In the summer of 1864, the best hope the Confederacy had for a victory was that troops under Robert E. Lee in Northern Virginia and Joseph E. Johnston's men in North Georgia would hold out just long enough. If by the U.S. Presidential Election in 1864 the situation seemed so difficult, whoever beat Abraham Lincoln would negotiate a treaty with the Confederacy. It was a slim chance. General William Tecumseh Sherman was steadily moving through Georgia, while Ulysses S. Grant was keeping pressure on Lee. By late July, Sherman had outflanked his was almost right to the rail hub at Atlanta. Then Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston with the much more aggressive John Bell Hood. Hood attacked at Peachtree Creek and saw massive losses. At the end of August, Sherman had surrounded the city and was putting pressure on Hood's lines south of Atlanta at Jonesborough. On August 31, Hood launched an attack that proved disastrous. When Sherman returned the attack on September 1, Hood's lines held, but he decided to evacuate the city anyway, destroying Atlanta's rail lines and munitions factories in massive explosions and handing a massive victory to the Union cause.