McPherson is ordered to carry in wagons twenty day’s rations, and to rely on the depot at Ringgold for the renewal of his bread.  Beeves are now being driven on the hoof to the front; and the commissary, Colonel Beckwith, seems fully alive to the importance of the whole matter.

Our weakest point will be from the direction of Decatur, and I will be forced to risk something from that quarter, depending on the fact that the enemy has no force available with which to threaten our communications from that direction.

Colonel Comstock will explain to you personally much that I cannot commit to paper.  I am, with great respect,

W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General.

On the 28th of April I removed my headquarters to Chattanooga, and prepared for taking the field in person.  General Grant had first indicated the 30th of April as the day for the simultaneous advance, but subsequently changed the day to May 5th.  McPhersons troops were brought forward rapidly to Chattanooga, partly by rail and partly by marching.  Thomas’s troops were already in position (his advance being out as far as Ringgold-eighteen miles), and Schofield was marching down by Cleveland to Red Clay and Catoosa Springs.  On the 4th of May, Thomas was in person at Ringgold, his left at Catoosa, and his right at Leet’s Tan-yard.  Schofield was at Red Clay, closing upon Thomas’s left; and McPherson was moving rapidly into Chattanooga, and out toward Gordon’s Mill.

On the 5th I rode out to Ringgold, and on the very day appointed by General Grant from his headquarters in Virginia the great campaign was begun.  To give all the minute details will involve more than is contemplated, and I will endeavor only to trace the principal events, or rather to record such as weighed heaviest on my own mind at the time, and which now remain best fixed in my memory.

My general headquarters and official records remained back at Nashville, and I had near me only my personal staff and inspectors-general, with about half a dozen wagons, and a single company of Ohio sharp-shooters (commanded by Lieutenant McCrory) as headquarters or camp guard.  I also had a small company of irregular Alabama cavalry (commanded by Lieutenant Snelling), used mostly as orderlies and couriers.  No wall-tents were allowed, only the flies.  Our mess establishment was less in bulk than that of any of the brigade commanders; nor was this from an indifference to the ordinary comforts of life, but because I wanted to set the example, and gradually to convert all parts of that army into a mobile machine, willing and able to start at a minute’s notice, and to subsist on the scantiest food.  To reap absolute success might involve the necessity even of dropping all wagons, and to subsist on the chance food which the country was known to contain.  I had obtained not only the United States census-tables of 1860, but a compilation made by the Controller of the State of Georgia for the purpose of taxation,