[
151]
before, in the following answer to
Sherman's telegram of October 11th, heretofore quoted:
Your dispatch of to-day received.
If you are satisfied the trip to the sea-coast can be made, holding the line of the
Tennessee River firmly, you may make it, destroying all the railroad south of
Dalton or
Chattanooga, as you think best.
In this permission also, the condition of holding
Tennessee firmly against
Hood is prominent.
The next day
General Grant again telegraphed as follows:
On reflection I think better of your proposition.
It will be much better to go south than to be forced to come north.
You will, no doubt, clear the country where you go of railroad tracks and supplies. * * * *
General Sherman, on page 154, says he received no answer to his
Kingston dispatch ‘at the time.’
The reason is obvious.
It was dated 11:30 P. M. of the 11th, and the next day
Sherman left for
Rome.
His telegraphic communications with
Kingston and with
Washington, however, remained perfect, and it is not likely that a dispatch from the
Lieutenant-General, directing the march of an army through to the sea-coast, would be long delayed.
If he had never received it in the field, however, he need not now have made the above mistake of three weeks in so important a date, since
General Grant's reply of October 11th was printed in full in his final report of the operations of the armies.
On page 157
Sherman says: ‘So it is clear that at that date [October 17] neither
General Grant nor
General Thomas heartily favored my proposed plan of campaign.’
And yet the day before this he had telegraphed
Halleck:
‘I got the dispatch in cipher about providing me a place to come out on salt water, but the cipher is imperfect, and I can not make out whether ’
