etta with his small brigade of nine
hundred men belonging to Stoneman's cavalry, reporting, as usual,
all the rest lost, and this was partially confirmed by a report
which came to me all the way round by General Grant's headquarters
before Richmond. A few days afterward Colonel Capron also got in,
with another small brigade perfectly demoralized, and confirmed the
report that General Stoneman had covered the escape of these two
small brigades, himself standing with a reserve of seven hundred
men, with which he surrendered to a Colonel Iverson. Thus another
of my cavalry divisions was badly damaged, and out of the fragments
we hastily reorganized three small divisions under
Brigadier-Generals Garrard, McCook, and Kilpatrick.

Stoneman had not obeyed his orders to attack the railroad first
before going to Macon and Andersonville, but had crossed the
Ocmulgee River high up near Covington, and had gone down that river
on the east bank. He reached Clinton, and sent out detachments
which struck the railroad leading from Macon to Savannah at
Griswold Station, where they found and destroyed seventeen
locomotives and over a hundred cars; then went on and burned the
bridge across the Oconee, and reunited the division before Macon.
Stoneman shelled the town across the river, but could not cross
over by the bridge, and returned to Clinton, where he found his
retreat obstructed, as he supposed, by a superior force. There he
became bewildered, and sacrificed himself for the safety of his
command. He occupied the attention of his enemy by a small force
of seven hundred men, giving Colonels Adams and Capron leave, with
their brigades, to cut their way back to me at Atlanta. The former
reached us entire, but the latter was struck and scattered at some
place farther north, and came in by detachments. Stoneman
surrendered, and remained a prisoner until he was exchanged some
time after, late in September, at Rough and Ready.

I now became satisfied that cavalry could not, or would not, make a
sufficient lodgment on the railroad below Atlanta, and that nothing
would suffice but for us to reach it with the main army. Therefore
the most urgent efforts to that end were made, and to Schofield, on
the right, was committed the charge of this special object. He had
his own corps (the Twenty-third), composed of eleven thousand and
seventy-five infantry and eight hundred and eighty-five artillery,
with McCook's broken division of cavalry