James D. Porter, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, Tennessee
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[144] but when success was near at hand the appearance of heavy reinforcements caused him to withdraw. Cheatham made a demonstration on Dalton with Strahl's brigade, and the garrison, 1,200 strong, surrendered unconditionally; and at the same time General Bate, under orders of Cheatham, demanded the surrender of a formidable blockhouse a few miles distant. The bearer of the flag, the gallant Capt. H. J. Cheney, had his horse killed under him. The flag was not recognized, whereupon General Bate advanced his artillery and opened fire. The first shell entered a porthole, killing fifteen or twenty of the garrison, and the white flag was run up.

General Beauregard, commanding the military division of the West, in forwarding to the war department the report of General Hood's operations in the Tennessee campaign, under date of January 9, 1865, said: ‘The plan of the campaign into middle Tennessee was correct as originally designed by General Hood, and if carried out without modification, would have compelled General Sherman to return to middle Tennessee to protect and repair his lines of communication before he could have collected enough supplies to march his army from Atlanta to the seacoast. But instead of crossing the Tennessee river at Guntersville, as General Hood had intended when at Gadsden [where General Beauregard had an interview with him], he changed his course while on the march and repaired to Tuscumbia and Florence,’ where three precious weeks were spent, enabling Sherman to repair the road to Chattanooga and collect his supplies for the march to the sea, at the same time affording time to General Thomas, who had been sent to Tennessee, for the concentration of an army at Nashville strong enough to crush Hood even if he had avoided Franklin.

Marching through the beautiful valley of the Tennessee over which Sherman had carried his army to reinforce Grant at Chattanooga, our army was appalled at its desolation. Sherman's iron hand had destroyed it—old men,