After completion of this unpleasant task, Hood determined to reverse Sherman’s strategy and to move with his whole army around Atlanta to draw Sherman after him into Alabama or Tennessee. In late September the Confederates crossed the Chattahoochee and marched northward over many of the summer’s battlefields. Sherman left a strong garrison in Atlanta and followed Hood northward for several weeks. Unable to bring his opponent to bay, Sherman detached a strong force to deal with the Confederates and returned to Atlanta. Hood’s army was virtually destroyed in several battles fought in Tennessee in November and December. Sherman, meanwhile, reorganized his armies and on November 15 burned Atlanta and marched out of the city on his way to the sea. The final importance of the Atlanta Campaign may lie more in its psychological impact than in any military results. Essentially, in early September, the Confederate military forces were in the same position relative to the Northern armies that they had held early in the spring. Psychologically, however, there had been a great shift. The news that Atlanta had fallen meant that the average Northerner had at last a tangible military victory that made it possible for him to see the end of the war in the future. There would be more months of marching, fighting, and dying, but Sherman’s capture of Atlanta convinced many that the Confederacy was doomed. [Illustration: {uncaptioned}] SHERMAN IN ATLANTA: A Photographic Portfolio On September 3, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln telegraphed the commanding officer of the Federal Military Division of the Mississippi: “The national thanks are rendered ... to Major-General W. T. Sherman and the officers and soldiers of his command before Atlanta, for the distinguished ability and perserverence displayed in the campaign in Georgia which, under Divine favor, has resulted in the capture of Atlanta. The marches, battles, sieges and other military operations that have signalized the campaign, must render it famous in the annals of war, and have entitled those who have participated therein to the applause and thanks of the nation.” The Union soldiers had, in Sherman’s words, “completed the grand task which has been assigned us by our Government.” Atlanta, chief rail hub of the Confederacy and one of the South’s principal distributing, industrial, commercial, and cultural centers, was in Federal hands at last. It was a choice prize.