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When
General Sherman wrote of our ‘original journey,’ he may have had in mind a letter he sent
General Banks, then in
Louisiana, dated
Nashville, April 3, 1864.
It contained the following paragraph:
‘All is well in this quarter, and I hope by the time you turn against Mobile our forces will again act toward the same end, though from distant points.
General Grant, now having lawful control, will doubtless see that all minor objects are disregarded, and that all the armies act on a common plan.’
Two weeks before this he had returned from the
Cincinnati conference with
General Grant, where the latter communicated to him the plan of the
Atlanta campaign and the movement beyond to
Mobile, as he had in the previous January made them known to
Generals Halleck and
Thomas.
As will be seen these letters were written about a month before the opening of the
Atlanta campaign, and over five months before the date claimed by
General Sherman as the earliest time when he had the March to the
Sea in his ‘mind's eye.’
There are some singular and important omissions in
General Sherman's story.
On page 166, after quoting
Grant's dispatch of November 2d, given above, he says: ‘This [November 2d] was the first time that
General Grant assented to the March to the
Sea.’
And yet, on November 1st, as appears in a dispatch to
General Grant, given in one of
General Sherman's published reports, he said:
‘Hood's cavalry may do a good deal of damage, and I have sent Wilson back with all dismounted cavalry, retaining only about four thousand five hundred.
This is the best I can do, and shall therefore, when I get to Atlanta the necessary stores, move south as soon as possible.’
Was he going without the permission which he here says he did not receive until November 2d?
The fact is, however, that, notwithstanding the statement that
Grant's dispatch of November 2d was his first assent to the March, he had really given such assent three weeks
