The Atlanta campaign of General Sherman was now about to open, and the Twenty-third Michgian being destined to take part in it, the regiment left Charleston on the 2d of May and took the road to Georgia. Passing down the valley of the Tennessee and thence up Chickamauga creek, it reached the vicinity of Tunnel Hill on the 7^th and confronted the enemy at Rocky-Face Ridge, Georgia, on the 8^th of May, opening the fight on that day by advancing in skirmish line and taking possession of a commanding crest in front of the hostile works. In the advance from Rocky-Face, the regiment with its brigade passed through Snake Creek Gap, arrived in front of Resaca on the 13^th, and on the following day took part in the assault of the enemy's strong works at that place. The result of this attack was a repulse of the attacking column and a loss to the Twenty-third of sixty-two in killed and wounded; all of this was incurred in a few minutes of desperate fighting. The enemy, though successful in repelling the assault, evacuated this position at Resaca and moved to the Etowah river where his rear guard was overtaken and slightly engaged by the Union pursuing force of which the Twenty-third Michigan formed a part. From this point the regiment moved on to Dallas and took a position in front of the rebel works at that place, where it remained from the 27^th of May until the 1st of June; during this time it was almost constantly engaged day and night in skirmishing with the advanced lines of the enemy. Again the rebel forces evacuated their strong position and moved south towards Atlanta, the Union troops pressing on in close and constant pursuit; in this service the Twenty-third Regiment participated and took part in the engagements at Lost Mountain, Georgia, Kenasaw Mountain and Chattahoochee river, and later fought in front of Atlanta until the capitulation of that stronghold. On the 1^st of October it was at Decatur, Georgia, and on the 3d of that month it moved from there, northward, in pursuit of the rebel General Hood, who was then marching towards Nashville.

While engaged in this service the Twenty-third marched with its division (it was then in the Second Brigade, Second Division of the Twenty-third Army Corps) to Marietta, New Hope Church, Big Shanty, Allatoona, Cartersville, Kingston, and Rome, Georgia, and from the last-named place, through Alabama, and thence back to Rome. There it remained a short time, and early in November again marched through Alabama into Tennessee, and was stationed at Johnsonville, employed in garrison duty and the construction of defensive works until the 24^th. It was then moved by rail to Columbia, Tennessee, where it arrived on the 25^th, while a heavy skirmish, amounting to almost a general engagement, was in progress near that place between the armies of Thomas and Hood. A part of the regiment was immediately advanced upon the skirmish line, while the remainder of the command went into position. At midnight it was withdrawn and ordered to the line of Duck river, where it lay on the south side of the stream, throwing up defenses and frequently skirmishing with the enemy. It was constantly on duty day and night until near daylight in the morning of the 28^th, when it retired across the river to the north bank, where it held position, and keeping up an almost continual skirmish with Hood's advance till noon of the 29^th, falling back with the army to the vicinity of Spring Hill, Tennessee, about ten miles north of Duck river. here, at about dark on the same day, the enemy was found in force occupying the road. An attack was made, and after a short fight the Confederates were driven from their position. The Union forces then resumed the march to Franklin, Tennessee, and arriving there in the morning of the 30^th, immediately took position and commenced throwing up temporary defenses. At four o'clock p.m., the enemy attacked in four strong lines, and with great desperation, but was repulsed with heavy loss. The attack was several times renewed, but unsuccessfully until about ten p. m., when an still more furious assault was made by the enemy, who succeeded in planting his colors on the works in front of the Twenty-third Regiment, but was again forced back after a hand-to-hand fight. At eleven p.m. the regiment with the other Union troops withdrew, and crossing the river moved on the road to Nashville, arriving there at two p.m. on December 1, having marched fifty miles in forty-eight hours, six hours of which had been passed under fire in the desperate battle of Franklin. During the week which had elapsed since the arrival of the Twenty-third at Columbia the men had suffered severely from scarcity of provisions, and in the last two days of the movement had subsisted on less than quarter-rations.

