By this time the people of Georgia were fully roused from their old feeling of false security. They had seen the Union Army march triumphantly over the mountain barrier at the northwest. They had seen their favorite commander, Johnston, and his great army, driven from point to point and forced to surrender positions which had been deemed impregnable. And now Sherman's conquering hosts, flushed with success, had crossed the Chattahoochee and lay only eight miles from Atlanta. Consternation prevailed throughout the State, and the people of Atlanta itself were panic-stricken. Nor were they allowed to gain new courage by a respite. Sherman's advance upon the city suffered no delay. A strong cavalry force was pushed forward from Decatur, Alabama, to Opelika, and thence to Marietta, completely cutting off Johnston's army from all sources of supply and reinforcement in that direction. Sherman also brought up fresh stores from Chattanooga. July 17th a general advance was made.
On this very day the Rebel government at Richmond committed an act that was worth three victories to the Union Army. There had long been antagonism between Joe Johnston and J. P. Benjamin, the Rebel Secretary of War, and Jefferson Davis had sympathized with the latter. Benjamin had now been removed from office, but his successor, Seddon, had inherited the antagonism to Johnston. So now, on July 17th, a dispatch came to Johnston from Richmond, saying that since he had failed to check Sherman's advance the government had no confidence in his ability to do so, and ordering him immediately to surrender his command to General Hood. This did great injustice to Johnston, but it also did greater injury to Rebel cause. Hood was a brave general, but rash and not competent to direct the operations of a great army in an important campaign. Indeed he himself felt most deeply his unfitness to continue Johnston's work, although he of course resolved to do his best.
In response to the harsh criticisms made upon him for not fighting a decisive battle with Sherman, Johnston said:
"Defeat would have been our ruin. Our troops, always fighting under cover, had trifling losses when compared with the enemy, whose numerical superiority was thus reduced daily and rapidly. We could, therefore, reasonably expect to cope with him on equal terms by the time that the Chattahoochee was passed. Defeat on our side of that river would have been his destruction. We, if beaten, had a refuge in Atlanta too strong to be assaulted, too extensive to be invested. I also hoped, by breaking the railroad in his rear, that he might be compelled to attack us in a position of our own choosing, or to a retreat easily converted into a rout. After we crossed the Etowah, five detachments of cavalry were successively sent with instructions to destroy as much as they could of the railroad between Dalton and the Etowah; all failed, because too weak. We could never spare a sufficient body of cavalry for this service, as its assistance was absolutely necessary in the defence of every position we occupied. Early in the campaign the statements of the strength of cavalry in the Departments of Mississippi and East Louisiana given me by Lieutenant-General Polk, just from that command, and my telegraphic correspondence with his successor, led me to hope that a competent force could be sent from Mississippi and Alabama to prevent the use of the railroad by the United States army."