HistoricSiteMarkers
Civil War

Attack from the West

Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia

Marker Inscription

Attack from the West. July 22, 1864. Gen. George Maney's div. (Hardee's A.C.) [Confed.] attacked the front of Giles Smith's div., 17th A.C. [Union] posted on Flat Shoals Road (Leggett's Hill to Glenwood), while Cleburne's div. attacked it from the rear. This forced the withdrawal of Smith to the s. slope of Leggett's Hill where he occupied a 2nd line extending eastward from Leggett's position. Cleburne & Maney, following up their advantage, were aided by Stevenson's div. (Cheatham's A.C.) [Confed.] from the city fortifications. Repeated attacks, front, flank & rear, by the three Confederate divisions failed to dislodge the 2 divs. of the 17th A.C. - Leggett's & Smith's. 060-104 GEORGIA HISTORIC MARKER 1984

Erected by Georgia Historical Commission

The Story

During the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864, Confederate divisions under Gen. George Maney and Gen. Patrick Cleburne struck the front and rear of Giles Smith's Union division on the Flat Shoals Road, forcing it back to Leggett's Hill. Aided by Stevenson's division from the city fortifications, the Confederates hammered the 17th Corps from front, flank, and rear. Despite repeated assaults, they failed to dislodge the entrenched Union defenders.

Why it matters

The struggle for Leggett's Hill was among the fiercest of the Battle of Atlanta, a savage day of fighting that marked the Confederacy's last major bid to save the city.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

By the summer of 1864, the Civil War had ground into its fourth exhausting year, and the fate of Atlanta had become one of the great questions of the age. The city was a railroad hub and manufacturing center, a beating industrial heart of the Confederacy, and Union armies under William T. Sherman had spent months fighting their way south through the mountains and rivers of north Georgia to reach its outskirts.

This marker stands on ground that on July 22, 1864, lay just east of the city, where the earth had been carved into ridges, roadbeds, and hastily dug entrenchments. The fighting here was part of the larger Atlanta Campaign, a war of maneuver in which Confederate forces repeatedly tried to catch a piece of the advancing Union army and destroy it before the whole could bring its weight to bear.

The day this marker commemorates would come to be known simply as the Battle of Atlanta, and it was one of the fiercest single days of combat the campaign produced. The low rise the inscription calls Leggett's Hill became, for a few brutal hours, the hinge on which the fighting turned.

People & events

The action recorded here reads almost like a diagram of what commanders most feared and most hoped for. A Union division under Giles A. Smith held a line along the Flat Shoals Road, part of the 17th Army Corps posted on the far side of the field. Confederate general George Maney's division struck it head-on, while Patrick Cleburne's division came in from behind — the nightmare of every soldier, an attack from the front and the rear at once.

The pressure was enough to force Smith back to the southern slope of Leggett's Hill, where his men re-formed a second line and dug in beside Leggett's own division. The Confederates, sensing they had the advantage, pressed hard, and were reinforced by Stevenson's division coming out from the city's fortifications. For a time the two Union divisions were assailed from front, flank, and rear together.

And yet the line held. That is the quiet drama buried in the inscription's careful military language: repeated assaults by three Confederate divisions, from every direction, failed to break the two Union divisions clinging to the hill. Cleburne — a general with a reputation as one of the Confederacy's hardest-hitting commanders — could not dislodge them. Sometimes the whole story of a battle lives in the difference between "forced back" and "broken," and here the defenders bent without breaking.

Its place in the American story

The struggle for this hill mattered far beyond the few acres it occupied. Atlanta's fall, when it finally came that autumn, sent a jolt of encouragement through the war-weary North at exactly the moment it was most needed, and it is often remembered as one of the turning points that helped decide the war's final course. The fighting recorded on this marker was part of the price paid for that outcome.

It also captures something essential about how this war was fought and lost. Attacks from front and rear could shove a defending line backward, but well-entrenched infantry, fighting from prepared ground, had become extraordinarily hard to destroy outright. That grim arithmetic — courage spent again and again against defenders who would not break — shaped the whole later course of the conflict.

To stand here is to remember that the campaign for a single city was decided not in one grand charge but in dozens of desperate local fights like this one, each measured in ridges held and roads contested, and each carrying a weight far larger than its map coordinates suggest.

If you visit

You are in the middle of Atlanta now, and the ground that once bristled with earthworks has long since been folded into streets, buildings, and the ordinary rhythm of a modern city. Part of the experience here is imaginative work: reading the marker, then looking around and mentally stripping away the pavement to picture the low rise, the road, and the smoke-filled fields of that July afternoon.

Look first for the lay of the land — even in a built-up city, a rise or a slope often survives, and the hill the fighting turned on was exactly the kind of modest high ground that soldiers died to hold. Notice how the inscription names specific roads and directions; tracing them helps you feel how the front, flank, and rear attacks came together on the defenders.

This is a good stop to fold into a wider tour of Atlanta's Civil War sites, where a chain of markers and preserved places lets you follow the campaign across the modern cityscape. Give yourself a few unhurried minutes here. The reward of a marker like this is not a grand monument but the sudden realization that momentous history happened precisely where you are standing.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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Related people

  • · George Maney
  • · Patrick Cleburne
  • · Giles A. Smith

Related events

  • · Battle of Atlanta
  • · Atlanta Campaign
  • · American Civil War

Themes & tags

Civil WarBattlefield

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