inferentially at least, more than was due
to me. I must also add, in order that there may be no misunderstanding
on the subject, that General Thomas also gave full credit to me
and to the Twenty-third Corps for the part we took in the battle
of December 15.

The only special credit to which I have thought myself entitled in
respect to Nashville was for two incidental services which General
Thomas did not seem to think worthy even of mention. They were,
in fact, only such services as any efficient staff officer possessed
of unusual knowledge of the character and habits of the opposing
commander could have rendered to General Thomas as well as I could.
The two services referred to were the suggestion relative to the
change in the details of the plan of battle for December 15, by
which the infantry attacking force on our right was increased from
about ten thousand to nearly twenty thousand men; and the information
I gave to General Thomas, in the night of the 15th, that Hood would
not retreat without another fight, about which I had not the
slightest doubt, and which seemed to me more important than the
information I had given about the relative lengths of the several
parts of the enemy's line of defense and of his (General Thomas's)
line of attack, as proposed in his written orders. But these little
services, not worthy of mention in terms of special praise, seemed
to me worthy of record, especially the latter, since I had made a
long ride in a dark night, after having already been in the saddle
from daylight till dark, to carry the information to the commanding
general in person, and try to convince him of its correctness.

A single word signifies sometimes much more than is imagined by
him who uses it. If General Thomas had said _resumed_ instead of
"continued," his statement of what he said he "directed" would have
corresponded very nearly with what was actually done after those
directions were given on December 16. But the continuation, at 3
or 4 P. M. of one day, of action which had been suspended at
nightfall the preceding day, hardly accords with the rule of accuracy
which is demanded in maturely considered military reports. Indeed,
when a military movement is suspended at nightfall on account of
darkness, it is properly spoken of as _resumed_, not "continued,"
even at daylight. The word "continued" was used to express what
was directed to be done at three or four o'clock in the afternoon
--"the movement