[34] The following is an extract from a letter dated August 18, 1864, written at City Point by Gen. U. S. Grant to Gen. B. F. Butler, agent of exchange at Fortress Monroe, Va.:
"It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man released on parole or otherwise becomes an active soldier against us at once, either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught, they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time to release all Rebel prisoners North would insure Sherman's defeat, and would compromise our safety here." (See War Records, page 606, Series II., Vol. VII., Serial No. 120.)
[35] Gen. J. D. Cox, Union army, who commanded most of the troops engaged in the battle of Franklin, in his volume published describing this battle (on page 15) states that our killed—1,750—exceeded "Grant's at Shiloh, McClellan's in the seven days' battle, Burnside's at Fredericksburg, Rosecrans's at Stone's river or at Chickamauga, Hooker's at Chancellorsville, and were almost as many as Grant's at Cold Harbor, and nine less than the British loss at Waterloo out of 43,000 men." The killed, as I have shown at Buena Vista, is very great compared with the wounded; more than at Franklin.
Comparisons often surprise us. An examination of the "United States Army Dictionary," by C. K. Gardner, Adjutant General U. S. A., brought down to 1853, shows also that the number of the killed and wounded in the United States forces during the war with Great Britain from 1812 to 1815 were; killed, 1,045; wounded, 2,656; total 3,701. (The Creek Indian war in Georgia and Alabama omitted.)
Again, the whole number of killed and wounded, from the firing of the first gun on the banks of the Rio Grande to Buena Vista, from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, thence to the shore of the Pacific and in California, was only 4,808.
And so the facts of history show that out of the 21,800 Confederate soldiers engaged in the battle of Franklin more were killed, in a few hours, than during either of the two preceding wars. In the Confederate war the United States lost, killed, 99,183, and from disease, 171,806.
The dispatch that Hood captured just before the battle, dated November 29, 1864, 3.30 A.M., will be found in Gen. Cox's book (page 25). There is no information in it to justify Hood in making the assault. Thomas merely "tells Schofield to fall back from Columbia to Franklin, and that Gen. A. J. Smith's command had not arrived in Nashville," etc.
Maj. D. W. Sanders's Letter.
May 6, 1897.
Gen. S. G. French, Pensacola, Fla.