A new generation has come upon the stage since our civil war. It has its
own writers on the events of that struggle. Some of these, careful
students as they are, make proper and effective use of the stores of
material which the Government has collected and published. Others,
stumbling upon interesting dispatches of notable campaigns, read them in
connection with the ill-considered and hasty criticisms of the hot times
which brought them forth, and, finding questions settled twenty years ago,
but entirely new to themselves, they proceed to reveal them as new things
to the new generation. By this process it has recently been announced that
General Thomas was slow at Nashville. To give this echo of thirty-two
years ago sufficient voice, several columns of dispatches--which a quarter
of a century since formed the basis of discussions that demolished the
theory they are now brought forward to sustain--are gravely presented as
something new.
Nothing better illustrates this situation than the very familiar story of
the Irishman who assaulted the Jew for the part he took in the
Crucifixion, and upon being remonstrated with upon the ground that the
event occurred eighteen hundred years ago, replied that it was
nevertheless new to him, as he had only heard of it the day before.
That General Thomas was not slow at Nashville is ancient history. General
Grant, who was the first to charge it, was also the first to withdraw the
imputation, by declaring in his official report that at the time he had
been very impatient over what appeared as unnecessary delay on the part of
Thomas, "but his final defeat of Hood was so complete that it will be
accepted as a vindication of that distinguished officer's judgment."
The ostensible reason for heralding Thomas as slow--so slow, indeed, as to
require his removal and lead to an order for it--was that he insisted upon
concentrating his infantry force and remounting his cavalry. Secretary
Stanton declared that the delay would be till doomsday if Thomas waited
for the latter.
A consideration of this most important, underlying, and controlling factor
in General Thomas's preparations brings up one of the most brilliant
chapters in our war history, and altogether the most brilliant in the
annals of cavalry operations.
In touching upon General Thomas's persistence in getting his cavalry
ready, it would be very natural for a surface student to quote Secretary
Stanton: "If he waits for Wilson to get ready, Gabriel will be blowing his
last horn," and treat it as conclusive proof of Thomas's dilatoriness and
Stanton's final opinion. But just far enough under the surface to escape
the eyes of historical amateurs, lies the splendid and unparalleled fact
that in eight winter days after the date of that dispatch General James H.
Wilson, Thomas's chief of cavalry, had impressed horses enough, with those
furnished on previous requisitions, to raise the effective mounted force
at Nashville from 5500 to 13,500, and that on the eighth day General
Wilson went into action with 12,000 mounted men, and had besides one
brigade of 1500 men engaged in an independent movement.
At this point a moment's consideration of the real reasons which caused
the outbreak against General Thomas, on the ground that he was slow, will
not be out of place. At City Point it was the perfectly natural but
sickening anxiety lest it should turn out that a great mistake had been
made in letting Sherman march away to the sea, thus possibly opening the
way for Hood to the Ohio. At Savannah it was the same fear, intensified by
the consciousness that Thomas had been left with unprepared forces to
contend against a veteran army which had stubbornly resisted both Thomas
and Sherman during the hundred days from Dalton to Atlanta.
And so, while Thomas, as all who were on the ground knew, was making
superhuman exertions to prepare fully for the task in hand, he was advised
to fight, pressed to fight, ordered to fight, threatened with removal if
he did not fight, and his successor dispatched to relieve him. And the
underlying cause of it all was the demoralizing fear that Hood might elude
or overthrow Thomas and strike for the Ohio, and the country rise in wrath
to inquire why Sherman, with 62,000 thoroughly equipped veterans,
including a larger force of mounted men than he left behind, had been
allowed to march away from the central theater of war. So great was this
fear at Savannah that even after receiving Thomas's dispatch giving an
account of the first day's battle at Nashville, which resulted in driving
Hood's left eight miles (which movement General Grant characterized as a
"splendid success"), Sherman telegraphed that this attack on Hood "was
successful but not complete": that he awaited further accounts "with
anxiety," as Thomas's complete success was necessary to vindicate his own
plan for this campaign.
Throughout all this inside panic in high official circles, only Thomas and
the trusted officers who supported him at Nashville were cool and unmoved
in the memorable crisis.