Available Troops Not Sent to the Front
Notwithstanding this earnest desire, General Thomas does not appear to have realized the existence of a force available for the purpose he had in view. The railroad guards from Atlanta to Chattanooga or Dalton, withdrawn after Sherman started on his march, and convalescents, men returning from furlough and others going to the front, but failing to reach Sherman’s army in time, all assembled at Chattanooga, made a surplus force at that point of about 7000 men.( 5) Some of these troops had been sent to East Tennessee, as well as all the mounted troops available in Kentucky, for the purpose of retrieving the disaster which had befallen the Tennessee military governor’s troops there, under Gillem. But all sent from Chattanooga had been returned by November 21, about the time when Hood’s advance from Florence had become certainly known. Yet it does not appear that General Thomas even inquired what force was available at Chattanooga until November 25, when, in reply to a telegram, he learned that Steedman could raise 5000 men (in fact, 7000), in addition to all necessary garrisons and guards, “to threaten enemy in rear,” in case he should “get on Chattanooga railroad.” It may then (November 25) have been too late to send those 5000 or 7000 men to the line of Duck River, or perhaps even to Franklin. They were sent to Nashville, reaching there after the battle of Franklin. If they had been ordered to Columbia by rail, via Nashville, as soon as Hood’s advance was known to General Thomas, they must have reached Duck River some time before Hood attempted to cross that stream. This addition to the Fourth and Twenty-third Corps would have raised the infantry in the field to nearly an equality with that of Hood in fact, though not nearly to what Hood’s force was then supposed to be. That increased force would doubtless have made it possible to prevent Hood from crossing Duck River anywhere near Columbia for several days, and perhaps to force him to select some other line of operations, or to content himself with sending his cavalry on another raid. In any case, the arrival of A. J. Smith a few days later would have enabled Thomas to assume the aggressive before Hood could have struck a serious blow at Thomas’s army in the field. In view of the earnest desire of General Thomas to reinforce the army in the field at Columbia, there does not appear to be any rational explanation of the fact that he did not send those 7000 men from Chattanooga to Columbia. His own report states the fact about those “7000 men belonging to his [General Sherman’s] column,” but does not give any reason why they were not used in his “measures to act on the defensive.” As General Thomas says: “These men had been organized into brigades, to be made available at such points as they might be needed.” At what other point could they possibly be so much needed as that where the two corps were trying to oppose the advance of the enemy long enough for Thomas to get up his other reinforcements?