-party, under Colonel W. W.
Wright, came down from Chattanooga with iron, spikes, etc., and in
about seven days the road was all right again. It was by such acts
of extraordinary energy that we discouraged our adversaries, for
the rebel soldiers felt that it was a waste of labor for them to
march hurriedly, on wide circuits, day and night, to burn a bridge
and tear up a mile or so of track, when they knew that we could lay
it back so quickly. They supposed that we had men and money
without limit, and that we always kept on hand, distributed along
the road, duplicates of every bridge and culvert of any importance.

A good story is told of one who was on Kenesaw Mountain during our
advance in the previous June or July. A group of rebels lay in the
shade of a tree, one hot day, overlooking our camps about Big
Shanty. One soldier remarked to his fellows:

"Well, the Yanks will have to git up and git now, for I heard
General Johnston himself say that General Wheeler had blown up the
tunnel near Dalton, and that the Yanks would have to retreat,
because they could get no more rations."

"Oh, hell!" said a listener, "don't you know that old Sherman
carries a duplicate tunnel along?"

After the war was over, General Johnston inquired of me who was our
chief railroad-engineer. When I told him that it was Colonel W. W.
Wright, a civilian, he was much surprised, said that our feats of
bridge-building and repairs of roads had excited his admiration;
and he instanced the occasion at Kenesaw in June, when an officer
from Wheeler's cavalry had reported to him in person that he had
come from General Wheeler, who had made a bad break in our road
about Triton Station, which he said would take at least a fortnight
to repair; and, while they were talking, a train was seen coming
down the road which had passed that very break, and had reached me
at Big Shanty as soon as the fleet horseman had reached him
(General Johnston) at Marietta

I doubt whether the history of war can furnish more examples of
skill and bravery than attended the defense of the railroad from
Nashville to Atlanta during the year 1864.

In person I reached Allatoona on the 9th of October, still in doubt
as to Hood's immediate intentions. Our cavalry could do little
against his infantry in the rough and wooded country about Dallas,
which masked the enemy's movements; but General Corse, at Rome,
with Spencer's First Alabama Cavalry and a mounted regiment of
Il