to carry out immediately his own proposition to strike first at Ringgold and then at Cleveland, proposing that General Buckner should threaten Knoxville, General Forrest advance into or threaten Middle Tennessee, and General Roddy hold the enemy in northern Alabama, and thus prevent his concentration in our front. This movement, although it held out no such promise as did the plan of advance before the enemy had had time to make his combinations, might have been attended with good results had it been promptly executed. But no such movement was made or even attempted. General Johnston's belief that General Grant would be ready to assume the offensive before he could be prepared to do so, proved too well founded, while his purpose, if the Federal army did not attack, that we should prepare and take the initiative ourselves, was never car ried out.* On the morning of May 2, 1864, General Johnston discovered that the enemy, under the command of General Sherman, was advancing against him, and two days subsequently it was reported that he had reached Ringgold (about fifteen miles north of Dalton) in considerable force. At this date the official returns show that the effective strength of the Army of Tennessee, counting the troops actually in position at Dalton and those in the immediate rear of that place, was about fifty thousand. When to these is added General Polk's command (then en route), and the advance of which joined him at Resaca, the effective strength of General Johnston's army was not less than 68,620 men of all arms, excluding from the estimate the thousands of men employed on extra duty, amounting, as General Hood states, to ten thousand when he assumed command of the army. *It was during this time, i. e., in March and April, 1864, that Forrest made his extraordinary expedition from north Mississippi across Tennessee to Paducah, Kentucky, and continued his operations against depots of supplies, lines of communication, and troops moving to reënforce Sherman-having, on June 11th, a severe action in Tishemingo with a force estimated at eight or nine thousand, supposed to be on their way to join Sherman. The energy, strategy, and high purposes of Forrest, during all this period, certainly entitle him to higher military rank than that of a partisan, and enroll him in the list of great cavalry commanders. Some of his other expeditions are elsewhere mentioned in these pages. 1864] PLACED AT HIS DISPOSAL. Army at Dalton, May 1, 1864, according to General John ston's estimates *. 37,652 infantry. 2,812 artillery. 2,392 cavalry. Mercer's brigade, joined May 2d... Thirty-seventh Mississippi Regiment, en route.... Dibrell's and Harrison's brigades in rear, recruiting their horses... Martin's division at Cartersville... Polk's command.... Total effective.. 551 To enable General Johnston to repulse the hostile advance and assume the offensive, no effort was spared on the part of the Government. Almost all the available military strength of the south and west, in men and supplies, was pressed forward and placed at his disposal. The supplies of the commissary, quartermaster, and ordnance departments of his army were represented as ample and suitably located. The troops, encouraged by the large accessions of strength which they saw arriving daily, and which they knew were marching rapidly to their support, were eager to advance, and confident in their power to achieve victory and recover the territory which they had lost. Their position was such as to warrant the confident expectation of successful resistance at least. Long mountain-ranges, penetrated by few and difficult roads and paths, and deep and wide rivers, seemed to render our position one from which we could not be dislodged or turned, while that of the enemy, dependent for his supplies upon a single line of railroad from Nashville to the point where he was operating, was manifestly perilous. The whole country shared the hope which the Government entertained, that a decisive victory would soon be won in the mountains of Georgia, which would free the south and west from invasion, would open to our occupation and the support of our armies the productive territory of Tennessee and Kentucky, and so recruit our army in the West as to render it impracticable for the enemy to accumulate additional forces in Virginia. *"Narrative," p. 302. On May 6th the Confederate forces were in position in and near Dalton, which point General Johnston believed that General Sherman would attack with his whole force. This belief seems to have been held by General Johnston until the evening of May 12th, when, having previously learned the proximity of the advance of Lieutenant-General Polk's command, and that the rest of his troops were hurrying forward to reënforce him, but discovering that the main body of Sherman's army was moving round his left flank, via Snake-Creek Gap to Resaca, under cover of Rocky-Face Mountain, he withdrew his troops from Dalton and fell back on Resaca, situated on the Western and Atlantic Railroad, eighteen miles south of Dalton on a peninsula formed by the junction of the Oostenaula and Conasauga Rivers. The Confederate position at this place was strengthened by continuous rifle-pits and strong field-works, by which it was protected on the flanks on the above-named rivers, and a line of retreat across the Oostenaula secured. Information, on May 15th, that the right of the Federal army was crossing the Oostenaula near Calhoun (four miles south of Resaca), thus threatening his line of communications, induced General Johnston to fall back from Resaca toward