a single force. By an advance on this principle, the enemy, by threatening communications, can necessitate the advancing army to weaken itself by constantly leaving large forces behind to protect its rear, and thus at length becoming so weakened that the enemy will be the strongest, and then defeat in detail the invading force. By advancing into Russia on this principle, which he proclaimed as the only proper one, Buonaparte found himself but a little stronger than his enemy at Borodino, and too weak to do anything effective at all when he arrived at Moscow. Hence that disastrous retreat which cost him his empire. Had the French army escaped from Metz, Paris would not have fallen. The communications of the German army would have been so exposed, that they could not have been provisioned around the city. In our discussions before President Lincoln in January 1863, we fully convinced him, and drew from him a distinct avowal of the conviction, that the principle, that under consideration,on which all our invasions of Confederate territory, up to that time, had been made, is a totally false one. The principle on which the campaign under consideration was made is wholly of this bad character, and but for a change in the command of the Confederate army would in all probability have resulted in a national disaster. General Johnston, as we have been informed on authority which we deem perfectly reliable, calculated that at the opening of the campaign the relative amount of the forces of the two armies was as twelve to seven. At the time when he was superseded, he calculated that the ratio stood at seven to six. At that time Sherman was in circumstances where he would be compelled to fight at great disadvantage. One or two battles fought under such circumstances would change the relative strength of the armies, so that the Confederates would be the strongest, and our army would be at their mercy, and would be crushed by superior forces. Such were the definite plans of General Johnston when he was superseded.

On the morning of September 1st, General Sherman, who was then twenty miles from Atlanta, heard sounds which clearly indicated that something of the greatest moment was transpiring in that city. Three days after, he

received intelligence from General Slocum that the sounds heard were the result of the explosion of the Confederate magazines in the city-an event which had been followed by the retirement of Hood and his army, and the peaceable entrance of ours into that same stronghold. Between September 5th and 7th, Sherman returned, and sent a telegram to Washington that "Atlanta has been fairly won.' In capturing the city, but very few prisoners fell into our hands. The loss to the Confederates, however, was immense. The position itself was of great importance; and the munitions, guns, cars, locomotives, manufactories, and machinery, all together constituted a loss truly irreparable.

One fact occurred at this time which does not add to the credit of General Sherman as a general. The Confederate army was now divided into two parts, and these were separated quite a distance from one another, while our army was so located that any amount of force which our commander might deem requisite might have been readily thrown in between the separated parts referred to, and have fallen with crushing weight upon either, or both in succession. Movements might obviously have been made which would have rendered it impossible for General Hood ever to have reunited his army. General Hardee, for example, as Sherman was from careful reconnoissance fully aware, was about twenty-five miles to the south of Atlanta, at a place named Lovejoy, in a strongly entrenched camp, while General Hood with the other half of his army had retired in quite another direction. By placing a strong force between Hood and Hardee, the one half of the Confederate army under the latter must inevitably have been defeated and captured. This golden opportunity, however, was neglected, and the Confederate army was reunited near Jonesboro', it being the fixed policy of our Generals to capture positions, and not armies. Here, by forced conscription, that army was raised to nearly its primal strength, consisting now of 35,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry.

The policy of the Confederate commander, at this crisis, was certainly very shrewd. Passing his entire army over the Chattahoochee, he moved directly upon Sherman's

