Dalton

Dalton, a city and the county-seat of Whitfield county, Georgia, U.S.A., in the N.W. part of the state, 100 m. N.N.W. of Atlanta. Pop. (1890) 3046; (1900) 4315 (957 negroes); (1910) 5324. Dalton is served by the Southern, the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis, and the Western & Atlanta (operated by the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis) railways. The city is in a rich agricultural region; ships cotton, grain, fruit and ore; and has various manufactures, including canned fruit and vegetables, flour and foundry and machine shop products. It is the seat of Dalton Female College. Dalton was founded by Duff Green and others in 1848, and was incorporated in 1874. Hither General Braxton Bragg retreated after his defeat at Chattanooga in the last week of November 1863. Three weeks afterwards Bragg, in command of the army in northern Georgia in winter quarters here, was replaced by General Joseph E. Johnston, who, with his force of 54,400, adopted defensive tactics to meet Sherman’s invasion of Georgia, with his 99,000 or 100,000 men in the Army of the Cumberland (60,000) under General G. H. Thomas, the Army of the Tennessee (25,000) under General J. B. M‘Pherson, and the Army of the Ohio (14,000) under General J. M. Schofield. The Federal forces stretched for 20 m. in a position south of Ringgold and between Ringgold and Dalton. Johnston’s line of defences included Rocky Face Ridge, a wall of rock through which the railway passes about 5 m. north-west of the city, Mill Creek (1 m. north-north-west of Dalton), which he dammed so that it could not be forded, and earthworks north and east of the city. On the 7th of May General M’Pherson started for Resaca, 18 m. south of Dalton, to occupy the railway there in Johnston’s rear, but he did not attack Resaca, thinking it too strongly protected; Thomas, with Schofield on his left, on the 7th forced the Confederates through Buzzard’s Roost Gap (the pass at Mill Creek) north-west of Dalton; at Dug Gap, 4 m. south-west of Dalton, on the 8th a fierce Federal assault under Brigadier-General John W. Geary failed to dislodge the Confederates from a quite impregnable position. On the 11th the main body of Sherman’s army followed M’Pherson toward Resaca, and Johnston, having evacuated Dalton on the night of the 12th, was thus forced, after five days’ manœuvring and skirmishing, to march to Resaca and to meet Sherman there.

See J. D. Cox, The Atlanta Campaign (New York, 1882); Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols., New York, 1887); and Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, series 1, vols. 32, 38, 39, 45, 49; series ii., vol. 8.

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