1st. We shall certainly get off on our contemplated expedition
before that time. The number of horses estimated for in this
department by its chief quartermaster was two thousand, and this
number, including those already sent, will, I think, completely
mount all the dismounted cavalry of this department. Recruits for
cavalry regiments are arriving freely, and this will swell our
requisitions for a couple of months to come. I will as far as
possible procure horses from the regions of country traversed by
our cavalry.

Yours truly, W. SOOY SMITH, Brigadier-General,

Chief of Cavalry, Military Division of the Mississippi.

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, January 28, 1864

Brigadier-General GEORGE CROOK, commanding Second Cavalry Division,
Huntsville, Alabama.

I start in about three days with seven, thousand men to Meridian
via Pontotoc. Demonstrate on Decatur, to hold Roddy.

W. SOOY SMITH, Brigadier-General,
Chief of Cavalry, Military Division of the Mississippi.

MAYWOOD, ILLINOIS, July 9,1875
General W. T. SHERMAN, Commander-in-Chief, United States Army.

SIR: Your letter of July 7th is just received.

Your entire statement in the "Memoirs" concerning my part in the
Meridian campaign is incorrect.

You overstate my strength, placing it at seven thousand effective,
when it was but six. The nominal strength of my command was seven
thousand.

You understate the strength of my enemy, putting Forrest's force at
four thousand. On our return to Nashville, you stated it, in
General Grant's presence, to have been but twenty-five hundred.
Before and during my movement I positively knew Forrest's strength
to be full six thousand, and he has since told me so himself.

Instead of delaying from the 1st to the 11th of February for "some
regiment that was ice-bound near Columbus, Kentucky," it was an
entire brigade, Colonel Waring's, without which your orders to me
were peremptory not to move. I asked you if I should wait its
arrival, and you answered: "Certainly; if you go without it, you
will be, too weak, and I want you strong enough to go where you
please."

The time set for our arrival at Meridian, the 10th of February, had
arrived before it was possible for me, under your orders, to move
from Memphis, and I would have been entirely justifiable if I had
not started at all. But I was at that time, and at all times
during the war, as earnest and anxious to carry out my orders, and
do my full duty as y