Available Troops Not Sent to the Front
General Thomas appears to have been puzzled by doubt whether Hood would aim for Nashville or some point on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, and not to have realized that his own plan should have been to concentrate all his available force into one army, so as to move against the enemy with the greatest possible force, no matter what the enemy might do. With the exception of those 7000 men belonging to Sherman’s column, Thomas had for necessary garrisons and railroad guards essentially the same number of men as had been employed in that service all the preceding summer,—no more and no less,—and the necessity for that service had not been very much diminished, except at and about Decatur, Stevenson, and Tullahoma, which Hood’s advance from Florence had rendered of no further consequence at that time. But the 7000 men available at Chattanooga ought unquestionably to have been sent to Columbia, or at least moved up to Nashville or Franklin, where they could “join the main force,” as suggested in my despatch of November 24 to Thomas,( 6) instead of being left in Chattanooga “to threaten enemy in rear.”( 7) As suggested in my despatch of November 24, R. S. Granger’s force and others along the railroad south of Duck River, as well as Steedman’s, might have joined the main force at Columbia, if orders had been given in time, thus increasing the army in the field by fully 10,000 men.
If R. S. Granger’s force had been left at Decatur, it would have drawn off from Hood’s invading army at least an equal force to guard his bridges at Florence, or else would have destroyed those bridges and cut off his retreat after the battle of Nashville. This was practically what had been suggested by Sherman in his instructions to Thomas. But the withdrawal of Granger’s troops and their detention at Murfreesboro’, instead of sending them to “join the main force,” served no good purpose at the time, and prevented their use in the capture of Hood’s defeated and retreating troops. The failure to make this timely concentration was the one great fault in Thomas’s action, instead of his delay in attacking at Nashville, for which he was so much criticized. But Hood’s repulse at Franklin had made this previous mistake a matter of past history, and hence it was lost sight of in view of the imminent danger afterward supposed to exist at Nashville, just as the brilliant victory at Nashville was accepted as demonstrating the wisdom of all that had gone before, even including Sherman’s division of his army between himself and Thomas before his march to the sea. Such is the logic of contemporaneous military history!
In my long conversations with General Grant on the steamer Rhode Island in January, 1865, I explained to him fully the error into which he had been led in respect to Thomas’s action or non-action at Nashville in December, and he seemed to be perfectly satisfied on that point. But he did not ask me anything about what had occurred before the battle of Franklin, and hence I did not tell him anything.
In connection with the action of General Thomas previous to the battle of Franklin, the following instructions from General Sherman on October 31 are important: “You must unite all your men into one army, and abandon all minor points, if you expect to defeat Hood. General Schofield is marching to-day from here.... “( 8) Again, on the same date, he telegraphed: “Bear in mind my instructions as to concentration, and not let Hood catch you in detail.”( 9)
Sherman thus gave the most emphatic warning against the mistake which Thomas nevertheless made by failing to concentrate all his own available troops until it was too late to meet Hood’s advance, thus leaving two corps to bear the entire brunt of battle until the crisis of the campaign was passed at Franklin.