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that when he was at Lost Mountain, or about that time, he ascertained that Allatoona was garrisoned to guard Sherman’s depot of provisions collected or stored there for his march south. As Sherman was then quiet in Atlanta and Hood at Lost Mountain on the 2d of October, why did he not move on Allatoona and capture them ? On the 4th he sent to General Stew art, who was at Big Shanty the orders copied in the first part of this article. These two orders were handed to General French by General Stewart. Now is there a line or is there one word in them intimating that Hood even suspected that Allatoona was for tified and garrisoned to protect Sher man’s supplies.’ As bearing directly upon this point the writer will state that since this ar ticle was prepared be has had conver sation with General A. P. Stewart, in which General Stewart informed him that, in addition to the instructions contained in the two orders quoted, General Hood also sent him word that French’s division could get tools for filling up the railroad cut from Gener al Armstrong’s cavalry brigade; but, he says, when General Armstrong was applied to he answered that his com mand had no tools and had not had any. He also says that in none of General Hood’s orders or messages did he say anything to indicate that he had any idea that Allatoona was forti fied or a depot of supplies. The truth therefore very evidently is that General Hood knew nothing about the works, garrison or supplies at Allatoona, and sent French by there on his way to the railroad bridge, and ordered him incidentally to stop there and “fill up the deep railroad cut ;”and consequently when General Hood, in his book, “Advance and Retreat,” on page 257, writes: As one of the main objects of the cam paign was to deprive the enemy of provi sions, Major-General French was ordered to move with his division, capture the garrison, if practicable, and gain posses sion of the supplies,— he, it seems clear beyond peradventure, knowingly published to the world what was altogether an afterthought, to shield his own ignorance at the ex pense of General French. For a moment suppose Hood knew Allatoona was for tided and garrisoned by three regiments (about a thou sand men) and that there Sherman had stored his provisions, why in the name of common sense did he not in form French ? To omit doing so seems what, by some, would be considered a military crime of the first magnitude, and unpardonable. If not then what had this division or its cofnmander done that they should, Uriah-like, be sent into an enemy’s zone, beyond the reach of support, and ordered to hurl themselves against strong and ingeni ously located and constructed works, on a high and steep ridge, thus invit ing apparently almost certain defeat and death ? As the main object of Hood in go ins to the flanS and rear with his ar my was to destroy and cut off provi sions for Sherman’s army and to obtain some for his own, why did he not march direct to Allatoona with the main body of his army, capture the garrison, obtain two months’ supplies for his entire army,* throw himself on the strong ridge directly across Sherman’s path, after having destroyed the railroad south of this point and the bridge over the Etowah north of it, and starve him out? Why did he not post his army on the fortified heights of Allatoona, which are alike * General Sherman’s letters written Oct. 7, show that lie had 2,700,1)00 rations of bread stored up at Allatoona on the date of the battle, defensible on both sides, and declared by Sherman, on page 49, of Vol. II of his “Memoirs” to be “a natural fortress ? ” Then Sherman would have been obliged to fight Hood on fortified lines of the latter’s own selec tion. There would have been no out flanking there! For once that army could have laughed at Sherman’s flanking. Or, why did he not send Stewart’s entire corps with all the empty provi sion trains to capture the stores and bring them away, as far as practicable, for the use of his army? Evidently because he knew nothing about Alla toona, or the garrison or the stores there; or he would have marched there himself and been master of the situation with abundant supplies. A Federal General, high in Sher man’s confidence in 1864, has stated to the writer that had Hood gone to Alla toona with his whole army he would have run over Corse and captured the place and everything there almost with out effort. Mortified that the prize had been missed or lost, from want of informa tion, he tries to shield himself under the unsustained statement, which his own orders, issued at the time, contra dict, that he sent General French to “gain possession” of the stores. Had he known the stores were there (and they were needed) he would have gone there without fail, no doubt of that. But mark his further animus at his own short coming. One of his main characteristics was his propensity for endeavoring to