of
what our great army was made of.

In the spring of 1864 we became a part of the great Army in the Atlanta
campaign. When we arrived at Chattanooga, on the 5th of May, I called at
General Sherman's headquarters. General McPherson, our Army Commander, was
there. Sherman said to him: "You had better send Dodge to take Ship's
Gap." "Why, General," replied McPherson, "that is thirty miles away, and
Dodge's troops are not yet unloaded, and he has no transportation with
him." Sherman said: "Let him try it, and have the transportation follow."
We struck out, and that night at midnight Sprague's Brigade of the Fourth
Division of the Sixteenth Corps had gained the Gap. The enemy appeared the
next morning. This opened the way through Snake Creek Gap, planting us in
the rear of Johnston's Army, and forcing him to abandon his impregnable
position at Dalton.

Our battles in the Atlanta campaign were those of the Army of the
Tennessee. The left wing received continual commendation until the great
battle of the 22d, when it happened to be in the rear of our Army, and
received and defeated the celebrated movement of Hood to our rear.
Sprague's Brigade fought all day at Decatur, and saved our trains. In the
battle of the 22d of July we had only five thousand men in line, but met
and repulsed three Divisions of Hardee's Corps, and McPherson, who stood
on our right and witnessed the fight, watching the charge of Fuller and
Mersey, and the breaking of two of the enemy's columns, spoke of us in the
highest terms, and five minutes later was dead. Our Army, who knew and
loved him, never could reconcile ourselves to his great loss.

The Battle of Atlanta was one of the few battles of the war where the
attack on the Sixteenth Army Corps caught it on the march in the rear of
the Army, without intrenchments or protection of any kind, both sides
fighting in the open.

In his address describing the battle of the 22d of July, General Strong,
of General McPherson's staff, says:

General McPherson and myself, accompanied only by our orderlies, rode
out and took position on the right of Dodge's line, and witnessed the
desperate assaults of Hood's army. General McPherson's admiration for
the steadiness and bravery of the Sixteenth Corps was unbounded. Had
the Sixteenth Corps given way the rebel army would have been in the
rear of the Seventeenth and Fifteenth Corps, and would have swept like
an avalanche over our suppl