Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 2

[410] of War: ‘I am just in receipt of a letter from General Sherman from Fayetteville. He describes his army in fine health and spirits, having met with no serious opposition. Hardee keeps in his front at a respectful distance. At Columbia he destroyed immense arsenals and railroad establishments, and forty-three cannon. At Cheraw he found much machinery and war material, including seventy-five cannon and thirty-six hundred barrels of powder. At Fayetteville, he found twenty pieces of artillery and much other material.’

The same day he wrote to Sherman:

I have never felt any uneasiness about your safety, but have felt great anxiety to know just how you were progressing; I knew, or thought I did, that with the magnificent army with you, you would come out safely some place.

Ever since you started on the last campaign, and before, I have been attempting to get something done at the West, both to co-operate with you, and to take advantage of the enemy's weakness there to accomplish results favorable to us. Knowing Thomas to be slow beyond excuse, I depleted his army to reinforce Canby so that he might act from Mobile bay in the interior. With all I have said, he had not moved at last advices. Canby was sending a force of about seven thousand men from Vicksburg towards Selma. I ordered Thomas to send Wilson from Eastport towards the same point, and to get him off as soon after the 20th of February as possible. He telegraphed me that he would be off by that date. He is not yet started [March 16], or had not at last advices. I ordered him to send Stoneman from East Tennessee into North-West