make scapt-goats of his subordinates to cover his own igno rance or errors in reasoning, and this fault was constantly shown either in positive assertions or by indirection. He writes on the same page: General Corse won my own admiration by his gallant resistance, and not without reason the Federal commander compliment ed this officer through a general order so” his handsome conduct in defense of Alla toona. This is very chivalrous so far as it goes; but there is no “admiration” for the Confederates. Hood saw things like Polonius sometimes. If, as has been stated, one man behind the breastworks is equal to about five on the outside, his own troops should have claimed his “admiration” as well as those inside. It might not be just to censure Hood for not knowing there was a garrison and stores at Allatoona, for even Gen eral French, who was there did not know until after he bad left the place that it was a great depot for Sherman’s entire army; but he certainly lays him self liable to censure for claiming and publishing that he knew it when his every order shows that he did not, and when he used his pretended knowledge to cloak his failures and injure the re putation of others. Such conduct sure ly seems unbecoming a high-minded and upright soldier? And yet there is another statement of Hood’s that is not correct, when he says, on page 326: Just at this critical juncture he (Gen eral French) received information which lie considered correct, but which subse quently proved to be false, that a large body of the enemy was moving to cut him off from the remainder of the army ; and he immediately withdrew his com mand from the place without having ac complished the desired object. This is a bold declaration to say it “was false”, because, to the contrary, Sherman says, page 147, Vol. II of his “Memoirs:” We could plainly see the smoke of bat tle about Allatoona and hear the faint reverberation of the cannon. From Ken nesaw*! ordered the 23d Corps to march due west on the Burnt Hickory road, and to burn houses or piles of brush, as it progressed, to indicate the head of col umn, hoping to interpose this corps be- THE KENNESAW GAZETTE. tween Hood’s main army at Dallas and the detachment then assaulting Allatoo na. The rest of the army was directed straight for Allatoona , northeast, distant eighteen miles. And further on he says that French got by on the Dallas road before the 23d corps reached it. A gentleman who resided near Al’a toona at the time of the battle, and who was there that day, informs the writer that a considerable body of Fed eral infantry reached Allatoona from the south hardly three hours after Gen eral French’s rear guard left there, and that other columns arrived during the night. The following summing up by Ma jor Sanders of General Hood’s blun ders in ordering this movement against Allatoona is so clear and complete hat it is inserted almost entire : In a general way I make this observa tion, having given this matter at various times a great deal of consideration : that at the time General Hood determin ed to march French’s division to make the assault at Allatoona, or rather to de stroy the bridge across the Etowah Riv er, there is this state of facts to be con sidered : Stewart’s corps was stretched on the railroad, destroying the rails and cross ties, and filling up the cuts with timber. The afternoon of the third, all of that night and the forenoon of the 4th of October, 1864, French’s division was on that part of the line of road between Big Shanty and Kennesaw Mountain. Walthall’s division was immediately north of French, and Loring’s division north of Walthall’s, up at the town of Acworth. This was the position of Stew art’s corps on the 4th of October, 1864. It might be borne in mind that French’s division was the weakest in point of numbers in the corps, and the farfbest removed from Allatoona. Loring’s di vision was more than double in strength that of French, and several miles nearer Allatoona and the Etowah River than French’s division. Now, why was it that General Hood directed French’s division, the farthest from the objective point, to march by the divisions of Walthall and Loring to Allatoona, when Loring’s division, doub le in strength and fully 6 miles nearer, could have been marched to Allatoona, surrounded the fort by dark or a little thereafter, and completely isolated the garrison at Allatoona from all possibility of being reinforced,as it was that night by a portion of the division of Gen. Corse '! At the same time, the divisions of Wal thall and Loring were marched from the railroad in a westerly direction and joined Hood’s army at New Hope, thus leaving French’s division in mid air, northwest from Acworth, with good roads for Sherman to march his infantry whicn we knew at that time to be at Marietta and also on the Kennesaw. The order of Hood directing the move ments of the divisions of this corps was of such an astounding character