l almost entirely upon the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Corps and two Divisions of the Fifteenth Corps, three Brigades
of the Sixteenth being absent. The attack of the enemy was made along this
line some seven times, and they were seven times repulsed.

We captured eighteen stands of colors, 5,000 stands of arms, and 2,017
prisoners. We lost in killed and wounded 3,521 men and ten pieces of
artillery, and over 1,800 men, mostly from Blair's Corps, were taken
prisoners. The enemy's dead reported as buried in front of the different
Corps was over 2,000, and the enemy's total loss in killed, wounded and
prisoners was 8,000.

The criticism has often been made of this battle that with two Armies idle
that day, one the Army of the Ohio (two-thirds as large as the Army of the
Tennessee) and the other the Army of the Cumberland (the largest of all
Sherman's Armies), why we did not enter Atlanta. General Sherman urged
Thomas to make the attack; Thomas's answer was that the enemy were in full
force behind his intrenchments. The fact was that Stewart's Corps was
guarding that front, but General Schofield urged Sherman to allow him to
throw his Army upon Cheatham's flank, in an endeavor to roll up the
Confederate line and so interpose between Atlanta and Cheatham's Corps,
which was so persistently attacking the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps
from the Atlanta front. Sherman, whose anxiety had been very great, seeing
how successfully we were meeting the attack, his face relaxing into a
pleasant smile, said to Schofield, "Let the Army of the Tennessee fight
it out this time." This flank attack of Schofield on Cheatham would have
no doubt cleared our front facing the Atlanta intrenchments, but Stewart
was ready with his three Divisions and the Militia to hold them.

General Sherman, in speaking of this battle, always regretted that he did
not allow Schofield to attack as he suggested, and also force the fighting
on Thomas's front; but no doubt the loss of McPherson really took his
attention from everything except the Army of the Tennessee.

At about 10 o'clock on the night of the 22d, the three Corps commanders of
the Army of the Tennessee (one of them in command of the Army) met in the
rear of the Fifteenth Corps, on the line of the Decatur road, under an oak
tree, and there discussed the results of the day. Blair's men were at the
time in the trenches; in some places the enemy held one side and they the
other. The men of the Fifteent