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sufficient to show that the latter was extending his lines during the 26th and also during the 27th, the day of the assault:
Sherman to Schofield, June 26: ‘Is the brigade across Olley's Creek above the Sandtown road, or at the road?’
Sherman to Schofield, June 26: ‘All right.
Be careful of a brigade so exposed, but I am willing to risk a good deal.’
Sherman to Schofield, June 26: ‘Good bridge should be made to-night across Olley's Creek, where the brigade is across, and operations resumed there in the morning early.’
Sherman to Schofield, June 27, 11:45 A. M.: ‘Neither McPherson nor Thomas has succeeded in breaking through, but each has made substantial progress at some cost.
Push your operations on the flank and keep me advised.’
The following parts of dispatches to General Thomas bear upon the same point:
Sherman to Thomas, June 27, 1:30 P. M.: ‘Schofield has one division close up on the Powder Spring road, and the other (division) across Olley's Creek, about two miles to his right and rear.’
Sherman to Thomas, June 27, 4:10 P. M.: ‘Schofield has gained the crossing of Olley's Creek on the Sandtown road, the only advantage of the day.’
Sherman to Thomas, June 27; evening: ‘Schofield has the Sandtown road, within eleven miles of the Chattahoochee, and we could move by that flank.’
As will be seen from the extracts quoted from the Memoirs, General Sherman claims that the assault was the result of a consultation and agreement between himself and Generals Thomas, McPherson, and Schofield.
As a matter of fact the latter did not favor an assault but earnestly discouraged it. Two of these officers are now dead, but the field orders of General Thomas are accessible, and the whole tenor of these disputes General Sherman's claim, as will now appear.
From his telegraph station, on a hill in rear of Thomas'
Cincinnati: Wilstach, Baldwin & Co. 1875.
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