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To the Gates of Atlanta covers the period from the Confederate victory at Kennesaw Mountain, 27 June 1864, leading up to the Battle of Peach Tree Creek, 20 July 1864, and the first of four major battles for Atlanta that culminated in the Battle of Jonesboro, 31 August and 1 September 1864.

To the Gates of Atlanta also gives the important, but previously untold stories of the actions and engagements that befell the sleepy hamlet of Buckhead and the surrounding woods that today shelter many parts of Atlanta’s vast community. 

From Smyrna to Ruff’s Mill, Roswell to Vinings, Nancy Creek to Peach Tree Creek, and Moore’s Mill to Howell’s Mill, To the Gates of Atlanta tells the story of each as part of the larger story which led to the fall of The Gate City of the South.

Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas was an intelligent, spirited woman born in 1834 to one of the wealthiest families in Georgia. At the age of fourteen she began and kept a diary for forty-one years, documenting her life before, during, and after the Civil War. In 1851 she graduated from Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia. Her life is an amazing story of survival and transformation that speaks to women in our own time.

When it opened in October 1864, Camp Lawton was called “the world’s largest prison.” Operational only six weeks, this stockade near Millen, Georgia, was evacuated in the face of advancing Federal troops under General Sherman. In that brief span of time, the prison served as headquarters for the Confederate military prison system, witnessed hundreds of deaths, held a mock election for president, was involved in a sick exchange, hosted attempts to recruit Union POWs for Confederate service, and experienced escape attempts. Burned by Sherman’s troops following its evacuation in late November 1864, the prison was never reoccupied. Over the next 150 years, the memory of Camp Lawton almost disappeared. In 2010, the Confederate military prison was resurrected—a result of the media event publically showcasing the findings of recent archeological investigations. This book not only summarizes these initial archeological findings, but is also the first full-length, documented history of Camp Lawton.

Houston Hartsfield Holloway (1844–1917) was born enslaved in upcountry Georgia, taught himself to read and write, learned the blacksmith trade, was emancipated by Union victory in 1865, and served as an ordained traveling preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church from 1870 to 1883. He devoted the remainder of his life to his family, his blacksmith trade, and his local church. Holloway’s 24,000-word autobiography offers a rare working-class perspective on life during some of the most transformative years of US history. Footnotes provide supplementary biographical information for nearly two hundred relatives, neighbors, friends, and coworkers named in Holloway’s narrative. An appendix includes nineteen extended biographical sketches. The book is illustrated with photographs and three detailed maps of Holloway’s home neighborhoods and preaching assignments.

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in Civil War sharpshooters. Now there is a new perspective on the subject in the story of Major William E. Simmons (1839–1931), with emphasis on his experiences as an infantry officer in the Army of Northern Virginia. Three years after graduating from Emory College, Simmons joined the first company in his home county and received his commission. He was later promoted to Captain in the elite 3rd Battalion Georgia Sharpshooters of Wofford’s Brigade. In 1864, he became acting commander of the brigade’s sharpshooter battalion. The book traces his family heritage and his footsteps from childhood to Emory College, through many challenging war encounters, his capture and imprisonment at Fort Delaware, and a lifetime of service to his state and community that lasted until the 1930s.

A JUST AND HOLY CAUSE? details the life of the family of Lieutenant Marcus Bethune Ely and his unit, the Russell Guards (Co. H, 54th Georgia Regiment) in the midst of one of our country’s greatest tragedies. The Russell Guards were organized in Columbus, Georgia by Captain Charles R. Russell in May 1862. Most of the recruits were from Muscogee and Harris County. These letters provide a picture of life on both the battlefield and the homefront, often touched with humor and love.

Greatly loved by those who served under him, Lieutenant Colonel William Gaston Delony possessed three admirable attributes: “commanding presence, bull dog courage, and superb generalship.” THE LEGION'S FIGHTING BULLDOG relays the story of a young man, on the cusp of a promising law career in the 1850s who comes to the conclusion that his way of life, and that of his neighbors, is about to change forever. Interwoven with those of his wife, Rosa Eugenia Huguenin, the Delony correspondence furnishes us a window into the lives of independent individuals during the Civil War who also happened to be well-placed in society due to birth. A graduate of the University of Georgia, Delony was well educated for the period. A lawyer prior to the war, his tremendous inherent tenacity and fighting ability made him the first Georgia Bulldog.

United States Supreme Court Justice James Moore Wayne is the most famous Georgian nobody knows. When his home state seceded from the Union in 1861, Wayne retained his seat on the US Supreme Court and remained loyal to the Union as the nation lunged headlong into war. He knew the insanity of secession, and warned of the folly of disunion, but his son, Col. Henry Wayne, resigned his commission in the US Army and cast his lot with the Confederacy. This book tells their story and examines the nature of Georgia’s strong and largely overlooked unionist sentiment in the decades before the Civil War.

In September 1864, at a gathering in Macon, Georgia, Confederate President Jefferson Davis admitted that two-thirds of his troops were absent, most without leave. Some had opposed secession to begin with. Others came to see the conflict as a “rich man’s war.” But it was hardship and hunger among their families that drew most soldiers back home. For more than a century and a half, historians have often ignored the Confederacy’s home front difficulties, which had so much to do with desertion and defeat. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Civil War knows that Confederate armies were outnumbered two to one. In a presumptive way, the manpower disparity is usually attributed to the North’s larger population. Lost in that simplistic view is the impact that desertion had on sapping the Confederacy’s fighting strength. And this is but one of the many critical issues historians too often brush aside.

The name of Union general William T. Sherman is still reviled in Atlanta, 150 years after his soldiers devastated this important Georgia city. Thirty-seven days of artillery bombardment, July-August 1864, wrecked countless downtown buildings and killed perhaps a score of civilians. Longtime Atlantan Stephen Davis describes Sherman’s shelling in detail unmatched in the Civil War literature.

This biography concentrates on the numerous legislative and diplomatic achievements of U.S. Senator Walter F. George (fl. 1922-1957), the son of a tenant farmer, who rose to become one of the most powerful men in the United States. His successes as a legislator (agricultural legislation, vocational education, work on the Bricker Amendment) and later in his role as a major authority on foreign policy made him a leader in the Senate. In his thirty-five year Senate career, George worked though the "Roaring Twenties," the Great Depression, American rearmament, World War II, and the Cold War. George made a positive mark on each of these historic events.

Atlanta, Georgia, is the New South city. No two names are more associated with its emergence than William Tecumseh Sherman and Henry W. Grady: Sherman the destroyer and Grady the New South's principal architect. Henry Grady advocated for a more urban South but had a vision for improved farm life as well.