better for us that they should stand
there, as we might make large and important captures. But I do not
believe the enemy will fight a force of thirty thousand men, acting
in concert with gunboats.

I will be most happy to take part in the proposed expedition, and
hope, before you have made your final dispositions, that I will
have the necessary permission. Half the Army of the Tennessee is
near the Tennessee River, beyond Huntsville, Alabama, awaiting the
completion of the railroad, and, by present orders, I will be
compelled to hasten there to command it in person, unless meantime
General Grant modifies the plan. I have now in this department
only the force left to hold the river and the posts, and I am
seriously embarrassed by the promises made the veteran volunteers
for furlough. I think, by March 1st, I can put afloat for
Shreveport ten thousand men, provided I succeed in my present
movement in cleaning out the State of Mississippi, and in breaking
up the railroads about Meridian.

I am, with great respect, your obedient servant,

W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General, commanding.

The object of the Meridian expedition was to strike the roads
inland, so to paralyze the rebel forces that we could take from the
defense of the Mississippi River the equivalent of a corps of
twenty thousand men, to be used in the next Georgia campaign; and
this was actually done. At the same time, I wanted to destroy
General Forrest, who, with an irregular force of cavalry, was
constantly threatening Memphis and the river above, as well as our
routes of supply in Middle Tennessee. In this we failed utterly,
because General W. Sooy Smith did not fulfill his orders, which
were clear and specific, as contained in my letter of instructions
to him of January 27th, at Memphis, and my personal explanations to
him at the same time. Instead of starting at the date ordered,
February 1st, he did not leave Memphis till the 11th, waiting for
Warings brigade that was ice-bound near Columbus, Kentucky; and
then, when he did start, he allowed General Forrest to head him off
and to defeat him with an inferior force, near West Point, below
Okalona, on the Mobile & Ohio Railroad.

We waited at Meridian till the 20th to hear from General Smith, but
hearing nothing whatever, and having utterly destroyed the
railroads in and around that junction, I ordered General McPherson
to move back slowly toward Canton. With Winslow's cavalry, and
Hurlbut's in