It had been determined by General Sherman that our corps (the 4th), commanded by General Stanley, and the 23d Corps, commanded by General Schofield—these two corps, and all other organizations of troops between Atlanta and Nashville, to be in command of General George H. Thomas. Howard was placed in command of the army of the Tennessee, whereby we lost the services of General Hooker. The remainder of the army (save the brigade of regulars, that were sent back to the top of Lookout mountain where they would be out of danger) was chosen by General Sherman to make the march to the sea. But you must not suppose that this choice was made by reason of any superiority of that portion of the army that went with him. It had turned out that Corporal Hood had made up his mind that if Sherman could cut away from his base of supplies, and march south into the enemy's country, he (Hood) ought to be able to march north, among his dearly beloved friends; and if Sherman struck a heavy blow south, he would get in his counter up north. And with the 23d and 4th Corps only, left by Sherman, Hood had two men to Thomas' one.
But before passing to the details of the campaign upon which we were about to enter, suffer me to remark that the same painstaking preparation by General Sherman that I referred to in the "Atlanta Campaign," was going forward. The most rigid surgical examination was had in every company of every man whose health was suspected, or where there could be anything found that incapacitated him from performing the supposed arduous duties to be imposed upon him. All that could not stand this rigid test were sent north. Would you not suppose that many would have taken advantage of this examination to have gotten rid of a campaign that seemed fraught with dangers, and so difficult of execution? On the contrary, I am informed by high authority that those that were rejected felt themselves grossly insulted and degraded as soldiers. Neither was this crucial examination confined to the men—the animals were carefully inspected, and all those not perfectly sound were sent to the rear, or disposed of in some other way. The same of arms and accouterments; so that when General Sherman turned his face toward the salt sea breezes of the Atlantic, he had under his command as hardy, as healthy, as determined, and as brave an army of veterans as ever caused the earth to tremble under their tread.
It now seemed that Hood wanted a little more of the smell of our powder before he took his little excursion to the mountains of Tennessee, for we heard he was in force north of Marietta, and was threatening one of our fortified positions at Altoona Pass, that Sherman had used as a sub-base of supplies during the Atlanta campaign. So October 3d, 1864, we broke up camp and marched to within five miles of Marietta, and camped in the rebel works that had been constructed by them, first, after leaving their position at Kennesaw mountain. This was good marching, having started from our camp, three miles east of Atlanta, at four o'clock p. m.
The fourth, we struck tents at noon and marched through Marietta to the front of Kennesaw, and again found the rebel works convenient. Plenty of rebels reported at Big Shanty, a short distance north. This two days' marching shows how much easier to retrograde than to advance, in the face of the enemy. It had taken us to go from Kennesaw mountain to Atlanta, from July 22d to September 2d, and we had returned in a part of two days. The fifth we moved out of our camp and marched north to Piny Knob, and formed in line of battle along the base of the mountain. Sherman had a signal corps or station on the top of this mountain. Some of us went up to the station, and we could distinctly see Altoona Pass, and see the smoke of the battle in progress there, as well as watch the advancing columns General Sherman was sending forward for the relief of General Corse, who was gallantly defending the works there, against overpowering numbers of the enemy. It was here, from this mountain top, that General Sherman signaled to General Corse "Hold the fort for I am coming," that some one has immortalized in sacred song. Several of the old 124th stood not twenty feet from the old general, when this famous dispatch was being signaled from the top of Piny Knob to the gallant Corse, who at that time was suffering from a dangerous wound he received while in the defense he was making. But Hood, evidently, did not care to fight on equal terms, and withdrew in the direction of Lost mountain, and afterwards moved in the direction of Rome, Ga.; and Sherman, leaving Old Pap Thomas to look after and care for Corporal Hood, turned his face toward the south, and that was the last day of the war we ever saw our beloved Uncle Billy. It was with a feeling of sadness that we saw him depart, for we had learned to love and trust in him as we had no other commander. We marched north through Altoona Pass, which still showed evidences of the sanguinary conflict that had taken place there. We marched all night after we went through the Pass, sleeping fifteen minutes each hour. It was perfectly surprising to see how quickly the regiment would go to sleep when the halt was sounded. When the assembly call came it was some trouble to wake the tired soldiers, but usually we were soon all in line, and marching on for another hour. The next day we marched all day long, after halting, making coffee, and taking breakfast near the Etowah river. On this march I first discovered the fact that it was possible for one to march and be sound asleep, for on waking up I discovered that no portion of the landscape had a familiar look, showing that one had been asleep long enough for the landscape to entirely change by our moving forward. This marching back on the railroad track was very hard, as the road was not in very good shape, and we were in danger of falling through trestles; and during the night, every now and then, some sleepy soldier would get off his guard, and his head would go down on the rail, making everything jingle. All the sympathy such unfortunates received would be the shouts and jeers of his comrades to which he often replied in language just bordering on the profane. This marching did not differ much from day to day, and on the fifteenth day of October we crossed the Rocky Face mountains. We went out over the Chickamauga battlefield and saw very many of the bones of our unknown comrades still unburied, that had fallen there more than a year before.
