Sherman's return of "present for duty" on May 31st, just after Blair had joined him with the Seventeenth Corps, was the largest of the campaign, being 112,819. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. i. p. 117.] By the end of June it was reduced to 106,070, when Johnston's was 59,196 without the reserves and militia. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 679.]
When Hood assumed the command, Bragg visited the army a second time, and gave new impulse to the effort to increase its effective force. On July 27th, in a very full report to Mr. Davis, he says, "the increase by the arrival of extra-duty men and convalescents, etc., is about 5000, and more are coming in daily. The return of the 1st of August will show a gratifying state of affairs." [Footnote:Id., vol. lii. pt. ii. p. 714.] This promise was fulfilled when that return showed a diminution in the "present for duty," since the 10th of the month, of only 7403, [Footnote:Id., vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 680.] although the period included the bloody engagements of Peachtree Creek, Atlanta, and Ezra Church.
The Confederate conscription included the whole able-bodied population, and details as for extra duty were the means by which physicians, clergymen, civilian office-holders, etc., were exempted from service in the army. These lists were rigidly scrutinized, and the laxity which had grown was corrected as far as possible. The aggregate of Hood's army, "present and absent," on August 1st, was 135,000, though his "aggregate present" was only 65,000. [Footnote: Ibid.] It included, of course, prisoners of war, deserters, and men otherwise missing, besides the class last mentioned. The extent to which the efforts to bring back absentees succeeded, is shown by the return for September 20th, when the aggregate of the "present and absent" falls to 123,000, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 637.] though the "present for duty" are almost as numerous as at the end of July. The difference of 12,000 shows how many were added to the army in this way, and these are in addition to the thousands which Bragg spoke of as gained by transferring non-combatants present with the army to the list of those present for duty.
It is only by examining Hood's returns in this way that they become intelligible, for his rolls of those present for duty hardly diminish at all during the whole month of August, being 51,793 on the 1st, 51,946 on the 10th, and 51,141 on the 31st. [Footnote:Id., pp. 680-683.] On September 10th he reports 46,149, and on the 20th 47,431, the first of these returns including his losses in the final combats of the campaign and the fall of Atlanta, and the latter indicating a gain by the exchange of prisoners with General Sherman. [Footnote: Id., vol. xxxix. pt. ii. pp. 828, 850.] By ignoring all the additions to his fighting force from the sources which I have enumerated, Hood was able to claim that his total losses while in command of the army were 5247. [Footnote: Id., vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 636.] The absurdity was indicated by Hardee, who replied in his official report that the losses in his own corps, which was only one third of the army, "considerably exceeded 7000" during the same period. [Footnote: Id., p. 702.]
Sherman's returns show a steady diminution of his available numbers during July and August, though, as he himself has said, it was not altogether from casualties on the battlefield and the diseases of the camp. [Footnote: Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 134.] The term of service of all the troops enlisted in the spring and summer of 1861 for three years was now ended, and an interval occurred in which the new levies under the law to enforce the draft had not yet reached the field, and the army was depleted by the return home of the regiments which had not "veteranized" in the last winter. He had present for duty, on July 31st, 91,675 officers and men; on August 31st, 81,758. Sherman's statement of his losses in battle and his comparison of them with his opponents is a model of candor and fairness. With the light we now have, he might properly have increased considerably his estimate of Johnston's casualties. [Footnote: Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 131-136.]
