Major General James B. McPherson, the commander of the Union's Army of the Tennessee, had graduated at the head of his West Point class and was a friend of General John Bell Hood, then commanding the Confederate defense of Atlanta.  During the Battle of Atlanta, McPherson was riding to deploy his troops against a Confederate counter-attack when he encountered a group of Confederate skirmishers and was shot.  He was the second highest ranking Union officers to die in battle during the war.  He was thirty-five years old. (By John Osborne) 

On the second day of the piviotal Battle of Jonesborough outside Atlanta, acting Brigadier-General Absalom Baird personally led the men of his division in a bayonet charge that broke through the last Confederate defenses, capturing CSA General Daniel Govan in the process. The enemy were then forced to fall back on Atlanta and, that evening, abandon the city.  Baird, a career soldier, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroics in April 1896. (By John Osborne) 

The battle around Jonesborough, Georgia was a Confederate attempt to break a Union effort to cut irrevocably Southern supply lines around Atlanta. Unaware that Union commander W.S. Sherman had committed much of his army to the maneuver, the two Confederate corps under William J. Hardee found themselves badly outnumbered.  Forced to break off on the second day, CSA commander John Bell Hood ordered the abandonment of Atlanta and Union troops marched into the city the next day. (By John Osborne)