The reason for this sudden and radical change of program is made perfectly clear by Sherman's despatch of November 1 and others: "The enemy is now in the full tide of execution of his grand plan to destroy my communications and defeat this army." Sherman's defiant spirit, thus aroused, brooked no delay. He would not wait for anything but his own necessary preparations. Nashville, Chattanooga, and Decatur could stand a long siege, and these alone he regarded as of strategic importance. The enemy would doubtless do "considerable damage," but afterward "reinforcements will pour to you" (Thomas). He convinced himself that Thomas had troops enough; but, "to make things sure," he might "call on the governors of Indiana and Kentucky for some militia"! In the meantime, he (Sherman) would "destroy all the railroads in Georgia and do as much substantial damage as is possible." Thus recklessly challenged by the Confederate chief, Sherman must not only accept that challenge, but do it at once. Perhaps if Jefferson Davis had known William T. Sherman as well as some of us did, he would not have uttered that challenge.
RAWLINS'S REPORTED OPPOSITION TO THE MARCH
From Grant's "Memoirs"(11) it appears that General Grant not only confirms Sherman's claim in respect to his independent authorship of the plan, but says he (General Grant) was in favor of that plan from the time it was first submitted to him, and credits his chief of staff, General Rawlins, with having been "very bitterly opposed to it," and with having appealed to the authorities at Washington to stop it.
This recollection of General Grant, after the lapse of so long a time, and when he was suffering almost beyond endurance from a fatal disease, may possibly, it seems to me, not express the views he entertained in October, 1864, quite so fully or accurately as his despatch of October 11, 1864, 11 A. M., to General Sherman, heretofore quoted.
That despatch was a literal prediction of what Hood actually did. It was dictated by a clear military foresight, whether of Grant or Rawlins. How far world-wide approval of Sherman's plans after their brilliant success may have obscured the past can only be conjectured. As distinctly stated by Grant himself soon afterward, he clearly saw that somebody ought to be criticized; but, in view of the results, he decided to let it pass.
However all this may be, even my respect for the opinions of the greatest of Union soldiers cannot alter the conclusion I have reached after many years of study and mature consideration. I can only say that the opinion ascribed to General Rawlins, as opposed to General Grant's, was in my judgment the better of the two; and that General Rawlins, though he had not the advantage of an early military education, was a man of great natural ability, and had learned much from more than three years' experience in war, after which the differences in military judgment which had existed at the beginning must have very largely, if not entirely, disappeared. General Rawlins was my immediate successor in the War Department, and would, I doubt not, have made a great reputation there if his life had been prolonged.
I believe Grant's own sound military judgment dictated his first answer to Sherman, dissenting from the proposition to begin the march to the sea before Hood's army was disposed of, or that result assured. His great confidence in the genius of his brilliant subordinate, and in Sherman's judgment that he had given Thomas ample means to take care of Hood, no matter what that bold and reckless adversary might do, dictated Grant's final assent to Sherman's project. Their correspondence shows this so clearly and fully that there would seem to be no need of my making any special reference to it. I do so only because of the statement in General Grant's "Memoirs." Very possibly General Grant may have meant, in his "Memoirs," only that he approved the general project, under the condition that sufficient force would be left "to take care of Hood and destroy him," not caring to say anything about the fulfillment or nonfulfillment of that condition.
From about October 1 till the time Sherman started on his march— six weeks—he seems to have been so intent on the execution of that project, and upon doing it with as large an army as possible, that no question of military principle or of fact could be permitted to stand in his way. He assumed and maintained throughout that the only question was whether he should continue the aggressive, or allow the enemy's movements to put him on the defensive, refusing to consider any other possible plan of aggressive operations, except for a moment in response to advice from Grant, and then brushing it aside as impracticable.—"If I could hope to overhaul Hood," etc. In like manner, he appears to have convinced himself that his arrangements for direct operations against Hood by Thomas in Tennessee were very materially more complete than they were in fact, and he so represented the matter to General Grant. It seems quite certain that Grant was laboring under a serious misapprehension in respect to Thomas's condition to cope with Hood, and no doubt Grant's subsequent impatience in respect to Thomas's action was largely due to this fact. This point deserves close consideration.
GRANT'S FINAL JUDGMENT ON IT
Grant's first assent to Sherman's plan was made, October 11, on the condition of "holding the line of the Tennessee firmly." On October 22 Sherman telegraphed: "I am now perfecting arrangements to put into Tennessee a force able to hold the line of the Tennessee."