Atlanta Campaign

About 4 P.M. the expected sally came from Atlanta, directed mainly against Leggett's Hill and along the Decatur road. At Leggett's Hill they were met and bloodily repulsed. Along the railroad they were more successful. Sweeping over a small force with two guns, they reached our main line, broke through it, and got possession of De Gress's battery of four twenty-pound Parrotts, killing every horse, and turning the guns against us.

...combined forces drove the enemy into Atlanta, recovering the twenty-pound Parrott guns - but one of them was found "bursted" while in the possession of the enemy. The two six-pounders farther in advance were, however, lost, and had been hauled back by the enemy into Atlanta. Poor Captain de Gress came to me in tears, lamenting the loss of his favorite guns; when they were regained he had only a few men left, and not a single horse. He asked an order for a reequipment, but I told him he must beg and borrow of others till he could restore his battery, now reduced to three guns. How he did so I do not know, but in a short time he did get horses, men, and finally another gun, of the same special pattern, and served them with splendid effect till the very close of the war. This battery had also been with me from Shiloh till that time.


Memoirs of General William T. Sherman
Atlanta Campaign
July 1864
 
Great grandfather lost his brother (also in the 63rd Indiana) April 2nd in Knoxville as the approached the beginning of fighting for the Atlanta Campaign. Then his good friend AJ McGarrah was killed, I believe in his immediate presence, during the Battle of Resaca. Then in July he was sent to Big Shanty, himself suffering with pneumonia....returned to unit sometime in September and on thru Franklin, nashville and the Carolinas.
 
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