The regiment lay within the works at Nashville for two weeks, and then in the morning of the 15^th of December it moved out with its division and the other commands under General Thomas to attack the Confederate army which had in the meantime concentrated in their front just south of Nashville. In the great battles of the 15^th and 16^th of December, which resulted in the defeat and complete rout of Hood's army, the Twenty-third took an active part. "On the 15^th, while the regiment was making a charge on a position occupied by a portion of the enemy behind a stone wall, its flag-staff was shot in two, and the color-sergeant severally wounded, but before the colors fell to the ground they were grasped by the corporal of the color-guard ands gallantly carried to the front. On the 17^th the pursuit of the enemy commenced and during the first three days of the march the rain fell in torrents, the mud being fully six inches deep, which, with the swollen streams, rendered progress extremely difficult and tedious. The pursuit was continued until Columbia was reached, where a halt was made and the movement ended."

The following is from a correspondent:

You are long since posted on our glorious battles of the 15^th and 16^th of December before Nashville. There is much to write, it seems, that the world can never know. Michigan should know more then the mere telegraphic reports of the part which her brave soldiers acted. The Twenty-third and Twenty-fifth are in the Twenty-third Army Corps. The morning of the 15^th was warm and the earth, fortunately for our movement, was covered with a dense fog. Steedman commands. The Fourth and Sixteenth Corps passed defiantly over their works and moved forward to confront the enemy in the works, while the Twenty-third Corps moved far to our right, passing between our fortifications and the city and, passing out, formed in four lines upon the extreme right of out line of infantry. We then began our usual movement in battle, during the whole Georgia campaign, swinging around to our left as we moved forward, and pressing hard upon the enemy's right. This we continued until our batteries reached the desired position. One by one they opened, until the whole earth seemed to tremble, the enemy responding as is written, "feebly." The results of these feeble efforts reached our lines, causing us to hug the earth closely, but with unpleasant sounds passing us and feeling proud of the general commanding, who had so defiantly pushed so much heavy ordinance into the very face of that boasting braggart, Hood. Hooker before Kenasaw had caused our heart to swell under the sublime thunder tones of his artillery, but Thomas before Nashville, having facilities for multiplying the notes, struck them boldly, and reached such of those explosive mines of feeling and emotion as seldom burst upon one in this world. While Steedman on our left and the Fourth Corps on his right, and the Sixteenth Corps were charging upon and taking successive lines of the enemy, our corps again moved by the flank nearly three miles to our right and front, our whole line having pushed the enemy back in wheeling movement around and upon his right flank, where were built his strongest fortifications, and where he made his most stubborn resistance that day. we reached again the extreme right of our infantry lines. A. J. Smith's force had just taken a high hill and a battery froth enemy. Behind this hill our corps formed and, moving over it near its base upon the opposite side where runs the Harrodsburg pike, passed through the resting lines of the Sixteenth Corps, relieving them and pressed on through a wood to the open fields of the valley. Here the balls from the skirmish line began to fly around our heads and shells from a battery upon the next eminence half a mile to our right shrieked over and tore up the ground before us. Down through the fields, over fences, past a mansion but a few moments since the headquarters of a rebel general, and over the fields and hills we ran. As our regiment climbed to the brow of a slight elevation we dislodged the enemy from a stone wall, losing a standard-bearer and several sergeants of Company I wounded, but escaping wonderfully, by the favorable lay of the ground, that shower of lead. We cast a glance toward the high point from which burst forth the smoke from the enemy's batteries. A regiment in advance of all others had climbed to within a hundred yards of the battery. A horseman had taken its Star Spangled Banner and rode forward to the very mouth of the cannon, then turned around and waved it to this valiant followers. I need not attempt to describe the shout of pride, of triumph and of joy that went up from our corps. The hill and battery were ours. The major who bore our beautiful banner there was Major Dunn, of the Third Tennessee Infantry. Until that hour we had known but little of the magnificence of that

"Flag of the free heart's hope and home,
by angel hands to valor given,
Whose stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all whose hues wee born in heaven."

