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and eight in killed and wounded during the attack.
So it could not have been the assault that finally induced him to leave, but the ‘flanking.’
And this was just as practicable before the assault as after it, and was subsequently made without the cost of a battle.
The above dispatches and extracts suggest all needed comment.
In the extract from the Memoirs quoted above, there is a slur upon
General Thomas, which deserves notice.
Says
General Sherman:
‘Satisfied of the bloody cost of attacking intrenched lines, I at once thought of moving the whole army to a point (Fulton) about ten miles below Marietta. * * * * General Thomas, as usual, shook his head, deeming it risky to leave the railroad’ * * * *
For this insinuation there is no excuse.
The following is the telegram from
Sherman to
Thomas, proposing this very move to the latter:
Are you willing to risk the move on
Fulton, cutting loose from our rail-road?
It would bring matters to a crisis, and
Schofield has secured the way.
In the first place, as
General Sherman communicated with
General Thomas upon this subject by telegraph and in cipher, it is evident that
Thomas could not have shaken his head through that medium; and second, while a figurative shaking might have been communicated in very plain terms, the dispatches show not only that this indication of dissent was wholly wanting, but that on the contrary,
Thomas approved the plan in the following exceedingly suggestive and emphatic manner:
What force do you think of moving with?
If with the greater part of the Army I think it decidedly better than butting against breastworks twelve feet thick and strongly abattised.
