Little evidence of the Battle of Atlanta remains. The Cyclorama painting, markers and a vivid imagination are a good start. Our experts weigh in on their must-sees

Sign off Memorial Drive, scene from the Cyclorama, McPherson monument and 1964 state map

People often lament Atlanta paved over its Civil War battlefields. But there are some vestiges of the fighting, and you can go to a couple museums and gaze at dozens of roadside markers to get a sense of what happened there.

Tuesday is the anniversary of the July 22, 1864, Battle of Atlanta, which led to the fall of the Southern city weeks later and likely assured the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln. 

I asked area historians, tour guides and preservationists to suggest places the interested can go to learn more about the battle and its importance. Among the suggested stops are markers where Union Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson and Confederate Gen. William H.T. Walker, a grizzled Confederate veteran nicknamed “Shot Pouch," were killed in action that day.

The following responses have been edited for context and brevity. A few sections have material from previous Civil War Picket posts. 

CHARLIE CRAWFORD, president emeritus of the Georgia Battlefields Association

Obviously, start at the Cyclorama at the Atlanta History Center. Spend at least half a day studying the painting and all the associated displays, including maps at the “War in Our Backyards” kiosk on the main floor, not far from the locomotive Texas display. It would help if you have already read related books by Albert Castel, Steve Davis, Earl Hess and Bill Scaife.

Go thereafter to the Carter Center bus parking lot and note three historical markers there, including the one for the Augustus Hurt House, which was Sherman’s HQ during the battle. 

View toward Stone Mountain in Cyclorama, which shows July 22, 1864; Decatur Road on right (Atlanta History Center)

Next, drive to Inman Park MARTA Station parking lot, start eastward on foot along DeKalb Avenue and note the Georgia historical markers, starting with the Pope House. Continue eastward on foot along DeKalb Avenue and turn north onto DeGress Avenue, which has three more markers, including a marker for the Troup Hurt House that you saw in the Cyclorama painting and a marker for the DeGress battery. 

The Old Decatur Road was more serpentine than DeKalb Avenue is now. It curved south of the railroad, then back north in the vicinity of the Confederate breakthrough. You can see this in the diorama at the base of the painting at AHC.

Return to you vehicle and drive eastward on Glenwood Ave SE and turn left (north) immediately past the I-20 interchange onto Wilkinson Drive. In 150 yards, turn left into the parking area for DeKalb Memorial Park. Walk back south to Glenwood Avenue. Note the Walker monument (upright cannon), its associated marker, and the marker across Glenwood Avenue for Terry’s Mill Pond. (Picket photo of Walker stone)

When done, walk back to your car and turn left (north) out of the parking lot until you hit Memorial Drive. Turn left (west) on Memorial Drive then take the first right onto Clay Street. Stop the car almost immediately and note the “Battle of Atlanta Began Here” marker on the west side of the street.

Safely find a way to turn around and head south, then make a right (west) on Memorial Drive. Take the second left (south) onto Maynard Terrace, and immediately after passing the I-20 interchange, turn right (west) onto McPherson Avenue. Park when you see the McPherson monument (upright cannon) on your left. Read the associated markers there. 

Not a comprehensive tour, but should be enough to prompt further research among the uninitiated.

Go to Georgia Historical Society’s marker page and read the texts ahead of time by searching DeKalb County and Fulton County markers.

JIM OGDEN, historian at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park

Charlie is certainly the expert here, so I would second his recommendations and add only a couple of others.  

While not 100% historically accurate, the visual of the Cyclorama is so valuable that going there or starting there is really important. It would also be really valuable to have a printed copy of it with you while you do the walk along DeKalb Avenue, particularly for when you're along DeGress or if you maybe even walk just a bit farther east on DeKalb and then turn around and look back west, holding that portion of the Cyclorama up in front of you. 

It's a window back in time through all the 21st and 20^th century around you.  I can't remember if AHC is selling any sort of printed reproduction of it but there is the old Kurtz 30 p. booklet of it that probably can be found on the used market.

