Our headquarters the second night after the battle were an improvement on those of the night before. We found a knoll which was fairly drained, we borrowed a tarpaulin from a battery, and with fence-rails made of it a lean-to with back to the storm. A pile of evergreen boughs made a couch on which we lay, and a camp-fire blazing high in front made a heat which mitigated even the driving December storm. Our faithful black boys had coffee-pots and haversacks, so that we did not go supperless. I wrote home that my overcoat with large cape weighed about fifty pounds with the water in it, but it kept my body dry, and I found it better to wear it than to put on a rubber waterproof, for perspiration did not evaporate under the latter.
Our private soldiers wore the rubber poncho-blankets above their overcoats in wet weather, and two "pardners" would make a shelter tent of the pair of waterproofs which had metal eyelets to adapt them to this use. Veterans carefully selected the place for the tent, pitched it in good form, trenched it so that the water would flow off and not run into the tent; then with their bed of cedar boughs, their haversacks and coffee-kettles, they were not worse off than the officers,--better off indeed than their company officers who trudged afoot like themselves.
Transportation was so difficult to get that, in pressing forward, baggage was reduced to smallest possible allowance. In bad roads such wagons as we had were far behind the troops, and the company officers were exposed to severe hardships by the delay. I laid their condition before General Schofield, in a letter which better tells the tale than I could now give it from memory alone. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 312.] "From the time we left Nashville," I wrote, "until last night [21st December], these gentlemen had no shelter, and only such food as they could obtain from the private soldiers, being far worse off than the men, since the latter had their shelter-tents and their rations in haversacks. The officers' rations and their cooking utensils are in the regimental wagons, which are necessarily left behind in movements such as we have lately made, and they must either furnish themselves with knapsacks and haversacks, and carry their cooking utensils upon their own persons or those of their servants, or be utterly destitute. Even if they do this, the wagons of the commissary of subsistence are also at the rear, except upon ordinary days of issue, and it would be necessary to issue to them precisely as is done to the soldiers in the ranks, and so break down the last vestige in distinction in mode of life between them and their commands. As it is, I state what I know from personal observation when I say that no individuals in any way connected with the army are enduring so much personal suffering and privation upon the present campaign as the officers of the line. As I know the commanding general will be most desirous to make any arrangement which is feasible to reduce the amount of discomfort, I take the liberty of suggesting that during the winter campaign the transportation for each regiment be one wagon for regimental headquarters and for company books and papers, desks, etc., as now, and in addition one pack-mule for each company. The pack-mules make little or no obstruction in the road, are easily moved to flank or rear in case of manoeuvre of troops, and will be up with the command when the regiment goes into camp. Unless some such arrangement is made, I fear many of our officers will break down in health, and many more, becoming disgusted with the hardships of the service, and especially with the difference between themselves and their more fortunate brethren of the staff and staff-corps, will seek to leave the army. In many commands some similar arrangements to the one I have suggested have been surreptitiously made; but as I have rigidly enforced the rule turning over to the quartermaster all unauthorized animals, I am the more desirous of obtaining for the gentlemen of the line whom I have the honor to command such authority to regulate their transportation as will save them from the apparently unnecessary hardships they have of late endured, without detracting from the mobility of the division." The plan suggested was one we had used in exigencies in the Atlanta campaign, and General Schofield immediately authorized it for winter use.
The cold rainstorm, in which the battle of Nashville had ended, lasted for a week, turning to sleet and snow on the 20th and clearing off with sharp cold on the 24th. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. i. pp. 360, 361.] Worse weather for field operations it would be hard to imagine. The ordinary country roads were impassable, and even the turnpikes became nearly so. They had never been very solidly made, and had not been repaired for three years. In places the metalling broke through, making holes similar to holes in thick ice, with well-defined margin. These were filled to the brim with water, and churned into deep pits by the wheels of loaded wagons. It required watchfulness to see them, as the whole surface of the road was flowing with slush and mud. When a wheel went into one, the wagon dropped to the axle, and even where there was no upset it was a most difficult task to pry the wagon out and start it on the way again. The wagon-master was lucky if it did not stop his whole train, and it was no uncommon thing for a mule to be drowned by getting down in one of these pits. Hood's rear-guard under Forrest and Walthall destroyed bridges behind them, of course, and that our cavalry with the head of our infantry column were able to keep close on the enemy's rear till they passed Pulaski is good proof of the energy with which the pursuit was conducted. Yet it was necessarily slow, for it was confined to one road, the rest being impassable, and flanking operations could only be made on a small scale when in contact with the enemy.
When we reached Franklin on our southward march, we were halted for a day, so that we might not crowd too much upon the rest of the column, and I took advantage of the opportunity to study the condition of the battlefield there. My division camped between the Columbia and the Lewisburg turnpikes, on the ground over which the Confederates had advanced to attack it in the battle. Portions of the second line of works close to the Carter house and the retrenchment across the Columbia road had been levelled, but the principal defences were as we had left them. The osage orange-trees which we had used for abatis had been evenly cut away by the bullets, and the tough fibres hung in a fringe of white strings, the upper line quite even, and just a little lower than the top of the parapet. The effect was a curiously impressive one as we looked down the line we had held and thought what a level storm of lead was indicated by this long white fringe, and what desperate charges of Hood's divisions they were that came through it, close up to the line of this abatis. Every twig was weeping with the cold pouring rain of the dark midwinter storm, and this did not lessen the gloomy effect of the scene. At the Carter house we learned from the family many incidents of their own experience during the battle and of the scenes of the next day. [Footnote: See "Franklin," chap. xv.]
Our position in the rear of the marching columns put upon us the duty of building bridges, repairing roads, and improving the means of supplying the troops in front. We consequently made halts, one of two or three days at Spring Hill, and another in our old camps north of Duck River, where we had held the line of the river on the 28th and 29th of November. The day after Christmas we moved over the river and encamped in front of Columbia, on the Pulaski turnpike. We remained here for several days, whilst the Fourth Corps and the cavalry, making Pulaski their depot for supplies, followed Hood until he crossed the Tennessee on the 28th and 29th of December. The line of the Confederate retreat was stripped bare of supplies and forage, and every energy was devoted to rebuilding railroad bridges and getting the road opened to Pulaski so that wagon transportation might be limited to the region beyond the head of the rails. Thomas had ordered Steedman's and R. S. Granger's divisions to Decatur by rail, going by way of Stevenson. Once there, they were to operate in the direction of Tuscumbia and Florence, seeking to destroy Hood's pontoon bridges crossing the Tennessee. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 260.] The light steamboats in the upper river were reckoned on to take supplies from Chattanooga, where an abundance was in depot. Steedman reached Decatur on the 27th of December, and Granger joined him from Huntsville, but Hood had reached Bainbridge, at the foot of Muscle Shoals on the 25th; [Footnote:Id., p. 731.] and next day had a bridge there, built in part of our pontoons which had been floated down from Decatur. [Footnote: Ante, p. 343.] He assembled the remnants of his army at Tupelo, Miss., fifty miles south of Corinth. The inspection report of January 20th showed 18,708, infantry and artillery, present for duty; Forrest's cavalry not reported. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. i. p. 664.] Thomas's prizes in the two days' fighting at Nashville were reported by him as amounting to 4462 prisoners and fifty-three pieces of artillery. [Footnote: Id., p. 40.] The pursuit after the battle doubled the number of the prisoners, gathered large numbers of deserters, and considerably increased the number of guns captured. [Footnote:Id., pp. 46, 48, 51.]
On the 29th of December Thomas indicated to General Halleck his opinion that all had been done which was now practicable, and his purpose to put his forces into winter quarters,--A. J. Smith's corps with most of the cavalry at Eastport, where the Mississippi and Alabama line reaches the Tennessee River; the Fourth Corps at Huntsville, Ala., and the Twenty-third at Dalton, Ga. Steedman's and Granger's divisions were already at Decatur, and would hold that important position, with which direct railway communication from Nashville would be opened as quickly as the road could be repaired from Pulaski southward. Thomas also outlined for the spring a concerted advance of the columns into southern Alabama. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 402.] The same day he issued his order to Schofield to prepare at once for the march of a hundred and fifty miles to northern Georgia. [Footnote: Id., p. 409.] A march of the same distance southward along the Mobile and Ohio Railway would have carried us to Hood's camps at Tupelo, with a prospect of immediate results, and we were not exhilarated by the order, which, however, was countermanded on the 30th in consequence of dispatches received by Thomas from Halleck.
