Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/615

Cox: A'lilitary Rcniiniscences of the Civil J J or 605 story. As to this ride to Thomas, of which much is made, there was no meeting of the enemy except the passing within range of a few cavalry skirmishers, and the exposure of the ride was the merest child's play compared with the fire to which every staft'-officer and every soldier on the field was at that moment subjected. The treatment of General Rosecrans throughout the volumes is gener- ally unfriendly in the extreme, though it consists largely in the repetition of venerable criticisms which are not history. Nor is it worthy treat- ment of an officer who, up to the time of the break in his lines on the second day at Chickamauga, had never lost a battle, and who unquestion- ably was the ablest strategist of the war. The old attacks upon this officer for resisting orders to advance before full preparations, first, from Murfreesboro, and next from Winchester, are given the old prominence, without the full vindication of result, which, for the Middle Tennessee campaign, was the driving of Bragg out of the state, over the Cumber- lands and across the Tennessee river by strategy, with a Union loss of only 570 killed and wounded. For the Chattanooga campaign, the same tactics were repeated on a still larger scale, and Bragg was forced from his mountain stronghold without a battle. Every student of the records knows these facts now, and it is not the part of a fair historian to ignore them. The chapters on the campaign in East Tennessee are comprehensive and interesting, and constitute in compact form a more complete history than has yet been written. The initiation of the Atlanta campaign is preceded by an interesting presentation of the relations of General Sherman to his superiors and his subordinates, and the relations between General Johns on and Mr. Davis. General Cox's treatment of the Atlanta campaign keeps entirely out of sight the initial and most serious mistake of General Sherman in not promptly accepting General Thomas's advice to move through Snake Creek Gap, which the latter had found to be unguarded, upon Johnston's rear, and force him to battle. After a three days' delay this was found to be the only practicable move, but it was then too late to prevent the escape of Johnston which compelled the long campaign to Atlanta. In like manner, the reader receives no impression of the needless and fruitless assault on Kennessaw Mountain, so costly in the loss of life. It is rather treated as a bold stroke called for by the existing conditions. In spite of the fact that General Grant's map received by General Sherman on April 4, a month before the Atlanta campaign opened, has now been found, and has long been public in the Atlas of the War Record Series, which map clearly laid down a March to the Sea after the fall of Atlanta, General Cox, as in his former writings, continues to attribute the origin of this march to General Sherman. As is now well known. General Sherman's plan, which he finally induced General Grant to acquiesce in, differed from that of the latter in leaving Hood in his rear for Thomas to take care of, with an army yet to be assembled, and marching to Savannah with no enemy in his front. VOL. VI. — 40.