position of General Thomas less secure, I deem it advisable that all the troops now here, save those commanded by General Granger, should return at once to within supporting distance of the forces in front of Bragg's army.

"In behalf of my command, I desire again to thank you and your command for the kindness you have done us.

"I am, general, very respectfuly, your obedient servant, A. E. BURNSIDE, Major-General commanding."

Having seen the forces of General Burnside move out of Knoxville in pursuit of Longstreet, and General Granger's move in, Sherman put his own command in motion to return.

General Howard was ordered to move, by way of Davis' Ford and Sweetwater, to Athens, with a guard formed at Charleston, to hold and repair the bridge which the enemy had retaken after the passage of the army up the river. General Jefferson C. Davis moved to Columbus on the Hiawassee by way of Madisonville, and the two divisions of the Fifteenth Corps moved to Telire Plains, in order to cover a movement of cavalry across the mountain into Georgia to overtake a wagon train of the enemy's which had escaped by way of Murphy. Subsequently, on a report from General Howard that the enemy still held Charleston, Sherman directed General Ewing's division on Athens, and went in person to Telire with General Morgan L. Smith's division. By the 9th, all the troops were in position, holding the rich country between the Little Tennessee and the Hiawassee. The cavalry under Colonel Long passed the mountains at Telire, and proceeded about seventeen miles beyond Murphy, when, deeming his further pursuit of the wagon train useless, he returned on the 12th to Telire. Sherman then ordered him and the division of General Morgan L. Smith to move to Charleston, to which point he had previously ordered the corps of General Howard.

On the 14th of December, all of the command lay encamped along the Hiawassee. Having communicated to General Grant the actual state of affairs, Sherman received orders

to leave on the line of the Hiawassee all the cavalry and proceed to Chattanooga with the balance of his command. Leaving at Charleston the brigade of cavalry commanded by Colonel Long, re-enforced by the Fifth Ohio cavalry, LieutenantColonel Heath, which was the only cavalry properly belonging to the Fifteenth Army Corps, with the remainder Sherman moved by easy marches by way of Cleveland and Tymus Depot into Chattanooga. There he received orders from General Grant to transfer back to the appropriate commands the Eleventh Corps of General Howard and the division of the Fourteenth Corps, commanded by General Jefferson C. Davis, and to conduct the Fifteenth Army Corps to its new field of operations in Northern Alabama.

In closing his report of the memorable campaign thus closed, Sherman wrote to General Grant :

"It will thus appear that we have been constantly in motion since our departure from the Big Black, until the present moment.

"In reviewing the facts, I must do justice to my command for the patience, cheerfulness, and courage which officers and men have displayed throughout, in battle, on the march, and in camp. For long periods, without regular rations or supplies of any kind, they have marched through. mud and over rocks, sometimes barefooted, without a murmur, without a moment's rest. After a march of over four hundred miles, without stop for three successive nights, we crossed the Tennessee, fought our part of the battle of Chattanooga, pursued the enemy out of Tennessee, and then turned more than one hundred miles north, and compelled Longstreet to raise the siege of Knoxville, which gave so much anxiety to the whole country.

"It is hard to realize the importance of these events without recalling the memory of the general feeling which pervaded all minds at Chattanooga prior to our arrival. I cannot speak of the Fifteenth Army Corps without a seeming vanity, but as I am no longer its commander, I assert that there is no better