The greatest loss that the Regiment sustained was when the men were dismounted to fight as infantry; they were armed like the infantry and usually fought as infantry. I have said that upon the organization of the Regiment it numbered about one thousand, rank and file. It is also well to know that when a cavalry regiment is dismounted it loses one-fourth of its effective strength by its horse holders. The largest force the Regiment ever had in line on foot was about seven hundred and fifty. This was at Chickamauga, which occurred just after a two months’ rest at Rome, Ga., when we took time to gather up all absentees and many recruits. Never after that did we have so many on foot as infantrymen.
It must also be taken into account that after the organization it was necessary to make many noncombatant details. Many were discharged for disability, from wounds received in action, sickness, etc. Others were discharged from being over and under the age limit. Many prisoners were taken by the enemy. The exchange of prisoners at all times was slow; but for two years or more before the war closed no exchange of prisoners was made, and I suppose that the Regiment had a hundred men who were not released from prison until after the war closed. And I am pretty sure that we had our share of those who got tired and “just quit fighting.” All of these causes greatly reduced the line of battle; and of the two hundred and fifty that surrendered at Greensboro, N. C., April 26, 1865, at least three-fourths of them had been wounded in battle, and many of them more than twice in different engagements.
I have finished what I have to say forty-seven years afterwards. It is necessarily incomplete, for many things have faded from my memory, and I speak altogether from personal recollection. I have thought it proper to give a cursory history of the Army of Tennessee from the fact that the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry Regiment was a part of it, participating in all of its campaigns, marches, and battles from October, 1862, to the surrender, except Hood’s campaign against Nashville. When General Hood left Atlanta, he ordered Wheeler to remain there and to march in whatever direction Sherman moved; hence we went to the sea, circumscribing as much as possible the burning and pillaging of Sherman’s large army of seventy thousand. We met the Army of Tennessee again in North Carolina, and served with it till the surrender at Greensboro, N. C., April 26, 1865. I would have been pleased to mention the name of every gallant soldier of the Regiment, but it is now impossible to get it; and to name some and leave out others equally as meritorious would not be proper. I have had to speak of some who have given me valuable assistance in compiling the casualty list of their company. I trust that this may be a sufficient apology, and that no one will be in the slightest degree offended by the action.
CHAPTER XIII.
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and Other Officers.
The Confederate army had five full generals, ranking in date of their commission as follows: Samuel Cooper, whose headquarters were at Richmond, Va., the capital, and who was never assigned to the field; Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, and G. P. Beauregard. All of them had resigned from the United States army to join the Confederate States army.
Joseph E. Johnston was fourth on the list, but he was the highest ranking officer who had thus resigned. He was assigned to the command of the Army of Tennessee in 1864, when it had expended its greatest strength, there being no resources to draw upon. He was confronted by an army double the numerical strength of his own, with all the resources at hand that could be asked for. Much of the territory of the Confederate States and its most resourceful sections were in the hands of the enemy. The Mississippi River had been closed to Confederate navigation, foreign intervention had become a dead letter, the exchange of prisoners had indefinitely ceased, and the blockade of Southern ports completed the hope of receiving resources from the outside. Truly was the South hermetically sealed.
Who can say that the tactics assumed by General Johnston in his Atlanta campaign were not the best that could be used under all the circumstances? Or that, if he could have succeeded at all, it must have been by the military operations he adopted? Do not the operations of General Hood in a few weeks thereafter prove this to be true? For, after fighting a few battles around Atlanta, losing as many men as Johnston did in his campaign from Dalton to Atlanta, and then falling back to Jonesboro, thirty miles south, where he fought Sherman, all without material results, he then moved to the rear of Atlanta, continuing his campaign against Nashville, that terminated so disastrously. Again, were they not the same tactics that General Lee was inaugurating when he left Petersburg with his little army, retreating to Appomattox, which movement, we can see now, was made when it was too late?
I am not able to say what would have been the result of Johnston’s proposed movement at Atlanta, but I can say this: that it promised more success than any that was attempted later. The restoration of General Johnston to the command of the Army of Tennessee looked as if Mr. Davis was repudiating his order of a few months before. General Johnston in accepting it displayed a magnanimity of character and patriotism never excelled. The army from which he had been so summarily dismissed was now shattered and broken to pieces, and the Confederacy itself was staggering to its downfall. His desire to share the fate of his soldiers and countrymen must have been the only motive.
When Joseph E. Johnston died, in 1891, a large and representative meeting of the citizens of Nashville was held in the First Presbyterian Church to do honor to his memory, and the following preamble and resolutions were unanimously adopted—to wit:
Mr. Chairman: Your committee to whom was referred the resolutions touching upon the life and character of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston beg leave to submit the following: