Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1913 — STORIES of CAMP and WAR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

STORIES of CAMP and WAR

HOOD LOST BIG OPPORTUNITY Commander Accused His Officers and! Men of Cowardice, Learned Under His Predecessor. Much has been said and Written about the retreat of the Fourth and Twenty-third corps from Pulaski to Franklin, more especially the night march from Columbia to and past Spring Hill, November 29, 1864. It' Is often referred to as Hbod’s -lost opportunity. in the early morning of: that day General Cox was in line facing the river, observing the Confederate pretense of crossing, which could not have been done if opposed by even a heavy skirmish line. When it became evident that only a feint was being made, General Wood sent Post’s brigade with some cavalry to reconnoiter up the river, writes Geo. S. Meyers of Company F, One Hundred and First Ohio, of Los Angeles, Cal., in the National Tribune. It was discovered that Hood was crossing troops at Huey’s Mill and moving to the north on a converging road, which touched our line of retreat at Spring Hill. To guard against an attack of from that. quarter Kimball’B division, of which my regiment was a part, was, halted at Rutherford’s creek and faced to the east, where we remained until late afternoon, while Wagner’s division proceeded on to Spring Hill, where, with the assistance of other troops, the advanced Confederate forces were driven back from the main road. At dark General Cox withdrew from Columbus, the wagons having been dispatched in the afternoon. Kimball’s division followed Cox, who was in turn followed by General Wood. Thus when the Confederate troops under Cheatham and Clebunie had arrived in considerable force there was an unbroken line of blue moving along the road, which the Confederate officers declared “was too long to attack with prospect of success." General Cheatham states that in crossing at Huey's Mill the bridge was broken several times, that the entire night waß spent ifi crossing, and that the troops were utterly exhausted thereby, and by the march over a nearly impassable road, with flankers out in expectation of an attack from us; that the troops had been without cooked rations for 24 hours. He also states that the grandiloquent speech Hood claims he made to General Cleburne and himself was not made in his presence.

It is an undisputed fact that Hood went a mile to the Confederate rear qnd went to bed, which would have, been a very unusual proceeding on the part of any army commander at the opening of a battle. The corpß of General Lee, the largest in Hood’s army, was still at Columbia. Not a piece of artillery had been gotten across the river. Hood did not expect a battle during the night; neither did he expect us to march out of the pocket before morning. The night following Ihe first day’s battle of Nashville was spent by us - around a fire, the weather being cold, and blankets we had none. A prisoner or deserter, who through some fault was not sent to the rear, sat through the night at our fire. This man was possessed with more intelligence than the average Confederate soldier. He minutely described the burial of the mutilated bodies in front of our little works at Franklin the morning after that battle, and also told of the hunger and exhausted condition of their men at their arrival near our marching column near Spring kill. He declared that neither oflfcers nor men could have been driven into a fight.

On the morning of the 30th, after having passed the night in sleep, Hood been no battle aqd that our army had made a clean get-away without the loss of a wagon. In his abuse of his leading generals he accused officers and men alike with cowardice brought about by being allowed to fight behind breastworks on the Altanta campaign under his predecessor, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. With the light we now have as to the condition of the Confederates at the time we passed their glowing campfires on that momentous night of November 29, 1864, we realize that our nervous feeling was not fully warranted. It would be a reflection on the valor of the men composing tha Fourth and Twenty-third corps, tested on many a hard-fought field, to believe they would have allowed themselves to be turned back by a remnant of Hood’s army at Spring Hill.