General Thomas, the prisoners captured from the enemy amounted in all to 11,857 men. If we add to these 1,332 who were exchanged, and 2,207 deserters who received amnesty, the loss of the enemy, aside from their killed, and wounded who were carried off, amounted to 15,396. We captured, also, 72 serviceable guns, and upwards of 3,000 small-arms. Among the prisoners were, one majorgeneral, seven brigadiers, thirty colonels and lieutenantcolonels, twenty-two majors, 813 captains and lieutenants, and eighty-nine surgeons and chaplains. If we take into account the killed and wounded, and the numbers who had joined the campaign only for temporary service, the fact becomes obvious that the army with which Hood invaded Tennessee was practically annihilated. On his arrival at Tupelo, Mississippi, Hood was "relieved at his own request, the Confederate army having lost while under his command between 30,000 and 40,000 men; the ruin of the Confederate cause in Tennessee, and the four States south of it, being consummated through his instrumentality.

We must here put on record our decisive protest against the conduct of Thomas, after Hood's last defeat at Nashville, our protest being based upon all prior precedents from the commencement of this war, the prior campaign in Missouri excepted. We write in no prejudice against General Thomas, or his illustrious predecessors in whose footsteps he refused to follow. What we say is dictated by one motive, to enable our countrymen rightly to understand the past, and to guard against its errors and blunders in the future. The obvious motive and plan of General Thomas was not only to defeat General Hood, but to annihilate his power for further mischief. In all prior victories under our leading commanders, those in Missouri excepted, this latter end seems to have been most carefully guarded against. After a victory over the enemy, the defeated army appeared to become a sacred thing in the regard of our Generals. We have heard it gravely asserted, that on the evening after the battle of Antietam, General Lee sent one of our captured officers to General McClellan, with a letter requesting the latter, in the name of humanity, not to press upon the Confede

rates in their disorganized and weakened condition. All this was pure fiction, of course, and was invented merely to illustrate the conduct of our Generals after a victory. Lee understood the state of facts too well to send such a request. He was well aware that, after a defeat, the Confederate armies were as safe from the perils of pursuit as from the falling of the sky.

After the victory of Thomas in Eastern Kentucky, and the capture of Forts Henry and Donaldson, the entire Confederate army at Bowling Green, as we have shown, lay within the easy grasp of Halleck and Buell. All advance of our forces, and that against solemn protestations, was held back, until the enemy had full time to retire with all their ill-gotten plunder, to take with them $10,000,000 worth of material from Nashville, to concentrate at Corinth, and then move up and slaughter thousands of our brave men at Shiloh. When Halleck had compelled the Confederates to retreat from Corinth, he stood still again until the enemy, by reorganizing his forces, could pass round our army and invade Kentucky a second time. When Buell had hastened back to that State, and by a defeat of the enemy had necessitated his retirement, he then prohibited pursuit, permitting the Confederate commander to retire at his leisure, driving off his immense droves of hogs and cattle and his long trains of waggons loaded with plundered provisions and goods, and afterwards to slaughter more than 50,000 of our men in the battles of Murfreesboro', Chickamauga, and on other fields. After his so-called victory at Antietam, McClellan retired back miles into the country to sleep, prohibited all disturbance of the enemy while passing over the Potomac, and for more than forty days refused all pursuit, thus permitting General Lee to recuperate his forces, and afterwards destroy more than 50,000 of our men in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. After our great victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Port Hudson, nearly 1,000,000 men, "well armed and equipped," with the exception of the single movement of Rosecrans with the Army of the Cumberland, and the relief of our forces, at Chattanooga and Knoxville, nearly 1,000,coo men lay "in stagnant idleness, from July until the beginning of

