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Consolidated Summaries in the armies of
Tennessee
and
Mississippi
during the campaign commencing
May
7
,
1864
, at
Dalton, Georgia
, and ending after the engagement with the enemy at
Jonesboroa
and the evacuation at
Atlanta
, furnished for the information of
General
Joseph
E.
Johnston
[148]
observing the Federal army of forty-five thousand men under Major-General Grant, between that river and Holly Springs.1 In Arkansas, Lieutenant-General Holmes, who commanded the Trans-Mississippi Department, had a large army, supposed to amount to fifty-five thousand men, the main body, near Little Rock, opposed to no enemy, except garrisons at Helena, and perhaps one or two other points on the Mississippi.
Without actual assignment, I was told, on reporting, that the Government intended to place the Departments of Tennessee and Mississippi under my direction.
This intimation justified me, I thought, in suggesting to the Secretary of War, General Randolph, that, as the Federal troops invading the Valley of the Mississippi were united under one commander, our armies for its defense should also be united, east of the Mississippi.
By this junction, we should bring above seventy thousand men against forty-five thousand, and secure all the chances of victory, and even the destruction of the Federal army; which, defeated so far from its base, could have little chance of escape.
That success would enable us to overwhelm Rosecrans, by joining General Bragg with the victorious army, and transfer the war to the Ohio River, and to the State of Missouri, in which the best part of the population was friendly to us. I visited him in his office for this purpose, and began to explain myself.
Before I had finished, he asked me, with a smile, to listen to a few lines on the subject; and, opening a large letter-book, he read me a letter to Lieutenant-General Holmes, in which he directed
1 Lieutenant-General Pemberton's reports to me.
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