e
also safely kept the gloves and dispatches.

After crossing the river Schofield rode to the fort that had been built
the year before on the high bluff which formed the north bank. From this
elevated position he had a good view of a large part of the battle-field
and the heavy guns in the fort were engaged in firing on the nearest flank
of the enemy; but he was not only well beyond the range of every rebel
bullet that was fired, but he was also so far away by the road which a
staff officer must take to communicate with the firing line, that he was
wholly out of touch with the troops that were fighting the battle. His
presence in the fort had no more to do with the repulse of Hood's assault
than if he had been the man-in-the-moon looking down upon the
battle-field. The only order that he sent from the fort was the order to
retreat after the army had won a great victory. When this order reached
Cox he made a manly protest against it. He explained the wrecked condition
of the rebel army to the staff officer, who brought the order, and giving
his opinion that retreat was wholly unnecessary, he urged the officer to
return to Schofield and persuade him to countermand the order. He also
sent his brother, Captain Cox, of his own staff, to remonstrate with
Schofield, and to say that General Cox would be responsible with his head
for holding the position. When Captain Cox reached the fort he found that
Schofield already had started for Nashville. The Captain hurried in
pursuit and, overtaking Schofield on the pike and delivering his message,
was told that the order to retreat would not be recalled and must be
executed. In Wagner's division we had been marching, or fortifying, or
fighting for more than forty hours continuously, and believed that we had
reached the limit of human endurance, but we still had to plod the
eighteen weary miles to Nashville before getting any rest.

In January, 1865, Schofield, with the corps that he was then commanding,
was transferred from Tennessee to North Carolina. When he passed through
Washington en route he had the opportunity of giving to President Lincoln
a personal account of his campaign in Tennessee. The president must have
known in a general way, that at Franklin the rebel army had made a very
desperate assault which had been most disastrously repulsed, but he
certainly was ignorant of the details of the battle, and in the absence of
any information to the contrary, his natural inference