communications. As soon as our commander became aware of this fact, he sent General Thomas to Nashville, giving him full command of all forces in that department; while General Sherman himself, leaving Slocum with the 20th corps at Atlanta, hastened with the rest of his army to protect his imperilled rear. imperilled rear. Hood made unsuccessful attempts to capture Altoona, then Kingston, Rome, and finally Resaca, to all of which places Sherman pursued the enemy in hot haste, without, however, being able to bring his antagonist to a stand-up fight, an event which, by this time, misfortune had taught Hood sufficient wisdom not to desire. At Fayetteville all movements and dispositions to bring on a general engagement having failed, and the enemy, passing round our front, and moving by our left, having suddenly become invisible, and gone our commander could not divine whither, the pursuit was given over. Halting finally near Galesville, Ala., and searching in vain for his vanished foe, our commander concluded that Hood had passed over Sand Mountain, and was moving in the direction of Nashville. This conjecture was confirmed by information that Hood, passing Decatur, had crossed the Tennessee at Florence, and was marching, or making preparation to march, into Tennessee. Detaching the 4th corps under Stanley, and the 23rd under Schofield, with the mass of his cavalry under Wilson, with orders to march to Chattanooga and report to Thomas, Sherman, with a single division of cavalry under Kilpatrick, and the rest of his army, returned to Atlanta to prepare for his famous march across the State of Georgia. Thus ended this Atlanta campaign, a campaign which, as we have seen, involved a fundamental error in its plan, was prosecuted with much skill and energy, and at a vast expenditure of men and treasure, and produced comparatively small results to the benefit of the nation. Of the verity of this statement, the reader will be rendered fully aware when we shall have noticed certain operations west of the Mississippi, and then presented a general view of the state of affairs, together with the plan of the Confederates at this time.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

OPERATIONS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

"THE Comprehensive plan" of General Grant comprehended, as we have stated, the idea of a nearly simultaneous movement upon the enemy, on a line quite 1,500 miles in extent,-namely, that of the Potomac, under Grant himself, in Virginia; that of the Cumberland, under Sherman, in Georgia; and two others, one under Banks, and another under Steele, in Texas and Arkansas. The results of the first two campaigns are before us. Let us now turn our thoughts to the current of events west of the Mississippi.

As early as January 1864, General Banks had planned a campaign in Texas, by way of Galveston,—a plan to enter the State from the sea-coast. This plan was superseded by another and different one, a movement up the Red river for the capture of Shreveport, and the general conquest of the State. This plan was to some extent matured before General Grant assumed supreme command, but was after that adopted as a part of his "comprehensive plan." The force set apart for this movement amounted to quite 40,000 men. Of these, some 15,000

were under the immediate command of General Banks at Franklin, Louisiana, and 15,000 under General Steele at Little Rock, Arkansas, while 10,000 were to be sent from Vicksburg, up the Red river, under General A. J. Smith. These forces, attended by Admiral Porter with a fleet of fifteen ironclads and four lighter steamers, were under four distinct and independent commands, neither reporting or accountable to the other. "While four forces," said General Banks, before the Committee on the Conduct of the War,-" General Steele's, Sherman's (under General

Smith), Admiral Porter's, and my own,-were operating together, neither one of them had a right to give a command to the other. General Smith never made any report to me, but considered his as substantially an independent force. It took us twenty days to communicate with General Steele; and then we could only state our position, ask what he was doing, and give advice; but we could not tell whether he followed the advice or not, or what he was doing." The result of a grand expedition thus conducted could not but be a failure. Steele's army never came upon the field at all. Of the 10,000 sent from Vicksburg, 3,000 marines were soon recalled to guard the Mississippi. At Alexandria, some seventy or eighty miles up the Red river, 3,000 more troops had to be left to guard the depôt of supplies. After getting up some distance farther, to Natchitochis, the river was found to be too low to float safely the heavy ironclads, and all means to remedy the evil proved ineffectual; while in an important crisis, General Franklin, as might have been expected, failed to come up in time. After fighting several bloody battles, in the most important of which, that at Pleasant Hill, both parties claimed the victory, the expedition returned with the acknowledged loss of quite 5,000 men. General Banks, who had to bear the blame of the blunders of his superiors, was now superseded, General Canby being put in command.

General Steele, after making ineffectual efforts to enter into communication with General Banks, gave over all attempts to reach Shreveport; and, on hearing of the latter's reverses, faced in the opposite direction. The efforts of the Confederates were now directed mainly to two ends-the recovery of Arkansas, and a grand invasion of Missouri. In both respects those efforts were successful. After various battles of greater and less importance, battles in some of which one party, and in others the other, was successful, Arkansas was practically recovered to the Confederacy, and about the middle of September, General Price, having been reinforced by General Shelby, entered South-Eastern Missouri with an army from 20,000 to 30,000 strong, and met with no resistance until he encountered a single brigade under General H. S. Ewing, at Pilot Knob.