While Confederate Cavalry commander Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler was absent, raiding Union supply lines from North Georgia to East Tennessee, Union Army commander Major General William T. Sherman sent cavalry Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick to raid Confederate supply lines.

Leaving on August 18, Kilpatrick hit the Atlanta & West Point Railroad that evening and disabled a small area of the track.

Confederate Infantry Dan Reynolds's Arkansas Brigade appeared and the raiders were forced to fight into the night, finally fleeing to prevent being surrounded.

Plans for the 202-acre (0.82 km2) battlefield include converting the farmhouse into a museum and renovating the barn into a public meetings and event facility, as well as walking trails throughout the property.

In 2010, the National Park Service published a revised assessment of the Civil War battles in Georgia, in which the Battle of Lovejoy was reassessed in terms of its military significance and its geographic extent (ABPP[3]) Contemporary sources (such as Four Years in the Saddle, by William Leontes Curry[4]), state that fighting on August 20 was continuous from Lovejoy to Walnut Creek.