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.

[633] loss was 3,722, of whom perhaps 1,000 were prisoners. Gen. Logan counted on the battle-field 2,200 Rebel dead, and estimates that there were 1,000 more not within our lines or who otherwise escaped observation. We took 1,000 prisoners, beside the many wounded who fell into our hands; and Gen. Sherman estimates that Hood's total loss this day can not have been fewer than 8,000. Among his killed was Maj.-Gen. W. H. T. Walker, of Georgia. Gen. Garrard, with his cavalry, returned from Covington next day; having broken up the railroad, destroyed a train of cars, with much other property, and bringing in 200 prisoners, with a total loss of two men.

Hood was not inclined to force the fighting directly thereafter; and Sherman, while quietly preparing for a new movement by the right, dispatched his now augmented cavalry on a raid against the railroads in Hood's rear. Stoneman, with his own and Garrard's divisions, 5,000 strong, was to move by the left around Atlanta to McDonough; while A. D. McCook, with his own and Rousseau's (now Harrison's) freshly arrived divisions, numbering 4,000, was to move by the right to Fayetteville, thence coming up the road and joining Stoneman at a designated point near Lovejoy's. Such cooperative movements rarely succeed, and almost never in tle hands of second and third-rate leaders.

McCook moved down the west bank of the Chattahoochee to River-town, crossed on a pontoon, and tore up the West Point railroad near Palmetto station; thence pushing on to Fayetteville, where he captured and burnt 500 wagons belonging to Hood's army; taking 250 prisoners, killing 800 mules, and bringing away others; thence striking, at Lovejoy's, at the time appointed, the Macon railroad, and tearing it up; but meeting no Stoneman, and getting no news of him. He thence pushed south-west to Newnan, on the West Point road; where he was confronted by infantry coming from Mississippi to aid in the defense of Atlanta, while the Rebel cavalry were hard on his heels: so he was forced to fight against odds, compelled to drop his prisoners, and make his way out as he could, with a loss of 500 men, including Col. Harrison, captured. He reached Marietta without further loss.

Stoneman's luck — that is, his management — was far worse. He failed to meet McCook as directed, and divided the force he had ; sending Gen. Garrard to Flat Rock to cover his own movement to McDonough. Garrard, after lingering some days, and skirmishing heavily with Wheeler's cavalry, hearing nothing from Stoneman, made his way back, with little loss, to our left.

Stoneman started with a magnificent project, to which he had, at the last moment, obtained Sherman's assent. He purposed to sweep down the road to Macon, capture that city, pushing thence by the right to Andersonville, where many thousands of of our captured soldiers were suffering inconceivable privations, liberate and, so far as possible, arm them, and then move with them to our lines in such direction as should seem advisable. The conception was a bold yet not necessarily a bad one; but it needed a Sheridan instead of a Stoneman to execute it. Sherman's assent to it was based on his orders that the