Mr. Parton offers the following comment upon this part of the letter and upon the situation:
"It thus appears that while General Jackson was anxiously looking for supplies from General Cocke, General Cocke himself was as destitute as General Jackson. A junction of the two armies would have had the sole effect of doubling Jackson's embarrassments, inasmuch as he would have had five thousand men to feed in the wilderness instead of twenty-five hundred, and would have required twenty wagon-loads of provisions daily instead of ten. General Cocke knew this; knew that Jackson's anxiety for a junction had arisen from an expectation that the East Tennesseeans would bring supplies with them; did not know that Jackson's dash at Talladega had left Fort Strother unprotected—did not know any thing about the Hillabees' suing for peace, and Jackson's favorable reply to them."
This, we say, is at most only a palliation of the offence. General Cocke did not know, as Mr. Parton says, that Jackson's anxiety for a union of the two armies was due to his expectation that the East Tennesseeans would bring supplies with them, because that was not the fact. He did expect them to bring provisions, but his anxiety for a junction was not altogether on that account. He wanted White's men for a garrison for Fort Strother, and hence General Cocke only believed that which Mr. Parton assumes that he knew. Again, if the junction had been made, and the doubling of the number of men had embarrassed Jackson, it would have been easy for him to separate the forces again. Moreover, after the Hillabee expedition was ended, General Cocke was ready and willing to join Jackson, while the scarcity of provisions remained; if his reason for not forming the junction was good in the one case, it was good also in the other. Indeed, General Cocke has himself contradicted the plea which Mr. Parton makes in his behalf. While General White was still absent on the Hillabee expedition, General Cocke wrote a letter to Jackson, in which he said:
"I entertain the opinion that to make the present campaign as successful as it ought to be, it is essential that the whole force from Tennessee should act in concert. I have despatched all my mounted men, whose horses were fit for duty, on the Hillabee towns, to destroy them. I expect their return in a few days. I send the bearer to you for the sake of intelligence as to your intended operations, and for the sake of assuring you that I will most heartily agree to any plan that will be productive of the most good."
From the fact that he thus arranged to put himself within the range of Jackson's authority as soon as his Hillabee campaign should be ended, the inference is inevitable that General Cocke neglected to make the contemplated earlier junction in order that he might carry out this little scheme of his own. Inasmuch as a court-martial, composed of officers who, General Cocke says, were his bitterest enemies and Jackson's closest friends, fully acquitted the accused officer of guilt, it is only fair to the memory of a brave and conscientious soldier to believe that he acted for the good of the cause; that his anxiety to deal a blow at the Hillabees was prompted by a desire to serve the ends of the campaign, not by unworthy jealousy of Jackson; but beyond this it does not appear to be possible to go. We may properly acquit General Cocke of petty envy, and of conscious insubordination, but it is impossible not to see that his course was ill-judged as well as calamitous in its results, and it is impossible also to blame Jackson for his displeasure with his subordinate. The most that General Cocke establishes in his defence, which is elaborate, is that he acted in accordance with the unanimous opinion of his field officers; that he conscientiously believed that his course was the best one to be pursued in the circumstances, and that it was dictated solely by his earnest desire to serve the cause. The most that is proved against him appears to be, that he acted with smaller regard to strict military rules than an officer of his rank should have done. He was guilty of a blunder, not of a crime.
