I have also had a careful tabular statement compiled from official records in the adjutant-general’s office, giving the “effective strength” of the army under my command for each of the months of May, June, July, August, and September, 1864, which enumerate every man (infantry, artillery, and cavalry) for duty.  The recapitulation clearly exhibits the actual truth.  We opened the campaign with 98,797 (ninety-eight thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven) men.  Blair’s two divisions joined us early in June, giving 112,819 (one hundred and twelve thousand eight hundred and nineteen), which number gradually became reduced to 106,070 (one hundred and six thousand and seventy men), 91,675 (ninety-one thousand six hundred and seventy-five), and 81,758 (eighty-one thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight) at the end of the campaign.  This gradual reduction was not altogether owing to death and wounds, but to the expiration of service, or by detachments sent to points at the rear.

CHAPTER XX

ATLANTA AND AFTER—­PURSUIT OF HOOD.

SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER, 1864.

By the middle of September, matters and things had settled down in Atlanta, so that we felt perfectly at home.  The telegraph and railroads were repaired, and we had uninterrupted communication to the rear.  The trains arrived with regularity and dispatch, and brought us ample supplies.  General Wheeler had been driven out of Middle Tennessee, escaping south across the Tennessee River at Bainbridge; and things looked as though we were to have a period of repose.

One day, two citizens, Messrs. Hill and Foster, came into our lines at Decatur, and were sent to my headquarters.  They represented themselves as former members of Congress, and particular friends of my brother John Sherman; that Mr. Hill had a son killed in the rebel army as it fell back before us somewhere near Cassville, and they wanted to obtain the body, having learned from a comrade where it was buried.  I gave them permission to go by rail to the rear, with a note to the commanding officer, General John E. Smith, at Cartersville, requiring him to furnish them an escort and an ambulance for the purpose.  I invited them to take dinner with our mess, and we naturally ran into a general conversation about politics and the devastation and ruin caused by the war.  They had seen a part of the country over which the army had passed, and could easily apply its measure of desolation to the remainder of the State, if necessity should compel us to go ahead.