But among the dead was one whose loss no numbers can fitly represent. The accomplished, the brave, the noble McPherson had fallen!

The Army of the Tennessee had lost its commander, every man in its ranks a friend, America a great soldier, and humanity a bright ornament.

CHAPTER XVII. '

ATLANTA WON.

ON the 23d, General Garrard, with his division of cavalry, returned from the expedition sent to Covington to break up the Augusta railway, and reported that, with the loss of only two men, he had succeeded in accomplishing that object, in such a manner as to render the road useless to the enemy during the pending operations, having effectually destroyed the large bridges across the Ulcofauhachee and Yellow rivers, which are branches of the Ocmulgee.

The Macon railway, running at first almost due south, was now the only line by which the Confederate army in Atlanta could receive the supplies requisite to maintain the defence of the place. The problem before Sherman was to reach that road. Schofield and Thomas had closed well up, holding the enemy behind his inner intrenchments, and Logan, with the Army of the Tennessee temporarily under his command, was ordered to prepare to vacate the position on the left of the line and move by the right to the opposite flank, below Proctor's Creek, while General Schofield should extend up to and cover the Augusta road. General Rousseau, who had arrived from his expedition to Opelika, bringing about two thousand good cavalry, of course fatigued with its long and rapid march, was ordered to relieve General Stoneman in the duty of guarding the river near Sandtown, below the mouth of Utoy Creek. Stoneman was then transferred to the extreme left of the line, and placed in command of his own division and Garrard's, numbering in all about five thousand effective troopers. The new cavalry brought by General Rousseau, and which was

commanded by Colonel Harrison, of the Eighth Indiana Cavalry, was added to the command of Brigadier-General Edward M. McCook, making with it a division of about four thousand.

The plan now was that while the Army of the Tennessee should move by the right on East Point to seize the Macon railway, Stoneman and McCook, with their well-appointed columns, were to march in concert, the former by the left around Atlanta to McDonough, and the latter by the right on Fayetteville, and, on the night of July 28th, to meet on the Macon railway, near Lovejoy's, and destroy the road in the most effectual manner. At the moment almost of starting, General Stoneman addressed a note to General Sherman, asking permission, after fulfilling his orders and breaking the railway, to proceed with his command proper to Macon and Andersonville, and release our prisoners of war confined at those points, thirty thousand in number, suffering the extremities of starvation, and rotting by hundreds from the loathsome diseases that follow in its train. "There was something captivating in the idea," says Sherman, and deeming the execution within the bounds of probable success, he consented that after the defeat of Wheeler's cavalry and breaking the road, General Stoneman might make the attempt with his cavalry proper, sending that of General Garrard back to the army. Both cavalry expeditions started at the time appointed.

General McCook, in the execution of his part of the movement, went down the west bank of the Chattahoochee to near Rivertown, where he laid a pontoon bridge with which he was provided, crossed his command, and moved rapidly on Palmetto station, on the West Point railway, where he tore up a section of track, leaving a regiment to create a diversion towards Campbelltown, which was successfully accomplished. McCook then rapidly moved to Fayetteville, where he found a large number of wagons belonging to the rebel army in Atlanta, killed eight hundred mules, and captured two hundred and fifty prisoners. He then pushed for the Macon railway, reached it at Lovejoy's station at the time appointed, burned