The shades of evening were falling, the enemy had fled. We entrenched ourselves and lay down to rest. Another hour and our regiment was building strong works on the hill, up near where the last battery was taken. The enemy, half a mile distant, on a hill of equal height, was heard doing a little work. Early on the morning of the 16^th the battery from General Couch's division opened upon the enemy's work at short range, doing splendid execution, piercing repeatedly their works, and even playing the sharpshooter, by crushing through the trees, from which were seen the smoke of rebel skirmishers, bringing audible response. The whole line poured out it volume of iron until about 2 p.m. All days legions of cavalry had been moving to our right. Then came the charge. Our first brigade, General Cooper's, moved from our left and began the assent of that steep hill, the summit of which was the last stronghold of the enemy visible to us. We watched our flag as it moved slowly but steadily up, until it reached the summit, when it waved triumphantly there and the rebels were seen flying before it. The excitement all along the line became intense. The flag that first waved over the enemy's work at the summit of the hill was that of the Twenty-fifth Michgian. A few yards to the right of this point the enemy was seen to plant hurriedly a battery and fire wildly a few shots, when our skirmishers silenced it. A moment more and this was ours. Still on the right and higher up than all, there was such heavy musketry firing as to produce that perfect roll which tells that it is the carbine with its seven or more shots. Suddenly, very suddenly, it ceased. Our cavalry, which in those days of Wolford, had there captured a brigade. The glorious day's work was done. "Ho, for Alabama!" was then out watchword. We marched over their works and on in the pursuit. Such a scene! Their trenches, the cornfields, the Granny White pike, which we then struck, the whole were covered the great and small arms, ammunition and accoutrements, wounded, dead--indeed, all the paraphernalia and debris of a routed army. Glory enough; we had reached the acme of our arms and felt a kind of pity for those who had not been here to see all this.

Soon after this utter rout of Hood's army and its expulsion from Tennessee, the Twenty-third Army corps received order to move east to the city of Washington, and on the 1^st of January, 1865, the Twenty-third Michgian, as part of the corps, left Columbia and took up its line of march for Clifton, one hundred and fifty miles distant, on the Tennessee river, at which point it arrived on the 8^th of the month. On the 16^th it embarked at that place and proceeded thence by steamer, on the Tennessee and Ohio rivers, to Cincinnati, where it arrived on the 22d and immediately left by railroad for Washington. Reaching that city on the 29^th, it went into camp at "Camp Stoneman," D. C., and remained until the 9^th of February. At that time the regiment moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where on the 11^th it embarked with its corps on transports bound for Smithville, North Carolina, at the mouth of the Cape Fear river, reaching that point of destination after a passage of four days. On the 7^th it moved with the other forces in the movement against Fort Anderson, taking position before it on the 18^th under a furious fire of artillery and musketry. Upon the capitulation of the fort and its occupants by the Union forces on the morning of the 19^th of February, the Twenty-third Michigan Infantry was the first regiment to enter the captured work. The regiment was again engaged at Town Creek, north Carolina, on the 209^th, taking three hundred and fifty prisoners and two pieces of artillery. In the morning of the 23d the Union force cross the Cape Fear river to its north bank, and found that the city of Wilmington had been evacuated by the enemy during the previous night. The corps moved up the coast on the 6^th of March, and reached Kinston, North Carolina, just at the close of the severe engagement at that place. In this movement the Twenty-third marched one hundred and twenty-five miles in six days, and during the last twenty-four hours moved constantly without halting, except long enough to draw rations and issue thirty additional rounds of ammunition to the men.

The corps left Kinston March 20, and on the 22d reached and occupied Goldsboro, where on the following day the advance of General Sherman's army made it appearance, coming in from the south. The Twenty-third Regiment was then ordered back ten miles to Mosely hall, to guard the railroad at that point while the army was receiving its supplies. On the 9^th of April the regiment moved with the army on the road to Raleigh, which was reached and occupied by the advance on the 13^th, the Twenty-third Michigan entering the city on the following day and receiving the welcome news of Lee's surrender at Appomattox. The regiment remained at Raleigh until after the war had been closed by the surrender of the Confederate army under Johnston. Its fighting days were over, but its men had yet to experience a little more of the fatigues of marching. On the 3d of May, it moved on the road, by way of Chapel Hill, to Greensboro, ninety miles distant, and reached that town on the 7^th. Two days later it left by rail for Salisbury, north Carolina, and remained there until the 29^th of June when it was mustered out of service. All that now remained of military left to the men of the Twenty-third was the homeward journey to Michgian and their final payment and discharge. They were transported by railroad through Danville and Petersburg to City Point, Virginia, and thence by steamer to Baltimore, Maryland, where they again took railway transportation for the West, and arrived at Detroit, July 7, 1865. On the 20^th of the same month they were paid and disbanded, and each went his way, to know no more of march, and bivouac and battle except as cherished memories of the eventful past.