as ( 1) at about
45,000 (exclusive of the Fourth and Twenty-third Corps, and Smith's
corps coming from Missouri), in which he included about 8000 or
10,000 new troops at Nashville, and the same number of civil
employees of the quartermaster's department. The Fourth and Twenty-
third corps he estimated at 27,000 men, and Smith's at 10,000, and
the cavalry in the field at 7700. All this was sufficiently accurate
if no account were taken of men unfit for duty or not equipped.
But the official returns show that the number of officers and men
present for duty equipped amounted to 49,322 in the department,
and in the two corps in the field to 24,265, and in the cavalry in
the field, to 4800. There were therefore the following discrepancies
in Sherman's estimate, due in part to the discharge of men whose
terms had expired, as well as to the usual number of men not equipped
for duty in the ranks: In the troops in the department, a discrepancy
of 8000; in the army corps in the field, 2735; in the cavalry in
the field, 2900 ( 2)--a total discrepancy of 13,635. That is to
say, Sherman's own estimate was in excess of Thomas's actual strength
by a force greater than either of the two army corps he sent back
to help Thomas. If he had sent back another large corps,--say the
Fourteenth, 13,000 strong, having besides the moral strength due
to the fact that it was Thomas's old corps,--the discrepancy in
his own estimate would doubtless have been sufficiently overcome,
and the line of Duck River at least, if not that of the Tennessee,
as Sherman had assured Grant, would have been securely held until
A. J. Smith arrived and Thomas could assume the offensive.

Hood's force was ready to invade Tennessee in one compact army,
while Thomas then had in the field ready to oppose it a decidedly
inferior force, even admitting the lowest estimate made of that
hostile army.

THE UNTENABLE POSITION AT PULASKI

The superiority of the enemy's cavalry made it necessary that the
garrisons of all essential posts and the guards of important railroad
bridges should be strong enough to resist attack from a large force
of dismounted cavalry and light artillery, so long as Thomas was
compelled to remain on the defensive. The records of that time
indicate that Thomas then appreciated, what mature consideration
now confirms, that if Hood's advance had induced him (Thomas) to
draw off sufficient troops from garr