General Hood was quite right in arguing, in his memoirs, that the wounded in a campaign are not all a permanent loss to an army, "since almost all the slightly wounded, proud of their scars, soon return to the ranks." [Footnote: Advance and Retreat, p. 217.] But what I have said above shows that he was entirely astray when he concluded that the difference in the returns of his effective force at the beginning and end of the campaign would show the number of killed and permanently disabled. The absence of data as to the additions to his field force through the means which I have analyzed, shows how absurd a result was drawn from his premises. The reports of casualties are not unfrequently faulty, but with all their faults they would be much more valuable if a complete series existed which could be compared and tested. It would require a minute examination of all returns, from companies to divisions, to determine accurately how many men returned to duty after being wounded or captured. The imperfect state of the Confederate archives would prevent this, if it were otherwise practicable. The statistical returns are conclusive for what they actually give, but inferences from them must be drawn with care. As an illustration (in addition to those already given) it may be noted that the Confederate cavalry made no returns of casualties or losses, and they do not appear at all in the Medical Director's report which General Hood makes the basis of his own assertions. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. iii. p. 687.] How grave an omission this is will be partly seen from the fact that Wheeler's corps, which reported 8000 men present for duty on August 1st (the last return made), was in such condition when he reached Tuscumbia after the raid in the rear of Sherman's army, that its adjutant-general doubted if more than 1000 men could be got together. [Footnote: Letter of General Forrest to General Taylor, Sept. 20, 1864, Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. ii. p. 859.]
The use of the cavalry in "raids," which were the fashion, was an amusement that was very costly to both sides. Since Stuart's ride round McClellan's army in 1862, every cavalry commander, National and Confederate, burned to distinguish himself by some such excursion deep into the enemy's country, and chafed at the comparatively obscured but useful work of learning the detailed positions and movements of the opposing army by incessant outpost and patrol work in the more restricted theatre of operations of the campaign.
From Chattanooga to the Chattahoochee, good work was done by Stoneman and McCook in scouting upon the front and flanks of the army, and by Colonel Lowe in vigilant guard of the railway close in rear of Sherman's movements; but the use of mounted troops in mass was not satisfactory, and as to the raids on both sides, the game was never worth the candle. Men and horses were used up, wholesale, without doing any permanent damage to the enemy, and never reached that training of horse and man which might have been secured by steady and systematic attention to their proper duties. Forrest, of the Confederates, was the only cavalry officer whom Sherman thought at all formidable, and he showed his high estimate of him by offering, in his sweeping way, to secure the promotion of the officer who should defeat and kill him. In another form he expressed the same idea, by saying he would swap all the cavalry officers he had for Forrest. [Footnote: The matter took an odd turn, when on the report that General Mower had defeated Forrest in West Tennessee and that the brilliant cavalry leader had fallen in the action, Mower got his promotion, but it turned out that it was Forrest's brother, a colonel, who was killed--"a horse of another color." Mower, however, was worthy of promotion "on general principles." See Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 471; vol. xxxix. pt. i. p. 228; Id., pt. ii. pp. 130, 142, 219, 233.]
High as was the National estimate of the importance of Sherman's campaign, Southern men rated it and its consequences quite as high as we did. In the conferences at Richmond, at which Mr. Hill had represented the strong desire of Governor Brown and General Johnston for reinforcements, Mr. Davis had made his apprehension of the disastrous results which would follow the loss of Atlanta the reason of his urgency for a more aggressive campaign. In closing the interviews, Mr. Seddon, the Secretary of War, and Mr. Hill showed their sense of the importance of the crisis by exchanging letters which were diplomatic memoranda of the conversations. Mr. Hill repeated his conviction that the fate of the Confederacy hung upon the campaign. He said that the failure of Johnston's army involved that of Lee; that not only Atlanta but Richmond must fall; not only Georgia but all the States would be overrun; that all hopes of possible foreign recognition would be destroyed; in short, that "all is lost by Sherman's success, and all is gained by Sherman's defeat." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. lii. pt. ii. p. 706.] Governor Brown had accompanied Mr. Hill's effort by a dispatch in which he declared that Atlanta was to the Confederacy "almost as important as the heart is to the human body." [Footnote: Id., p. 680.] So far from taking exception to these strong expressions, Mr. Davis based his action in regard to General Johnston upon the absolute necessity of a military policy in Georgia, which would hold Atlanta at all hazards. When the city fell, the whole South as well as the North knew that a decisive step had been taken toward the defeat of the rebellion.