twelve years later I was able to repay this
then unknown stern denial of clemency to a youth by saving the
veteran soldier's army from disaster, and himself from the humiliation
of dismissal from command on the eve of victory. Five years later
still, I had the satisfaction, by intercession with the President,
of saving the same veteran general from assignment to an inferior
command, and of giving him the military division to which my
assignment had been ordered. When death had finally relieved him
from duty, and not till then, did I consent to be his successor.
In 1879 I had the satisfaction, after many months of patient
investigation, of rendering justice to the other of those two
unrelenting soldiers who, of all the thirteen, could not find it
in their hearts to recommend clemency to an erring youth; I was
president of the board which reversed the judgment of the court-
martial in the case of Fitz-John Porter.

I believe it must now be fully known to all who are qualified to
judge and have had by personal association or by study of history
full opportunities to learn the truth, that General Thomas did not
possess in a high degree the activity of mind necessary to foresee
and provide for all the exigencies of military operations, nor the
mathematical talent required to estimate "the relations of time,
space, motion, and force" involved in great problems of war. His
well-known high qualities in other respects obscured these
imperfections from the great majority of those who surrounded him
during the war, and rendered the few educated soldiers who were
able to understand his true merits the more anxious to aid him and
save him from personal defeat. And no one, I am sure, of his
comrades in arms desires to detract from the great fame which is
justly his due; for, according to the best judgment of mankind,
moral qualities, more than intellectual, are the foundation of a
great and enduring fame. It was "Old Pap" Thomas, not General
Thomas, who was beloved by the Army of the Cumberland; and it is
the honest, conscientious patriot, the firm, unflinching old soldier,
not the general, whose name will be most respected in history.

CHANGE OF PLAN BEFORE THE BATTLE OF NASHVILLE

Of the general details of the battle of Nashville I do not propose
to speak, but simply to notice a few of its most important points.
The plan of battle, as published, placed my command--the Twenty-
third Corps--in