and orders as rapidly as possible to collect the cavalry serving in Kentucky and Tennessee, to mount, organize, and equip them, and report to Major-General Thomas for duty. These forces, Sherman considered, would enable General Thomas to defend the railway from Chattanooga back, including Nashville and Decatur, and give him an army with which he could successfully cope with Hood, should the latter cross the Tennessee northward. The entire plan of the campaign was communicated to General Thomas, and he was instructed that, as an essential portion of it, he was expected to defend the line of the Tennessee River, to hold Tennessee, in any event, and to pursue the enemy should Hood follow Sherman.

On the 26th, the enemy appeared in some force before Decatur, but after skirmishing for three days withdrew. On the 31st, in spite of all the efforts to the contrary of Croxton's brigade of cavalry, which, as has been seen, was engaged in guarding the river, the enemy succeeded in effecting a lodgment on the north bank of the Tennessee, about three miles above Florence. On the 28th November, Forrest, coming from Corinth with seventeen regiments of cavalry and nine pieces of artillery, having captured a gunboat and two transports, and burned a third at Fort Heiman, seventy-five miles from Paducah, planted batteries above and below Johnsonville, and after cannonading that place for three days, during which our troops burned their transports and stores, withdrew and crossed the Tennessee just above the town.

The same day Schofield, with the Twenty-third Corps, reached Nashville and was hurried on to Johnsonville; and arriving there the night after Forrest's withdrawal, was sent on to join the Fourth Corps at Pulaski, leaving a garrison at Johnsonville. General Schofield was charged with the immediate direction of the operations of these two corps, with instructions to watch Hood's movements, and delay them as much as possible, without risking a general engagement, so as to allow time for A. J. Smith to arrive from Missouri and for Wilson to remount his cavalry. Thomas' effective force, at this moment, numbered twenty-two thousand infantry

and seven thousand seven hundred cavalry, exclusive of the numerous detachments garrisoning Murfreesboro', Stevenson, Bridgeport, Huntsville, Decatur, and Chattanooga, and distributed along the railways to guard them. With these he had to oppose Beauregard, with Hood's three corps and Forrest's, Wheeler's, and Roddy's cavalry, now grouped about Florence, threatening the invasion of Middle Tennessee.

Meanwhile, Sherman, having completed his preparations, received his final instructions, and explained his plans in detail, under strict confidence, to his corps commanders and heads of staff departments, had changed front to the rear and was once more marching towards the south.

During the campaign just closed, the army and the country were called upon to lament the death of the gallant commander of the Seventeenth Corps, Brigadier-General Thomas Edward Greenfield Ransom. He had been suffering at the outset from the fatal dysentery which caused his death, but esteeming it as merely a temporary malady, and unwilling to quit his post at such a time, he had remained in command, continuing to exert himself day and night to the utmost of his power, until, on the 20th, on arriving at Gaylesville, the aggravated nature of his symptoms compelled him to yield his inclinations and go to the rear. On the 29th of October, his end being evidently nigh at hand, he was taken from the stretcher on which he was being carried to Rome, and borne into a house by the roadside, where shortly afterwards he breathed his last.

Born in Norwich, Vermont, on the 29th of November, 1834, and graduating at Norwich University in his seventeenth year, he removed to Lasalle County, Illinois, in 1851, and entered upon the practice of his profession as civil engineer. In 1854, he embarked in the real estate business, at Peru, Illinois, in connection with an uncle, Mr. Gilson, and in December, 1855, joined the house of Galloway and Company, at Chicago, who were largely engaged in land operations. When the rebellion broke out he was living in Fayette County, Illinois, acting as an agent of the Illinois Central Railway Company. Imme

diately after the issue of the President's proclamation of April 16, 1861, calling for seventy-five thousand three months' militia, Ransom raised a company, which was presently attached to the Eleventh Regiment of Illinois Volunteers, whereof, by a vote of the company officers, he was elected major, and duly commissioned accordingly by the governor of the State. On the reorganization of the regiment for the three years' service at the end of July, 1861, Ransom was made its lieutenant-colonel. On the 19th of August he was severely wounded in the shoulder, in a charge at Charleston, Missouri. He took part in the capture of Fort Henry, and led his regiment in the assault on Fort Donelson, where he was again severely wounded, and narrowly escaped death, his clothing being pierced by six bullet-holes, and his horse being shot under him. Though suffering from prolonged sickness, consequent upon his wound and continued exposure, he insisted on remaining with his command, and being soon promoted to the position vacated by the appointment of Colonel W. H. L. Wallace as a brigadier-general, led the regiment through the battle of Shiloh, though again wounded in the head in the early part of the engagement. In January, 1863, he was appointed a brigadier-general, dating from the 29th of November previous, and as such commanded a brigade of Logan's division of McPherson's seventeenth corps during the siege of Vicksburg. Early in August his brigade was sent to occupy Natchez, and was soon afterwards transferred to the Thirteenth Corps, under Major-General Ord, when that corps was assigned to the Department of the Gulf, and he was placed in command of a division. He took part in the brief occupation of the Texas coast by General Banks in the winter of 1863, and in the ill-fated Red River expedition, being so severely wounded in the knee at the battle of Sabine Cross-roads, on the 8th of April, 1864, that the surgeons were divided in opinion on the question of amputation. General Ransom himself decided the dispute in favor of retaining the leg, and recovered, though suffering with a stiff knee, in time to join

Sherman and take command of a division of Blair's seventeenth corps, just before the capture of Atlanta.

By his talents, his patience, his courage, his aptness for command, he had rapidly mounted almost to the highest rewards of his profession, when death closed a career of honor apparently without other limit. Young, enthusiastic, and untiring, brave and skilful, in Ransom's death the Army of the Tennessee lost a jewel second only in lustre to that which fell from its diadem in the death of McPherson.

CHAPTER XX.

THE COLORS POINT TO THE SOUTH.

SHERMAN moved the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps by slow and easy marches on the south of the Coosa back to the neighborhood of Smyrna camp-ground, and the Fourteenth Corps to Kingston, whither he repaired in person on the 2d of November. From that point he directed all surplus artillery, all baggage not needed for the contemplated march, all the sick and wounded, refugees and other encumbrances to be sent back to Chattanooga, and the three corps above-mentioned, as well as Kilpatrick's cavalry, and the Twentieth Corps, then at Atlanta, to be put in the most efficient condition possible for the long and difficult march before them. This operation consumed the time until the 11th of November, when, every thing being ready, General Corse, who still remained at Rome, was directed to destroy the bridges there, as well as all foundries, mills, shops, warehouses, and other property that could be useful to the enemy, and to move to Kingston. At the same time the railway in and about Atlanta, and between the Etowah and the Chattahoochee, was ordered to be utterly destroyed. General Steedman was also instructed to gather up the garrisons from Kingston northward, and to draw back to Chattanooga, taking with him all public property and all railway stock, and to take up the rails from Resaca back, preserving them, that they might be replaced whenever future interests should demand it. The railway between the Etowah and the Oostanaula was left untouched, in view of General Grant's instructions, and because Sherman thought it more than probable that