them, because they were performed out
of sight in Alabama and Georgia, while the attention of the country was
fixed upon the fall of Richmond and the great events immediately following
it. For this reason it is believed that the brief story here presented
will not be without interest.

H. V. B.

WASHINGTON, D. C., _September_, 1896.

WAS GENERAL THOMAS SLOW AT NASHVILLE?

A new generation has come upon the stage since our civil war. It has its
own writers on the events of that struggle. Some of these, careful
students as they are, make proper and effective use of the stores of
material which the Government has collected and published. Others,
stumbling upon interesting dispatches of notable campaigns, read them in
connection with the ill-considered and hasty criticisms of the hot times
which brought them forth, and, finding questions settled twenty years ago,
but entirely new to themselves, they proceed to reveal them as new things
to the new generation. By this process it has recently been announced that
General Thomas was slow at Nashville. To give this echo of thirty-two
years ago sufficient voice, several columns of dispatches--which a quarter
of a century since formed the basis of discussions that demolished the
theory they are now brought forward to sustain--are gravely presented as
something new.

Nothing better illustrates this situation than the very familiar story of
the Irishman who assaulted the Jew for the part he took in the
Crucifixion, and upon being remonstrated with upon the ground that the
event occurred eighteen hundred years ago, replied that it was
nevertheless new to him, as he had only heard of it the day before.

That General Thomas was not slow at Nashville is ancient history. General
Grant, who was the first to charge it, was also the first to withdraw the
imputation, by declaring in his official report that at the time he had
been very impatient over what appeared as unnecessary delay on the part of
Thomas, "but his final defeat of Hood was so complete that it will be
accepted as a vindication of that distinguished officer's judgment."

The ostensible reason for heralding Thomas as slow--so slow, indeed, as to
require his removal and lead to an order for it--was that he insisted upon
concentrating his infantry force and remounting his cavalry. Secretary
Stanton declared that the delay would be till doomsday if Thomas waited
for the latter.

A consideration of this most import