Confederates had been making desperate raids or sorties, trying
to cut Sherman off from his base in Tennessee and keep back the
Federal forces in other parts of the river area. "Our Jack
Morgan," whom we left as a prisoner of war after his Ohio raid of
'63, had escaped in November, fought Crook and Averell for
Saltville and Wytheville in May, and then, leaving southwest
Virginia, had raided Kentucky and taken Lexington, but been
defeated at Cynthiana and driven back by overwhelming numbers
till he again entered southwest Virginia on the twentieth of
June. Forrest raided northeastern Mississippi, badly defeated
Sturgis at Brice's Cross Roads in June, but was himself defeated
by A.J. Smith at Tupelo in July.

Meanwhile Sherman had been tapping Johnston's fifty miles of
entrenchments for three weeks of rainy June weather, hoping to
find a suitable place into which he could drive a wedge of
attack. On the twenty-seventh he tried to carry the Kene saw
lines by assault, but failed at every point, with a loss of
twenty-five hundred--three times what Johnston lost.

By a well-combined series of maneuvers Sherman then forced
Johnston to fall back or be hopelessly outflanked. Johnston, with
equal skill, crossed the Chattahoochee under cover of the
strongly fortified bridgehead which he had built unknown to
Sherman. But Sherman, with his double numbers, could always hold
Johnston with one-half in front while turning his flank with the
other. So even the Chattahoochee was safely crossed on the
seventeenth of July and the final move against Atlanta was begun.
That same night Johnston's magnificent skill was thrown to the
winds by Davis, who had ordered the bold and skillful but far too