Marker at Springvale Park mentions remnant of ravine (David Seibert/HMbd.org)

This might be too obvious, but the only other thing I might note is that the many railroad tracks today on the south side of DeKalb are the modern version of the one track that is another one of the important landmarks in the Cyclorama.

For someone who might be up for a bit more of a walk, particularly if they want to do it a bit more from the perspective of the Confederate attack in the painting, would be to walk farther west on DeKalb, at least to Waverly Way, and then north to Springvale Park to see the remains of the low ground the Confederates crossed north of the railroad as they attacked east and the markers there. (Springvale Park has one of the few monuments to the battle. It has a marker as well, indicating that Manigault’s Confederate brigade reformed in the low ground there before making their final dash).

One could even go to Oakland Cemetery to the rise from which Hood watched the battle.  

Atlanta may have seemingly swallowed the July 22 battlefield, but there are still faint traces of that history to be found on the ground.

Artillery Capt. Francis DeGress trails Maj. Gen. Logan in Cyclorama scene (AHC)

PERRY BENNETT, local historian and tour guide

Perry Bennett, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, will be giving a free tour at 1 p.m. Tuesday.

The historian said the tour will start at a historical marker on the grounds of Alonzo A. Crim Open Campus High School, 256 Clifton Road SE. It is being given to the Longstreet Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans but anyone can attend. 

“I cover both sides but am focused upon when the battle began on this particular tour and what went well and what did not,” he said.

Bennett mentions markers where Bate’s Confederate division deployed, where two of his brigades were blocked during their attack and another sign indicating where Walker’s division attacked the same hill from Terry’s Mill pond. 

The tour will also make stops at the sites of McPherson’s and Walker’s killings.

Those interested can contact Bennett at lperrybennettjr@gmail.com

CHAD CARLSON, East Atlanta historian and Civil War photo collector

Chad Carlson, a historian with the Georgia Department of Transportation, suggests a stop in East Atlanta Village, at the intersection of Glenwood and Flat Shoals roads. The agency put up a Battle of Atlanta replica marker and interpretive panel in 2013 to replace a 1930s version that was removed in the 1970s. (Read about that here).

Carlson said he appreciates the simplicity of the marker, which describes military units and troops movements. It describes Confederate troops pushing Federal units back to Leggett’s Hill on July 22.

Marker about troop movements in East Atlanta (Georgia DOT)

GDOT made an exact replica but used a cheaper metal material, I think aluminum, instead of bronze, so (there is) less likelihood of it getting stolen.”

For years, local historians, Civil War buffs and the Battle of Atlanta Commemoration Organization (B*ATL) have worked to educate residents and visitors to the rich Civil War history of East Atlanta, Kirkwood and other Atlanta neighborhoods.

On this day in 1864, a Federal counterattack saved the day in Atlanta. Who was artillery Capt. DeGress, a hero depicted in the Cyclorama?

Gen. Logan and Capt. DeGress rush toward captured cannons (Atlanta History Center)

If you are familiar with the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, the first image likely to come to mind is the brick Troup Hurt house, scene of a brief Confederate breakthrough during the fighting of July 22, 1864 -- 157 years ago today.

While the 370-foot circumference painting has dozens of small scenes and thousands of figures, the house is clearly the focal point of the battle – misinterpreted for years by its Southern promoters as showing a Rebel victory. Instead, something big is about to happen that will ensure this day will, in fact, see a Federal triumph.

Galloping furiously to the rescue, hat in hand, is Maj. Gen. John A. “Black Jack” Logan, head of the Army of the Tennessee. Behind him is Capt. Francis DeGress, whose artillery battery had been overrun shortly before.

Rebel breakthrough at Troup Hurt house (Picket photo)

“It is the point at which the 15^th Corps is pushed back. Like a rubber band, it springs back,” says Gordon Jones, senior military historian at the Atlanta History Center (AHC), which houses the mammoth work of art.

DeGress, already a respected veteran, is about to become a folk hero to the Northern cause. He retakes the four 20-pounder Parrott guns and turns them on the retreating Confederates.

“He is an example of the sort of mid-level officer who was a natural leader, on whom the troops really came to depend. On whom the battle depended,” said Jones, adding it is the privates, sergeants, lieutenants and captains who are controlling the battle.

