previous next
[459] Sherman's condition became more hazardous as he approached Atlanta, and that of the Confederate army absolutely safe, when it reached the place, in which, as I have already said,1 it could neither be assailed nor invested. General Grant, on the contrary, found a secure base on James River. The assertion that the Army of Tennessee lost twenty-five thousand men while under my command is an enormous exaggeration. The only authentic statement of that loss is in the reports of Surgeon A. J. Foard, medical director. According to them,2 it was nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-two killed and wounded. We had good reason to think the enemy's loss six times as great. It is a calumny to say that the Army of Tennessee was dispirited or broken down. It had never before been in finer condition — the men in a high state of discipline, and full of confidence from uniform success in their engagements with the enemy, and the horses of the cavalry and artillery, and the mules of the trains, in fine order for service-much better than when the campaign was begun. As for fatigue, they but once made more than a half-day's march in one day,3 and never two half-days' marches in two consecutive days. I was never questioned as to my ability to hold Atlanta. General Bragg, who undoubtedly visited the

1 Page 358.

2 Less than a sixth of the number were killed. At Dalton, and thence to the Etowah, four hundred and forty-four were killed, and two thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight wounded. Near New. Hope Church three hundred and nine were killed and one thousand nine hundred and twenty-nine wounded. Thence, to the Chattahoochee, five hundred and thirty-five were killed, and three thousand nine hundred and thirty-five wounded. Cavalry are not included.

3 From Allatoona to New-Hope Church.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)
hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
William T. Sherman (1)
Grant (1)
A. J. Foard (1)
Braxton Bragg (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: