|
|
|
The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain
June 27, 1864
A Major Battle in the Campaign for Atlanta
|
Illinois Monument on Cheatham Hill
"Erected to the memory of the Illinois soldiers who died on the battlefield of Kennesaw Mtn, Ga., June 27, 1864.
"On this field the men of Col. Dan McCook's 3rd Brigade, 2nd Div. 14th Army Corps assaulted the Confederate works on the 27th day of June, 1864, losing four hundred and eighty killed and wounded, including two commanders, Col. Dan McCook mortally
wounded and Col. O.F. Harman killed; Brigade reached Confederate works and at less than one hundred feet from them maintained a line for six days and nights without relief, at the end of which time the Confederates evacuated."
Illinois veterans erected this memorial 50 years after the battle.
The battle of Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, 1864, cost the Union army an estimated 3,000 killed, wounded or missing soldiers. The Confederates suffered fewer than 1,000 casualties. After the war, the dead of both sides were reburied in separate cemetaries in nearby Marietta.
Here at the Dead Angle where the Illinois Monument stands, Col. Daniel McCook's brigade lost 397 men, most of them from Illinois. In 1899, survivors from McCook's brigade bought 60 acres of land here and donated it to the State of Illinois to build a state-funded monument. Union veterans dedicated it on June 27, 1914, the battle's 50th anniversary.
From this beginning, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park has grown to nearly 3,000 acres of the ground that two great armies struggled over so long ago.(nps)
Sources
� � � National Park Service
� � � Castel, Albert. "The Campaign for Atlanta," National Park Civil War Series,' published by Eastern National Park & Monument Association. 1996.
|