ould, as soon as I should be able to do so, write a full
critical history of that campaign as a text-book for military
students. I have not yet found time to fulfil that promise. The
foregoing pages were intended, when written, as only a very partial
fulfilment of that task, and that almost entirely of one side of
it--far the most difficult side. The other side is so easy,
comparatively, and is already so familiar to military students,
that further elucidation now seems hardly necessary. Yet I hope,
as a labor of love, if for no other reason, to present my impressions
of those grand tactical evolutions of a compact army of one hundred
thousand men, as I witnessed them with the intense interest of a
young commander and student of the great art which has so often in
the history of the world determined the destinies of nations.

HOOD'S OPERATIONS IN SHERMAN'S REAR

After the capture of Atlanta, in September, 1864, General Sherman
proposed to give his army rest for a month while he perfected his
plans and preparations for a change of base to some point on the
Atlantic or the gulf, in pursuance of the general plan outlined by
General Grant before the Atlanta campaign was opened in May. But
the Confederate commander took the initiative, about September 20,
by moving his army around Sherman's right, striking his railroad
about Allatoona and toward Chattanooga, doing some damage, and then
marching off westward with the design of transferring the theater
of war from Georgia to Alabama, Mississippi, or Tennessee.

Sherman very promptly decided not to accept that challenge to meet
Hood upon a field chosen by the latter, but to continue substantially
the original plan for his own operations, having in view also new
ulterior plans opened to him by this erratic movement of his
adversary. An essential modification of the original plan, to meet
the unexpected movement of Hood, was to send back into Tennessee
force enough, in addition to the troops then there and others to
be assembled from the rear, to cope with Hood in the event of his
attempting the invasion of Tennessee and Kentucky, or to pursue
and occupy his attention if he should attempt to follow Sherman.
General George H. Thomas, commanding the Department of the Cumberland,
whose headquarters were at Nashville, was already at that place,
and was directed by General Sherman to assume command of all the
troops in the three departm