so until after the battle
of Franklin, November 30, and the retreat to Nashville that night;
and that General Thomas did not have an army at Nashville until
December 1. I had united with Thomas's troops two weeks before
the battle of Franklin, and was commanding his army in the field
as well as my own during that time. If the historians had read
the records ( 1) they could not possibly have fallen into such a
mistake.

FAULTY INSTRUCTIONS TO OPPOSE HOOD AT PULASKI

Before reaching Pulaski I was furnished with an order from General
Thomas's headquarters assigning me to the command in the field, by
virtue of my rank as a department commander, and a copy of instructions
which had already been telegraphed to General Stanley at Pulaski.
I assumed command in the morning of November 14. The moment I met
Stanley at Pulaski, in the evening of November 13, he called my
attention to the faulty position of the troops and to an error in
General Thomas's instructions, about which I then knew nothing
because I was unacquainted with the geography of the surrounding
country. Upon Stanley's statement, I halted Cox's division of the
Twenty-third Corps a few miles north of Pulaski so that the troops
might be the more readily placed as the situation required when I
had time to consider it. No part of the Twenty-third Corps actually
went to Pulaski, although that was the place to which General Thomas
had ordered it.

On the 19th General Thomas repeated to me the same orders he had
sent to General Stanley, in these words: "If the enemy advances
in force, as General Hatch believes, have everything in readiness
either to fight him at Pulaski if he advances on that place, or
cover the railroad and concentrate at Columbia, should he attempt
to turn your right flank. . . ."( 2) I then telegraphed General
Thomas, November 20, pointing out the faulty nature of the position
selected by him for the troops at Pulaski, and the danger that must
be incurred in attempting to carry out his instructions to fight
Hood at Pulaski if he should advance upon that place; also suggesting
what seemed to be the best way to avoid that difficulty. General
Thomas very promptly approved these suggestions, and thus ended
the embarrassment occasioned by the faulty instructions. But his
official report on that point has made it necessary for me to
comment upon it more fully later.

The season of Hood's invasion of Tennessee was e