunisia". Accounts of who took von Arnim differ: Alexander names the commanding officer of 2 Gurkhas, while Howe notes that von Arnim credited the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 4th Indian Division and a contemporary report the 1st Royal Sussex Regiment.14
At 1415 hours on 13 May Alexander signaled the Prime Minister: "Sir, it is my duty to report that the Tunisian campaign is over". He wrote that "A quarter of a million men laid down their arms in unconditional surrender", and Howe that the last week of the fighting brought "about 275,000 prisoners into Allied custody". Alexander's despatch begins at El Alamein.15
