Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

---

[583] whole Department of the Mississippi; Rosecrans was able to send him reinforcements from Missouri; Sherman detached two corps--the Fourth and Twenty-third--to move, by the way of Chattanooga, to the relief of Thomas; and there was little doubt that with this force Thomas could ho d the line of the Tennessee, or if Hood forced it, would be able to concentrate and give a good battle. Sherman was left in command of four army corps, and two divisions of superb cavalry — a force of about sixty-thousand men. When Hood wandered off in the direction of Florence, Sherman was left free to complete his arrangements, and there was nothing to interfere with his grand projected march to the sea. In October, Gen. Grant, who was watching closely the development of the wretched Davis-Hood device to find some compensation for the loss of Atlanta, telegraphed Sherman: “If you were to cut loose, I do not believe you would meet Hood's army, but would be bushwhacked by all the old men, little boys, and such railroad guards as are still left at home.” With nothing, of course, to fear from such an opposition, Sherman telegraphed his determination “to make a wreck of the road, and of the country from Chattanooga to Atlanta, including the latter city; send back all his wounded and worthless, and with his effective army, move through Georgia, smashing things, to the sea.”

The march would, indeed, have been a perilous enterprise, if there had been any considerable force in Sherman's front, or on his flanks. As it was, nothing opposed his march to the sea, and he had simply to pass through the gate-ways which the stupidity of the Davis-Hood campaign had left open. It is amusing to the student of history to have such a plain march entitled a grand exploit, when it was only a question of so many miles motion a day. Sherman knew very well that there was nothing to oppose him; he knew that the Confederacy had been compelled to throw all its fighting power on its frontiers, for Grant had told him “it was but an egg-shell;” he knew that the conscription had exhausted the interiour; he knew that the country he would traverse was peopled with non-combatants, women, and children; he knew that this country abounded with supplies, which the difficulties of transportation had withheld from Richmond. He simply proposed to take plain advantage of these circumstances, and march to the sea-board. There was no genius in this; no daring; it was merely looking the situation in the face. It is said that had Sherman failed he would have been put down as one of the greatest charlatans of the age. But there was no chance of failure when there was nothing to dispute the march. If, indeed, he had attempted the movement with a Confederate army in his front or on his flank, it is highly probable that the adventure would have taken rank with his movement in 1862 on Vicksburg, the greatest fiasco of the war, and his experiment with “the strategic triangle” in 1863, a piece of charlatanism and of dis. ordered execution that should have decided his reputation.