Adairsville, thirteen miles south on the railroad. General Johnston, in accounting for his abandonment of his strong position at Dalton, and of his subsequent position at Resaca, states that he was dislodged from the first position-that in front of Dalton-by General Sherman's movement to his right through Snake-Creek Gap, threatening our line of communication at Resaca; and from the position taken at Resaca to meet that movement, by a similar one on the part of the Federal General toward Calhoun-the second being covered by the river, as the first had been by the mountains. After abandoning Resaca, General Johnston hoped to find a good position near Calhoun; but, finding none, he fell back to a position about a mile north of Adairsville, where the valley of the Oothcaloga was supposed from the map to be so narrow that his army, formed in line of battle across it, could hold the heights on both flanks. On reaching this point, however, it was found that the valley was so much broader than was supposed, that the 1864] THE BEST HE SAW DURING THE WAR. 553 army, in line of battle, could not obtain the anticipated advantage of ground. Hence a further retreat to Cassville was ordered, seventeen miles farther south, and a few miles to the east of the railroad. Here, supposing that the Federal army would divide, one column following the railroad through Kingston and the other the direct road to the Etowah Railroad Bridge through Cassville, General Johnston hoped that the opportunity would be offered him to engage and defeat one of the enemy's columns before it could receive aid from the other, and, as the distance between them would be greatest at Kingston, he determined to attack at this point. The coming battle was announced in orders to each regiment of the army. The battle, for causes which were the subject of dispute, did not take place as General Johnston had originally announced, and, instead of his attacking the divided columns of the enemy, the united Federal army was preparing to attack him. Here our army occupied a position which General Johnston describes as "the best that he saw during the war," but owing, as he represents, to an expressed want of confidence on the part of Lieutenant-Generals Hood and Polk in their ability to resist the enemy, the army was again (May 19, 1864) ordered to retreat beyond the Etowah. General Hood, in his official report, and in a book written by him since the war, takes a very different view of the position in rear of Cassville, and states that he and General Polk explained that their corps were on ground commanded and enfiladed by the batteries of the enemy, therefore wholly unsuited for defense, and, unless it was proposed to attack, that the position should be abandoned. General Shoup, a scientific and gallant soldier, confirms this opinion of the defects of the position, as does Captain Morris, chief-engineer of the Army of Mississippi, and others then on duty there.* The next stand of our army was at Alatoona, in the Etowah Mountains, and south of the river of that name; but the reported extension of the Federal army toward Dallas, threatening Marietta, was deemed to necessitate the evacuation of that strong position. The country between Dallas and Marietta, * "Advance and Retreat," by J. B. Hood, pp. 98-116. eighteen miles wide, and lying in a due westerly direction from the latter place, constitutes a natural fortress of exceptional strength. Densely wooded, traversed by ranges of steep hills, seamed at intervals by ravines both deep and rugged, with very few roads, and those ill constructed and almost impassable to wheels, it is difficult to imagine a country better adapted for defense, where the advantages of numerical superiority in an invading army were more thoroughly neutralized, or where, necessarily ignorant of the topography, it was compelled to advance with greater caution. The engagements at New Hope Church, June 27th and 28th, though severe and marked by many acts of gallantry, did not result in any advantage to our army. Falling back slowly as the enemy advanced to Acworth (June 8th), General Johnston made his next stand in that mountainous country that lies between Acworth and Marietta, remarkable for the three clearly defined eminences: Kenesaw Mountain, to the west of the railroad, and overlooking Marietta; Lost Mountain, half-way between Kenesaw and Dallas, and west of Marietta; and Pine Mountain, about half a mile farther to the north, forming, as it were, the apex of a triangle, of which Kenesaw and Lost Mountains form the base. These heights are connected by ranges of lower heights, intersected by numerous ravines, and thickly wooded. The right of our army rested on the railroad, the line extending four or five miles in a westerly direction, protected by strong earthworks, with abatis on every avenue of approach. While the enemy, feeling his way slowly, was skirmishing on the right of our position, our army, our country, and mankind at large, sustained an irreparable loss on June 13th in the death of that noble Christian and soldier, Lieutenant-General Polk. Having accompanied Generals Johnston and Hardee to the Confederate outpost on Pine Mountain, in order to acquaint himself more thoroughly with the nature of the ground in front of the position held by his corps, he was killed by a shot from a Federal battery six or seven hundred yards distant, which struck him in the chest, passing from left to right. Since the calamitous fall of General Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh and of General T. J. Jackson at Chancellorsville, the |