By late May 1864, William Tecumseh Sherman's Atlanta campaign had settled into a deadly chess match. Sherman commanded three armies totaling over 100,000 men, pushing south against General Joseph Johnston's Confederate Army of Tennessee, which fielded roughly 65,000 to 75,000 troops. After compelling Johnston to fall back to the strong defenses at Allatoona Pass, Sherman refused a frontal assault and instead attempted a wide sweep around the Confederate western flank. Johnston anticipated the move, shifting his forces southwest to block it. On May 25, Sherman's first thrust was defeated at New Hope Church, a place Union soldiers grimly renamed the "Hell Hole" after suffering 1,665 casualties in three hours of fighting that ended in a thunderstorm. Both sides entrenched. Sherman then ordered Major General Oliver Otis Howard's IV Corps, supported by other formations, to find and turn Johnston's right flank. It was a sound idea on a map. The terrain told a different story.

Howard withdrew Thomas J. Wood's division from its freshly dug trenches at dawn on May 27 and formed it into a column of brigades -- six lines of men, one behind the other. The forests were so dense that Wood gave the colonel of his lead regiment a compass to guide the march. A supporting division under Richard Johnson formed into a similar column. After marching through the woods, Howard ordered both columns to wheel right and prepare to attack. Skirmishers discovered entrenched Confederates ahead, so Howard shifted the assault point farther north. He assigned Brigadier General Nathaniel McLean's brigade to support Wood's right flank -- a fateful choice. Howard and McLean carried a bitter grudge between them dating to the Battle of Chancellorsville, and historian Albert Castel later wrote that "of all the brigade commanders in Sherman's army, a worse one to assist in Howard's attack could not have been found." Meanwhile, Johnston had transferred Patrick Cleburne's division to his extreme right flank, deploying Granbury's Texas brigade and Govan's Arkansas troops along a ridgeline above a ravine.

At 4:30 p.m., Wood sent Hazen's brigade forward alone. His men pushed through about 1,000 dismounted Confederate cavalrymen deployed in a thin skirmish line, forcing them back to a ravine. Beyond it rose a ridge. As Hazen's soldiers surged toward it, Granbury's Texans reached the crest just ahead of them. The Confederates took cover and opened devastating fire. Some of Hazen's men shouted "Ah, damn you, we have caught you without your logs!" as they rushed forward, but they were stopped cold. Hazen swung his second-line regiments toward a cornfield on the left. Govan sent the consolidated 8th and 19th Arkansas Infantry to shore up the cavalry. Cleburne deployed Lowrey's brigade on Granbury's right. No units from Johnson's division ever appeared to support the attack. After 50 minutes of taking heavy casualties with his ammunition running low, Hazen's survivors spontaneously withdrew. Wood then sent Gibson's brigade forward, but it was stopped by the same ferocious fire. Scribner's brigade finally arrived on Gibson's left, only to be pinned down by enfilading rifle fire. On Gibson's right, McLean's troops did nothing at all.

At 6 p.m., word came that Sherman had cancelled the attack 45 minutes earlier. Howard ordered Knefler's brigade forward to hold the line while entrenchments were dug. Knefler's men blundered into the ravine and were struck by intense fire. They pulled back and, joined by regiments from Scribner's brigade, exchanged shots with the Confederates until nightfall. After dark, Knefler's soldiers crept forward to retrieve as many wounded as possible from the killing ground. At 10 p.m., Granbury ordered his Texans to charge into the ravine to drive off any remaining Federals. In pitch darkness, few men were hit by bullets, but the Texans captured numerous Union soldiers and chased others away. That night, a veteran of the Texas brigade was assigned to picket duty in the ravine. At dawn, the carnage sickened him so badly he had to leave. He noted that many of the Federal dead had been shot in the head -- the grim result of defenders firing downhill from a ridgeline at men in a ravine.

Cleburne's division reported 448 casualties, mostly in Granbury's brigade. Union losses totaled 1,600 killed, wounded, and missing. The ratio of killed to wounded was abnormally high -- the Confederates found one corpse with 47 bullet holes. Hazen's brigade alone suffered 467 casualties, Gibson's lost 681, and Knefler's lost 250, mainly prisoners. The battle was overshadowed by the larger campaign and largely forgotten. But Ambrose Bierce, who served as a topographical engineer on Hazen's staff and watched the disaster unfold, never forgot. He wrote an account titled "The Crime at Pickett's Mill" that stands as one of the most searing eyewitness descriptions of Civil War combat. Today the battlefield is preserved as Pickett's Mill Battlefield Historic Site, a Georgia state park at 4432 Mount Tabor Church Road in Dallas, Georgia. The earthworks used by both sides remain visible. Hiking trails wind through the same dense woods where soldiers navigated by compass, and the ravine where so many men fell is still there, quiet now, the creek running past Malachi Pickett's long-vanished grist mill.