For several days after the Battle of Atlanta, there was a lull in military activities around the city. Both sides were reorganizing. Sherman selected Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard to command the army that McPherson had led. On the Confederate side, Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee replaced Cheatham as commander of the corps that had originally been Hood’s.

By July 26, Sherman had decided upon his next maneuver. His goal was the railroads south and west of Atlanta—the last links between that city and the rest of the Confederacy—and to reach them he would swing Howard’s Army of the Tennessee around from his extreme left to his extreme right. The movement began that afternoon and by nightfall on the 27th, Howard’s men were west of Atlanta. Early the following day the advance was resumed. The only effective opposition came from a small body of Confederate cavalry.

Hood was aware of Sherman’s new maneuver and determined to block it by sending the corps of Lee and Stewart west along the road to the little settlement of Lickskillet. By noon the opposing forces were in the area of a meetinghouse known as Ezra Church, about 2½ miles west of Atlanta. The Confederates had been ordered to attack and prevent the Northerners from crossing the road, and Lee and Stewart sent their men forward in a series of assaults against the XV Corps. The Federals had not had time to entrench, but they had piled up barricades of logs and church benches, and these afforded some protection.

“Our skirmishers, overpowered by numbers, were compelled to fall back to the main line,” wrote a Union officer,

followed at an interval of but a few paces by dense columns of the enemy, which, covered as they were by the undergrowth, advanced within forty or fifty paces of our lines, when a terrific and destructive fire was opened upon them, and was continued steadily until their advance was checked, at the distance of some twenty to thirty paces. Their lines were cut down, disordered, and driven back some distance, when they rallied and again came boldly forward to the charge, but under the murderous fire of our rifles were no more able to disorder or discompose our lines than before. They gained a little ground several times, only to lose it inch by inch, after the most terrible fighting on both sides.... After a very short interval, which did not amount to a cessation of the battle, new and largely augmented columns of the enemy came pouring in upon us, with the same results, however, as before, although their colors were planted within twenty paces.

For 4 or 5 hours the assaults continued, but the Confederates attacked piecemeal—separate units rushing forward—rather than striking a unified blow, and all their desperate courage was not enough to overcome this handicap. The Southern army is estimated to have suffered about 5,000 casualties in this battle. Federal losses were reported at 600.