of attack was for Hardee to form entirely in the rear of the
Army of the Tennessee, but Hardee claims that he met Hood on the night of
the 21st; that he was so late in moving his Corps that they changed the
plan of attack so that his left was to strike the Seventeenth Corps. He
was to swing his right until he enveloped and attacked the rear of the
Seventeenth and Fifteenth Corps.

Hood stood in one of the batteries of Atlanta, where he could see Blair's
left and the front line of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps. He says he
was astonished to see the attack come on Blair's left instead of his rear,
and charges his defeat to that fact; but Hardee, when he swung his right
and came out in the open, found the Sixteenth Corps in line in the rear of
our Army, and he was as much surprised to find us there as our Army was at
the sudden attack in our rear. The driving back by the Sixteenth Corps of
Hardee's Corps made the latter drift to the left and against Blair,--not
only to Blair's left, but into his rear,--so that what Hood declares was
the cause of his failure was not Hardee's fault, as his attacks on the
Sixteenth Corps were evidently determined and fierce enough to relieve him
from all blame in that matter.

Historians and others who have written of the Battle of Atlanta have been
misled by being governed in their data by the first dispatches of General
Sherman, who was evidently misinformed, as he afterwards corrected his
dispatches. He stated in the first dispatch that the attack was at 11
a. m., and on Blair's Corps, and also that General McPherson was killed
about 11 a. m. The fact is, Blair was not attacked until half an hour
after the attack upon the Sixteenth Corps, and McPherson fell at about 2
p. m. General Sherman was at the Howard House, which was miles away from
the scene of Hardee's attack in the rear, and evidently did not at first
comprehend the terrific fighting that was in progress, and the serious
results that would have been effected had the attack succeeded.

The battle began within fifteen or twenty minutes of 12 o'clock (noon) and
lasted until midnight, and covered the ground from the Howard House along
the entire front of the Fifteenth (Logan's) Corps, the Seventeenth
(Blair's) on the front of the Sixteenth (which was formed in the rear of
the Army), and on to Decatur, where Sprague's Brigade of the Sixteenth
Army Corps met and defeated Wheeler's Cavalry--a distance of about seven
miles.

The