May of the next year, the Confederacy being thus allowed full time to recover from the blows it had received, to adjust itself to its new relations, and with renewed energies and reorganized armies to enter the field of slaughter for the year 1864, that most bloody year of all the war. As soon as the Confederate lines were broken at Gettysburg, and the power to crush Lee, and end the war, was put into the hands of our General, he ordered an immediate standstill of our forces, until the enemy had leisurely retired beyond the reach of danger. How tenderly, and by word of command, was subsequent pursuit conducted. And when Providence, by a swollen river, had again put the entire Confederate army into our hands, how sacred was that army in the regard of our commander, until the flood had subsided, and the enemy had passed safely and undisturbed over upon his own "sacred soil," with full leisure there to recover strength to slaughter upwards of 150,000 Union soldiers. When Bragg, with a large portion of his guns and material, and his army but a little more than 30,000 strong, retreated before Grant and Sherman at Chattanooga, 100,000 men were compelled to lay idle on the Tennessee, until that defeated and disorganized army had recovered strength to "beat down to the ground more than 50,000 of our "strong and lusty" men. Had Sherman improved his three victories over Hood as Thomas did his two, the Confederate army would have been destroyed at Atlanta, instead of Nashville. It was, undeniably, by the utter and palpable neglect of our Generals to improve the manifest advantages which their victories so often put into their hands, that, more than any one cause, occasioned the amazing protraction of the war, the appalling slaughter of hundreds of thousands of our brave men, and the creation of that Atlantean debt with which our nation is now so oppressed. It was by a departure from such precedents that the military power of the Confederacy was annihilated in the States of Missouri, Arkansas, and in fact in Texas, on the one hand, and, on the other, in those east of the Mississippi, and west of Virginia and the Carolinas.

CHAPTER XXXII.

SHERMAN'S MARCH THROUGH GEORGIA.

ON the 11th November, General Sherman, having sent his sick and wounded back to Chattanooga, having destroyed the railroads and all property which might be used to his injury, having sent his last message to Washington, and cut off all telegraphic communications between himself and the Northern States, commenced his famous march from Rome and Kingston to Savannah, a march of some six weeks' continuance, a march which was made without fighting a battle worthy of being recorded, and in which almost the only impediment encountered was rains, swamps, and bad roads,-a march of 255 miles, and in which we lost in all less than 600 men. Before entering upon his march, General Sherman divided his army, upwards of 60,000 strong, into two grand divisions, commanded by Generals O. O. Howard and H. W. Slocum, each division being constituted of two corps, the four being commanded respectively by Generals P. J. Oosterhaus, F. B. Blair, J. C. Davis, and A. S. Williams; the cavalry being led by General J. Kilpatrick. When the army moved from Atlanta, it was furnished with bread for twenty, and meat, sugar, etc., for forty, and forage for three days, supplies for the rest of the march being drawn from the country. As no incidents worthy of notice occurred during this march, we deem it important merely to direct special attention to the following statements and reflections in respect to it.

The dismantling and depopulation of Atlanta.

On taking possession of Atlanta, General Sherman sent off in different directions, at Government expense, and as

the people elected, all the inhabitants of the city, rendering its habitations tenantless. "This unprecedented measure, General Hood affirmed, "transcends, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever brought to my attention in the dark history of war." Of the truth of that statement posterity will judge. That it is difficult, if not impossible, to find a parallel for it in modern warfare, we deem undeniable. Nor can it be defended, or apologized for, on the ground of expediency. After the destruction of its fortifications and manufactories and railroad communications, and its abandonment by our army, it had no importance as a military post to us, or to the Confederates. Nor did the depopulation of the place give us any facilities for its reoccupation, should we ever have desired to return to it. Just as valid reasons can be offered for the depopulation of Rome, Kingston, Macon, or Savannah, as for Atlanta. To be sure, the people were sent off at Government expense. After being thus conveyed to a certain distance, however, they were left homeless, and without provisions, or the means of obtaining them. We cannot regard the act in any other light than that of needless barbarism, like the desolation inflicted upon the defenceless population of the Shenandoah Valley.

What the highest wisdom demanded of the Confederates at the time of Sherman's invasion.

The same fundamental blunders characterized this war as conducted by the Union, on the one hand, and the Confederate military authorities on the other. We refer to a want of discernment of golden opportunities. When Hood lay at Florence, his army, as we have seen, was at the mercy of Sherman. As soon as Sherman advanced from Atlanta into the interior of Georgia, his army, most obviously and undeniably, lay equally at the mercy of the Confederates. Practicable dispositions on their on their part would have rendered the capture of the entire invading force an absolute certainty. Had Lee, as he might have done, with 10,000 men, reinforced Hardee, who confronted Sherman, and had Hood, with his 45,000 infantry and artillery, and his 12,000 splendid cavalry, pressed upon our wings and rear, Sherman could, by no possibility, have sustained