Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II.

[638] (which Hood had just broken, and was purposing more thoroughly to destroy) was fully taxed with transporting the supplies needed by our army; and not a pound of food would be sent in by the Confederates from the adjacent country, whoever might perish. To feed the remaining inhabitants of Atlanta in that city could not cost our Government less than $1,000,000 per quarter, supposing it were at all practicable; while it must greatly cripple Sherman and fetter his future operations, even supposing it could be done at all. To let them stay an starve would have excited still louder and more frenzied denunciations. The order for the removal of the people was therefore at once wise, provident, and humane; yet Mayor J. M. Calhoun and his council appealed to Sherman in deprecation of “the woe, the horror, the suffering” involved in the execution of his order, as if it had been impelled by mere caprice or wanton cruelty, instead of being the stern dictate of an obvious, imperative necessity. And this was but one of many instances wherein the Rebels chilled the admiration which the desperate gallantry of their fighting was calculated to excite, by screechy objurgations, and theatrical appeals for sympathy with their distresses, which they, who had so haughtily and so needlessly rushed into war, should have had the dignity and self-respect to abstain from.

The removal was quietly and humanely effected: all who chose to go South (446 families, 2,035 persons) being transported in wagons at the national cost, with their furniture and clothes, averaging 1,651 pounds per family, to Rough-and-Ready, or to our outpost in that direction ; while those who preferred to come North were brought at Government cost by railroad to Chattanooga. When all was done, Major Clan, of Hood's staff, tendered to Col. Warner, of Sherman's staff, his written acknowledgment¹ of “the uniform courtesy you have shown on all occasions to me and my people, and the promptness with which you have corrected all irregularities arising in our intercourse.” This was the simple truth. The removal was not only right in itself, but was effected with considerate tenderness.

While Sherman was still north of the Chattahoochee, a Rebel raiding, force of cavalry, under Pillow, had dashed into Lafayette, nearly up to Chattanooga, held by Col. Watkins with 400 men, and had very nearly taken it; when Col. Croxton, 4th Kentucky, came up and beat them off; taking 70 prisoners. The killed and wounded on either side were about 100.

Wheeler, after breaking the railroad at Calhoun, as already narrated, appeared before Dalton, which he summoned ; but Col. Leibold held it firmly till Gen. Steedman arrived from Chattanooga and drove the Rebels off. Wheeler now pushed up into East Tennessee, halting at Athens; whence, on being menaced, he dashed eastward across the Little Tennessee, and thence across the Holston at Strawberry plains; and so, circling around Knoxville, he crossed the Clinch near Clinton, and the Cumberland mountains, by Sequatchie, MeMinnville, Murfreesborough,