that I hardly know how properly to character ize his action as a General commanding troops in active operation in the field. He knew that Sherman was alert and brave, with veteran troops well armed, throughly disciplined, and commanded by accomplished officers, and who could be relied upon to march rapidly and as sault with intrepidity any position which the Confederates might occupy. He knew, morever, that selecting French’s command, and placing it up at Allatoona, with Sherman’s army at Kennesaw to march unobstructed to the relief of the garrison at Allatoona, while French’s Hanks and rear in the mountains were menanced, though not harrassed by Baum’s division of cavalry, which was between the Etowah River and Allatoo na, and also the garrisons at Kingston and Rome, without the possibility of be ing reinforced by the troops under his command which occupied the old lane at New Hope Church, certainly was an unjustifiable order ; one more unjustifi able fora General commanding an army cannot be found in the history of the late war than that given by Gen. Hood to French on this occasion. Without sagacity, without information, without knowledge of the topography of the country, although he had marched over it as a corps commmander in the spring, he deliberately marches this di vision, being the farthest from the objec tive point, to what proved to be the as sault of a fortified post, and at the same time moved the balance of the corps, to gether with the other corps of his army, to a position in which he is absolutely disabled either to assist, reinforce, pro tect or relieve this division as the ex igencies might arise from the offensive operations of Sherman’s troops. * * * Never was an assault made with more gallantry, determination and rapidity than that of French’s division up the mountain sides of Allatoona on that October morning in 1864, and it can be said with equal truth, that the Federals with equal determination fought and de fended their lines until the assaulting troops were mingled indiscriminately with those in the fort. It was the only time within my knowledge and observa tion that bayonets and clubbed muskets were used. Van Horne, in his history of the Army of the Cumberland, Vol. 11, page 161,says: The gallant resistance of the garrison and the movement of the 23d Corps to his left induced General French to with draw entirely during the afternoon; and his division remained in rear of the army and offered such resistance to Gen’l Elliott that it was impossible to tell the direction the enemy’s standards were pointing. The last four lines of this quotation would seem to indicate that if the sol diers of French’s division, on withdraw ing from Allatoona, were as badly dem oralized as the Federal writers would have us believe, they very strangely recovered almost at once courage enough to hold at bay fresh troops in larger numbers than those they encountered in the works at Allatoona. Here, then, is ample evidence that Armstrong’s dispatch was correct, and that to have remained much longer at Allatoona was at the risk of being cut off from Hood’s army. It is difficult to conjecture why Gen eral Hood should have ventured to write in his book that he ordered General French to ‘ ‘capture the garrison if prac ticable, and gain possession of the sup plies” unless he supposed that his orders to French would never be produced to expose his misleading statement. No doubt, in after years, Hood felt very keenly the regret that he did not obtain the information about Sherman’s supplies, and capture them, as could readily have been done had he march ed for that purpose. Hood on the heights of Allatoona with his army supplied with two months’ provisions could not have been a fail ure, considering the mountain range, and that Sherman could obtain no sup plies south of the Etowah. Besides Hood could have burnt the bridge over the Etowah after the capture of Allatoona. He had all the advantage of Sher man in the movement he made, but he was not aware of it until it was too late. The want of provisions alone forbade him assuming a position across the road of Sherman’s supplies at the “natural fortress’of Allatoona; but the provisions were already there, but alas! he knew it not! Sherman, on page 42 of his “Me moirs”, says he knew in former years that “the Allatoona Pass was very strong,” and would “be hard to force” so he resolved to get to Marietta by way of Dallas. Therefore again he would have been obliged to fight Hood at the pass or return west through upper Alabama and cross the Etowah where he did when he out-flanked Johnston. In the latter case Hood would have gained a substantial vic tory, and Atlanta have again been in possession of the Confederates, and “ fairly won,” as Sherman wrote when he captured it from Hood. The Western & Atlantic Railroad runs more trains per day over the same rails than any other railroad south of the Ohio River. The W. & A. is the quickest. 15