CONFEDERATE ARMIES of MISSISSIPPI & TENNESSEE
May 19th 1864,
under Command of General
J. E. JOHNSTON.
Army Tenn: Genl Johnston.
Miss: Lt. Genl Polk.

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When supper was over Hood and Polk asked Johnston to a conference that they had previously arranged, and Johnston asked me to go with him. At the conference, at this time, Hardee was not present. Hood commenced by declaring that his line and Polk's line were so enfiladed by the Federal artillery that they could not be held. Polk was not so strenuous. Johnston insisted on fighting, and my diary says:

At 9 P.M. it was, I am sure, determined to fight at Cassville, and, after remaining at the conference sometime longer, I hastened to camp to entrench. Soon after it was intimated to me by an officer riding along past me that we would fall back, owing to the enemy moving so far on our left.

20th. At midnight we commenced to leave our position. Skirmishers were left, and a few men in the trenches were given axes to fell trees to deceive the enemy and drown the noise made in withdrawing the artillery.

I am obliged, before I proceed any further, to make a digression here in reference to the proceedings of this conference by reason of what has been published about it.

Johnston, in his "Narrative," gives his version of what occurred, and so far as what took place it is mainly correct. Hood, in his "Advance and Retreat," makes an incorrect statement of the condition of his line, and, whilst I was there, made no reference to being in a good position for acting on the aggressive and making an attack. His memory is defective, because in a letter of his, written to me ten years after, he had entirely forgotten that I was present at the conference. Then again, in October, 1894, there appeared in the New Orleans Picayune an anonymous article that endeavored to transfer Polk's concurrence with Hood to not fight on to my shoulders. It was so entirely erroneous—nay, purely imaginative—that it required me to notice it for the benefit of my children, and it can be found in the Southern Historical Magazine, Vol. XXII., pages 1 to 9, published in Richmond, Va., January-December, 1894.

I regret that this fabulous Picayune article, emanating in New Orleans, was ever written on account of Gen. Polk. It made him appear to be a weak man.