[
172]
And at the time, in a letter to
General Halleck, dated December 24th (not given in the Memoirs), he wrote:
‘I felt somewhat disappointed at Hardee's escape from me, but really am not to blame.
I moved as quick as possible to close up the ‘Union causeway,’ but intervening obstacles were such that before I could get my troops on the road Hardee had slipped out. Still, I know that the men that were in Savannah will be lost, in a measure, to Jeff. Davis, for the Georgia troops under G. W. Smith declared they would not fight in South Carolina, and they have gone north en route for Augusta; and I have reason to believe the North Carolina troops have gone to Wilmington; in other words, they are scattered.’
But these reflections will scarcely break the force of
Mr. Stanton's words, heretofore quoted, from a dispatch to
General Grant:
‘It is a sore disappointment that Hardee was able to get off his fifteen thousand from Sherman's sixty thousand.
It looks like protracting the war while their armies continue to escape.’
It might be supposed that in treating of the
Savannah campaign after the lapse of so many years,
General Sherman would not introduce matter reflecting upon
Thomas, whose victory at
Nashville furnished the only justification for the March to the
Sea.
How far he does violence to so charitable a supposition will appear in another chapter.
