verbal orders in relation to the movement of the
Second (Sweeney's) Division of my command, the Sixteenth Corps, which had
been crowded out of the line by the contraction of our lines as we neared
Atlanta, and told me that I was to take position on the left of the line
that Blair had been instructed to occupy and intrench that morning, and
cautioned me about protecting my flank very strongly. McPherson evidently
thought that there would be trouble on that flank, for he rode out to
examine it himself.

I moved Sweeney in the rear of our Army, on the road leading from the
Augusta Railway down the east branch of Sugar Creek to near where it
forks; then, turning west, the road crosses the west branch of Sugar Creek
just back of where Fuller was camped, and passed up through a strip of
woods and through Blair's lines near where his left was refused. Up this
road Sweeney marched until he reached Fuller, when he halted, waiting
until the line I had selected on Blair's proposed new left could be
intrenched, so that at mid-day, July 22d, the position of the Army of the
Tennessee was as follows: One Division of the Fifteenth across and north
of the Augusta Railway facing Atlanta; the balance of the Fifteenth and
all of the Seventeenth Corps behind intrenchments running south of the
railway along a gentle ridge with a gentle slope and clear valley facing
Atlanta in front, and another clear valley in the rear. The Sixteenth
Corps was resting on the road described, entirely in the rear of the
Seventeenth and Fifteenth Corps, and facing from Atlanta. To the left and
left-rear the country was heavily wooded. The enemy, therefore, was
enabled, under cover of the forest, to approach close to the rear of our
lines.

On the night of July 21st Hood had transferred Hardee's Corps and two
Divisions of Wheeler's Cavalry to our rear, going around our left flank,
Wheeler attacking Sprague's Brigade of the Sixteenth Army Corps at
Decatur, where our trains were parked. At daylight, Stewart's and
Cheatham's Corps and the Georgia Militia were withdrawn closer to Atlanta,
and placed in a position to attack simultaneously with Hardee, the plan
thus involving the destroying of the Army of the Tennessee by attacking it
in rear and front and the capturing of all its trains corraled at Decatur.
Hardee's was the largest Corps in Hood's Army, and according to Hood there
were thus to move upon the Army of the Tennessee about 40,000 troops.

Hood's order