etreat.
. . . To-morrow I begin the movement laid down in my Special Field
Orders, No. 115, and shall keep things moving thereafter. . . . By
using detachments of recruits and dismounted cavalry in your
fortifications, you will have Generals Schofield and Stanley and
General A. J. Smith, strengthened by eight or ten new regiments
and all of Wilson's cavalry. You could safely invite Beauregard
across the Tennessee River and prevent his ever returning. I still
believe, however, that public clamor will force him to turn and
follow me, in which event you should cross at Decatur and move
directly toward Selma as far as you can transport supplies. . . .
You may act . . . on the certainty that I sally from Atlanta on
the 16th instant with about 60,000 well provisioned, but expecting
to live chiefly on the country."

The reason for this sudden and radical change of program is made
perfectly clear by Sherman's despatch of November 1 and others:
"The enemy is now in the full tide of execution of his grand plan
to destroy my communications and defeat this army." Sherman's
defiant spirit, thus aroused, brooked no delay. He would not wait
for anything but his own necessary preparations. Nashville,
Chattanooga, and Decatur could stand a long siege, and these alone
he regarded as of strategic importance. The enemy would doubtless
do "considerable damage," but afterward "reinforcements will pour
to you" (Thomas). He convinced himself that Thomas had troops
enough; but, "to make things sure," he might "call on the governors
of Indiana and Kentucky for some militia"! In the meantime, he
(Sherman) would "destroy all the railroads in Georgia and do as
much substantial damage as is possible." Thus recklessly challenged
by the Confederate chief, Sherman must not only accept that challenge,
but do it at once. Perhaps if Jefferson Davis had known William
T. Sherman as well as some of us did, he would not have uttered
that challenge.

RAWLINS'S REPORTED OPPOSITION TO THE MARCH

From Grant's "Memoirs"(11) it appears that General Grant not only
confirms Sherman's claim in respect to his independent authorship
of the plan, but says he (General Grant) was in favor of that plan
from the time it was first submitted to him, and credits his chief
of staff, General Rawlins, with having been "very bitterly opposed
to it," and with having appealed to the authorities at Washington
to stop it.

This recollec