Why the battle of Atlanta took place?

Answer 1

It raised Northern morale when Lincoln looked as though he would lose the Election.

It also marked the moment when Sherman decided to reverse Grant's strategy, ignore the army of Tennessee that he'd been told to destroy, and instead attack the infrastructure that supported the Confederate armies in the field - wrecking farms and railroads all over Georgia.

This shortened the war by months.

Answer 2

In the battle of Atlanta, General Sherman effectively destroyed much of the bustling Southern city by using the scorched-Earth technique. It is credited with severely weakening Confederate morale.

Answer 3

After the conquest of Tennesse State, the Union Army invaded Georgia.

General Sherman, its commander, had two tasks:

1 - to engage and destroy or drive out of combat the Confederate Army of Tennessee as effective opposing force;

2 - to conquest Atlanta but as subordinate to the task one .

The widely inferior Confederate Army of Tennesse, under Joseph Johnston had three tasks:

1 - to prevent from being engaged in large, pitched battles, engaging the enemy in harassing encounters, giving space but gaining time, unless particularly favourable conditions would allow that;

2 - To avoid the seizing of Atlanta using its entrenched camp and fortifications as mainstay of manoeuvre, carrying on a weary conduct of operation, which would have led to weaken the opposing army.

3 - To keep intact as far as possible at least the core of his army, even if it should have cost the loss of Atlanta.

Indeed "Old Joe" rightly thought that had the army been destroyed, Atlanta would have been lost forever, while maintaining the army's fighting power, the city might have been soon or later reconquered.

Johnston's strategy was carried on successfully but President Jefferson Davis, who never had trusted Johnston's military qualities, worried about of enduring retreats and pressed by some military and political, most of which Georgians, criticism, decided to substitute the general.

He appointed to command the Army of Tennessee John Bell Hood who was claiming an all out offensive to face and sort out the situation.

That led to the battle of Atlanta or better said, to the three battles which were fought there.

They were all defeats for the Confederacy.

Atlanta was lost forever for the South, the Army of Tennessee was scattered,

and the Union campaign aiming to take behind the Confederate Eastern Front went on almost without opposition.