What strange feelings come over one as he passes over the field where he fought, and his loved comrades fell. It seems as though they were with him again in all of their manly beauty; he can see their stern looks of defiance; can hear the rattle of the musketry, the thunder of the artillery, the shouts of victory, the thud of the fatal minie, the dying groan, the last good-bye; and the specter battle seems as real as when engaged in the deadly conflict of the year before. The timber was badly torn down by the shot and shells on that portion of the field over which we passed. I remember the last day our Colonel Payne was with us. The regiment was marching left in front that day, and of course that brought my company next to the colonel and his staff. We made a halt near Rossville, and laid down on the grass to rest. It was a beautiful Indian summer evening; and while in conversation with the colonel he informed me he intended to leave the regiment at Chattanooga; "thought he had done his part," which was true, having nearly lost his life from a wound he received at Chickamauga. I was surprised to learn of his intention to leave us, as this was the first intimation that I had of his intention to resign; but what surprised me most was the despairing view he seemed to take of the war. He said to me, "We never can conquer the south, and if we do children yet unborn will fight in this war." I replied: "They would have to muster them in pretty young, if they did, and I expect to see the end of the rebellion the next year." I think it must have been the depressing effect of our retrograde movement that had taken such a hold on our brave young colonel, for it did seem to many that all our arduous campaign to Atlanta had been for naught.
Many thought it presumptuous in General Sherman to leave a large rebel army to be opposed by an army of about half its numbers. But General Sherman knew him that was in command of the rebel army, and knew very well the grand old Virginian he had intrusted with the taking care of him. We went into camp around Chattanooga, the place that had been the scene of so much of sorrow and rejoicing the year before. We soon heard that Hood was marching for the Tennessee river about Decatur, and we were put into and on freight cars, and started in the night for that point.
A large part of my company was on the top of the cars, and many of them went to sleep in that dangerous situation and caused me very much anxiety. Many a time during that night of peril I found a comrade just on the edge of the car, liable to fall off with any little jolt. I never remember passing a more perilous night. The next day we "came off the roof" of the cars, and soon commenced the march northward for Pulaski.
When we came to the Duck river, that we had crossed the year before at Manchester, there a mere mountain stream, we found a considerable river, and so swollen with rains that it gave us considerable difficulty in crossing. We soon arrived at Pulaski, a beautiful little village in middle Tennessee. This is the best portion of the state, and so much has nature done for it, that had it not been for the blighting influence of slavery, might have truthfully been denominated the garden spot of the United States. We had not been in Pulaski many days before Forrest's cavalry appeared on our flanks, and we heard that Hood had crossed the Tennessee river. We now took the pike again and moved up as far as the village of Columbia, the home of several distinguished officers of the confederate army. Here we went into camp, and did considerable intrenching, our flanks resting on the Elk river. We arrived at Columbia the twenty-fourth of October, and remained there until the night of the twenty-ninth. During the day of the twenty-ninth our regiment was sent up the river to watch a ford, and we watched it nicely, seeing the rebel infantry crossing all day; but we had no orders to do anything but watch. That afternoon we heard heavy firing in the direction of Spring Hill, and we afterwards learned that our first division had been sharply engaged with Cheatham's division, and had most handsomely checked the rebel advance. At dark we were called in, and commenced the march northward again. I should say it was about midnight when Adjutant Hammer came riding back directing the company commandants to have the men so adjust their canteens and bayonet scabbards that as little noise be made as possible, that we were in the immediate presence of the enemy. This we could hardly believe. Were it possible that the rebels had gotten a position cutting our army in twain? We believed nothing of the kind, but, nevertheless, obeyed the order like the true veteran soldiers that we were. Soon we saw two lines of fires running away to the northeast, and the left end of the line nearest us was so near the pike one could have cast a stone into it without much effort. Were it possible these two lines of bivouac fires represented the two lines of blue and gray that had been fighting there the afternoon before? It was true. Such were the facts. And yet our division, the 3d, and a wagon train twelve miles long, passed along that pike, with all the noise incident to the moving of a wagon train and artillery attached to our division, without hindrance or molestation from the enemy.
Not a shot was fired, not a rebel picket nor skirmish line encountered, as we passed the left flank of the enemy's line. Yet, they knew we were there, for several of our men wandered from the column and went over to the fires to warm, and were captured. Was there treason to the confederacy? The fighting the next day fully answers that question in the negative. Hood claims, I am told, that his officers were drunk and failed to attack as he had ordered, and thereby let our division pass him at Spring Hill. This may be true, for middle Tennessee makes a kind of whiskey that will take the W. C. T. U. a long time to eradicate. A single skirmish line across the pike that night would have so delayed us, incumbered with the train, as we were (the train could not have been moved off the pike), that it hardly seems possible that General Stanley could have reunited the divisions of his corps. Thus was the golden opportunity of Hood lost. We soon left the rebel fires behind us, and with our train well ahead, and our divisions united, we had little to fear from an army commanded by such a general as Hood. I have read somewhere a confederate account of this transaction, and the writer, though claiming to have been on the spot, fails to give anything like a rational reason for the confederate forces letting us pass them October 30th, at Spring Hill.
The next morning we halted and made coffee beside the pike. While breakfasting, a squad of rebel cavalry dashed up to the train, fired a few shots, and were away like the wind. As we neared Franklin we came up with some new regiments that General Thomas had hurried on from Nashville, to meet and assist us in case we were forced to a battle before we reached Nashville. These poor fellows that had been as far south as Spring Hill, and were returning that morning, were mostly completely played out, and filled the fence corners all along the pike. I am sorry to say the hardy veterans that swung along after marching all night treated them to expressions of which the following are samples: "Fresh fish." "Fresh fish." "There lies $1000 and a cow." "How much did you get?" "Say Jimmy, who owns you?" "Millions in it." These poor fellows, with knapsacks larger than a mule should be required to carry, received these taunts and jeers with silent disgust; and quite likely the most of them at this time are drawing pensions for disabilities received in the service and in the line of duty, while the old veteran of scores of battles and skirmishes, of hundreds of miles of marches, though broken in health, and prematurely old by reason of his hard service, has no hospital record, and suffers great difficulties in establishing his claim for a pension. Something wrong, somewhere, sure.