Letter to Sherman
“(Unofficial.) “Columbia, Tenn., December 28, 1864. “My dear General: Accept my hearty congratulations on the happy termination of your ’pleasure excursion’ through Georgia. You must have had a merry Christmas.
“As was predicted, you have had the fun, and we the hard work. But altogether your plan has been a brilliant success. Hood didn’t follow you,... but he did me. I held him at Columbia several days, and hurt him considerably. Finally he got across the Duck River above, and made for Franklin via Spring Hill. I headed him off at Spring Hill with a division, and concentrated at Franklin. There he made the heaviest assaults I have ever seen, but was fairly repulsed and terribly punished. In fact we pretty much knocked all the fight out of him on that occasion, and he has shown very little since. Now I reckon he has n’t any left.
“I barely succeeded in delaying Hood until Thomas could get A. J. Smith and Steedman to Nashville, when he became abundantly strong, and after getting Wilson’s cavalry together moved out and gave Hood a most thorough beating with all ease. The fact is, Hood’s army showed scarcely any fight at all. I have never seen anybody except Jeff Thompson so easily beaten.
“Stoneman has cleaned out Breckinridge and destroyed the salt-works and everything else in southwest Virginia; so all together matters are in pretty good shape in this part of the military division.
“Thomas has given me nine new regiments, and promises three more. These will make a pretty good division for new troops.
“All this being true, I take it the objects for which I was left in this part of the country have been accomplished, and I would like very much to be with you again, to take part in the future operations of the Grand Army. Cannot this be brought about?
“Of course I can only conjecture what your operations will now be, and can hardly judge of the practicability of my joining you, but I hope I may be able to do so. I have written to General Grant on this subject, and suggested that if I cannot reach you, I might with propriety be sent to Virginia. I feel certain that I am no longer needed here, for without me Thomas is much stronger than Hood.
“I have not talked with General Thomas on the subject, but intend to do so as soon as I can see him.( 4) No doubt he will be opposed to any reduction of his force, but I go for concentrating against Lee. If we can whip him now, the rebellion will be virtually ended.
“My corps is small, it is true, but it is ‘powerful willing,’ and can help some anyhow.
“Please present my kindest remembrances to my old comrades, and favor me with an early reply. Yours very truly,
“J. M. Schofield, Major-General. “Major-General Sherman, Com’d’g, etc., Savannah, Ga.”
On my passage through Washington in January, 1865, Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, confirmed the view I had taken of the situation, and gave reasons for it before unknown to me, by telling me it was regarded by the administration as an absolute financial necessity that the war be ended in the campaign then about to begin. It is, perhaps, not strange that General Thomas had not thought of this; but it does seem remarkable that he had proposed to let a broken and dispirited enemy have several months in which to recuperate before annoying him any further.
The expectation and instructions of General Grant and General Sherman were that General Thomas should, as soon as he was ready to take the offensive, pursue Hood into the Gulf States. General Thomas appears to have forgotten that part of his instructions. As soon as he had driven Hood across the river, he proposed to go into winter quarters, and “hold the line of the Tennessee” till some time the next spring. If General Sherman had confided to General Thomas, as he did to General Grant, his ulterior purpose to march from Savannah toward Richmond, for which reason he wanted Hood kept out of his way, Thomas would have perceived the necessity of pressing the pursuit of Hood into the Gulf States. But if Thomas supposed, as he might naturally have done, that Sherman had only shifted his base with a view to further operations in Georgia and the Gulf States, under the plan of the last autumn, with which Thomas was perfectly familiar, he may well have seen no necessity for his pressing the pursuit beyond the Tennessee River in midwinter.
Some of our military operations in the Civil War remind me of the spirit of “fair play” shown by our old doctors in the West in the days of malarial fever. When the poison had fully developed its power, and threatened the destruction of its victim, the good doctor would come in and attack the enemy with heroic doses of quinine. In a few days medical science would prevail. Then the fair-minded physician would retire, and give the worsted malaria a chance to recuperate and “come to time” for another attack; and so on indefinitely until either the man or the malaria—often the man— finally got “knocked out.” It was not until after much study and some practice of the art of war that I conceived for myself the idea of giving the enemy of my youth, which still clung to me, no chance to recover after I once got him down. He has never got the better of me since.