General J. E. Johnston, the commander of the Confederate forces in Georgia, at the head of forty-five thousand men, was intrenched at Dalton, lying in wait for the advancing troops of Sherman, then marching into this stronghold of the Confederacy from Chattanooga.

The last Confederate gunboat had been driven from the Mississippi and the great basin of the south and west was safe in Union keeping. The great strength of the South now was its inland armies, which were fed by the granaries and supported by the factories of Georgia.

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