Exhibits at the AHC include several DeGress artifacts, including a saber he likely carried that day, a Pond revolver he purchased a few months before the battle, a 15^th Corps badge and a bit that was used by one of the battery’s horses during the fighting. They were donated by family members. The AHC has papers related to DeGress at its Kenan Research Center.

The German-born artilleryman, commander of Company H, 1^st Illinois Light Artillery, was a veteran of several campaigns by the time he arrived in Atlanta. The 23-year-old’s battery was deployed in a vulnerable part of the Union line, east of the city and near a railroad line. (Sketch of DeGress, left, appeared in Harper's Weekly)

At 4 p.m. on July 22, the battery was firing canister as fast as it could. The determined Confederates continued to push forward and were about to be upon them.

DeGress knew the horses could not pull back the guns in time, Jones said, and he had two guns spiked. The captain and Sgt. Peter Wyman stayed with the other two weapons, firing double canister. They eventually had to flee; Wyman was killed while DeGress fled back to the collapsed Federal line.

Fast-forward to the scene depicted in the cyclorama: Logan rallying his troops and rushing toward the breach. DeGress soon regains possession of the battery and gets back into the action.

Bit that belonged to one of the battery horses (Picket photo)

The painting also depicts the death of horses that pulled guns, caissons and limbers for Company H.

“You are seeing in the painting the Confederates are killing the horses because they are about to be overrun,” says Jones. But there’s a chance that DeGress ordered some of them be shot before his retreat. It was not unusual occurrence, because armies did not want their own guns used against them.

“Perhaps the mostly skillfully rendered figures in the painting are the horses,” says Jones. “The closest the artists got to real horror, they are showing them writhing in agony.”

Among the German and Austrian artists who created the cyclorama in 1886 was Albert Richter. He painted the horses based on sketches made at a Milwaukee slaughterhouse, where he apparently paid to use dying horses as models.

Depiction of the killing of battery horses (Picket photo)

Harper’s Weekly illustrator Theodore R. Davis is largely responsible for DeGress being depicted in the painting. Davis, who traveled with the Federal army, submitted an illustration and article for the publication about the officer soon after the battle and served as an advisor to the artists in Milwaukee.

DeGress’ battery took part in the March to the Sea after Atlanta and the campaigns in South Carolina and North Carolina, and was present at the surrender of Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston near Durham in April 1865.

After the war, the soldier went into business in Mexico, with a firearms company among his ventures. He died in 1883 – three years before the cyclorama was painted -- in Mexico City and is buried there.

DeGress' revolver (Picket photo)

Charlie Crawford, president emeritus of the Georgia Battlefields Association, said it is clear DeGress was highly regarded by superiors, subordinates and fellow artillery commanders.

“One measure of this regard is how quickly he was able to reconstitute his battery (H, 1st Illinois) after his guns were reclaimed on 22 July 1864,” says Crawford. “This is a testament to his own leadership and to how readily the other artillery batteries provided horses, harnesses, limbers, caissons and other equipment.”

The cyclorama shows the moment Alabama and South Carolina troops in Brig. Gen. Arthur Manigault’s brigade punctured the Union line. The AHC has the saber Manigault carried that day.

The Troup Hurt house is long gone. A church was built on the site, and now that structure is a private residence.

Troup Hurt house was where this home was erected (Picket photo)

It’s important to note the battlefield on July 22 was much larger than what is shown in the painting. For example, troops clashed for a much longer time on Bald (Leggett’s) Hill south near current Interstate 20.

By evening, Confederate troops under Gen. John Bell Hood were repulsed with heavy losses. Fighting continued in and around Atlanta for several weeks, until the Rebels evacuated and the city fell.

Among the clashes was the little-known battle at Utoy Creek. From late July to late August, Federal troops made several thrusts toward the vital Rebel rail line in nearby East Point. Ultimately, victory had to come elsewhere.

"The War in Our Backyards": See the AJC's 2014 comprehensive interactive on the Atlanta Campaign

DeGress swords, saber at top believed used in battle (Picket photo)