Sherman sent a telegram to Washington on September 3, 1864: "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won."

Lincoln read it and knew the election was saved.

The Military Context

By August 1864, the war was going badly for the Union politically. Grant was bogged down at Petersburg. Sherman had been maneuvering around Atlanta since May but had not taken the city. The Democratic Party was preparing to run George McClellan on a peace platform. Northern war weariness was real. Lincoln privately believed he would lose in November.

Sherman had been fighting John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee for weeks after Hood replaced the cautious Joseph Johnston in July. Hood attacked repeatedly and aggressively, losing men the Confederacy could not replace. Sherman, frustrated by direct assaults, finally extended his army in a wide arc around Atlanta's supply lines to the south.

On August 31 and September 1, Sherman's forces engaged Hood at Jonesborough, cutting the last railroad into Atlanta. Hood evacuated. Confederate engineers blew up the ammunition train before leaving — the explosion was visible 15 miles away. Sherman entered the city on September 2.

Why It Mattered in Washington

The fall of Atlanta transformed the political landscape of 1864 with a speed that astonished contemporaries. Within weeks of Sherman's telegram, the peace wing of the Democratic Party was discredited, McClellan was backpedaling from the peace platform his own convention had adopted, and Republican confidence had shifted from despair to cautious optimism.

Mobile Bay had fallen to Farragut on August 5. Sheridan was winning in the Shenandoah Valley. Sherman had Atlanta. The Union, which had looked exhausted in July, suddenly looked like it was winning.

Lincoln won in November with 55 percent of the popular vote. The soldier vote was 78 percent for Lincoln.

Sherman then ordered Atlanta's civilian population evacuated, prepared the city's military infrastructure for destruction, and on November 15 marched out toward Savannah. He burned Atlanta as he left.