General Grant had, on the 16th, authorized Sherman to make his own plan for a new campaign, and the latter had indicated the march from Savannah to Columbia and thence to Raleigh as that which he would make if left to himself. [Footnote: Id., vol. xliv. pp. 727-729.] The necessity of reducing the war expenses as soon as possible, as well as more purely military reasons, seemed to the General-in-Chief to make a continuous winter campaign imperative, and by his orders Halleck had directed Thomas not to go into winter quarters, but to assemble his army at Eastport and prepare for further active work. [Footnote:Id., vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 441.] Grant rightly concluded that Hood's army would be sent to the Carolinas as soon as Sherman marched northward. He was therefore considering combinations of Thomas's with Canby's forces for the capture of Mobile and a movement on Selma, Ala., which was the only great armory and manufacturing centre now remaining to the Confederates in the Gulf States. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. pp. 419, 420.] Our army was a good deal worn with the hardships of the campaign, our wagon trains had not been brought up to the requirements for full field service, and we were receiving new troops which were not yet fully assimilated to the old; but the advantages of following up our successes by unflagging efforts in the West as well as in the East, and of making the "long pull and a pull all together" which would end the war, were so plain that all responded cheerily to the call.
But in the Twenty-third Corps a new element entered into the debate, which resulted, a fortnight later, in orders for us to move in a widely different direction. On the 27th, the day that we received at Columbia the news that Sherman had taken Savannah, Schofield wrote an unofficial letter to Grant, suggesting that the corps would no longer be needed for the spring campaign which Thomas was then planning, and that with its increase of strength it might be of more use in Grant's own operations in Virginia if it was not practicable for us to rejoin Sherman. [Footnote: Id., p. 377.] Circumstances were making Schofield's situation in Tennessee uncomfortable, for, as he said in the same letter, he was in an anomalous position, nominally commanding a department and an army, but practically doing neither. Such considerations reinforced the military reasons, but the latter were strong enough to establish the wisdom of his suggestion to Grant. He wrote at the same time to General Sherman, indicating that his strongest wish would be to join the army at Savannah if it should be feasible, for he recognized the great military importance of now concentrating against Lee. [Footnote: "Forty-six Years," p. 254.] It happened that on the same day that Schofield was writing these letters, Grant was writing to Sherman, expressing his pleasure in the latter's confidence of his ability to march through the Carolinas, and his own belief that it could be done. "The effect of such a campaign," he said, "will be to disorganize the South, and prevent the organization of new armies from their broken fragments." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xliv. p. 820.] Giving a sketch of the situation in the West, he thought Sherman's advance would force the Confederacy to use Hood's broken army without allowing it time to collect its deserters and reorganize. As it would thus be "wiped out for present harm," he was considering the plan of ordering A. J. Smith away from his temporary connection with Thomas's main army, and bringing him with ten or fifteen thousand men to Virginia to make his own army strong enough to deal effectually with Lee, whether the Confederate general continued to defend Richmond or should abandon that city. [Footnote:Ibid.] Schofield's suggestion fitted so well the plan Grant was revolving in his mind, that he decided to bring the Twenty-third Corps East, instead of Smith's. On the 7th of January he directed Thomas to send Schofield and the corps to him with as little delay as possible, if he were sure that Hood had gone further south than Corinth. [Footnote: Id., vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 529.] When Thomas received the order on the 11th, he was at Paducah on the Ohio River, and about to start up the Tennessee by steamboat. We were at Clifton on the Tennessee, after a hard march of some seventy miles southwest from Columbia, and were awaiting steamboats to take us up to Eastport, wholly ignorant of the surprise that was in store for us. [Footnote: Id., pt. i. p. 363.] Even Schofield had received no word from Grant as to his action.
In making this outline of the changing plans of our superiors, I have outrun the current of my personal experience in which some things may be worth noting. On the day after the battle of Nashville, I was conscious of malarial poisoning from the specially unwholesome conditions of our bivouac on the night of the 16th, but was so confident in the vigor of my constitution in throwing off such ailments that I paid no attention to my health, and kept about my duties with my ordinary activity. I found, however, that my strength was not equal to the demands upon it, and by the time we reached the Duck River on the 23d of December, I was glad to find quarters at the house of Mrs. Porter, in the bend of the river, where we had been during the two days before the battle of Franklin, and where we were again received with a kindness and hospitality which was wonderful when one considers how the passing and repassing of armies had ruined the country and overstrained the sympathies of the people.