Meantime Schofield, with the Twenty-third Corps, presented a bold front toward East Point, daring and inviting the enemy to sally out to attack him in position.  His first movement was on the 30th, to Mount Gilead Church, then to Morrow’s Mills, facing Rough and Ready.  Thomas was on his right, within easy support, moving by cross-roads from Red Oak to the Fayetteville road, extending from Couch’s to Renfrew’s; and Howard was aiming for Jonesboro.

I was with General Thomas that day, which was hot but otherwise very pleasant.  We stopped for a short noon-rest near a little church (marked on our maps as Shoal-Creek Church), which stood back about a hundred yards from the road, in a grove of native oaks.  The infantry column had halted in the road, stacked their arms, and the men were scattered about—­some lying in the shade of the trees, and others were bringing corn-stalks from a large corn-field across the road to feed our horses, while still others had arms full of the roasting-ears, then in their prime.  Hundreds of fires were soon started with the fence-rails, and the men were busy roasting the ears.  Thomas and I were walking up and down the road which led to the church, discussing the chances of the movement, which he thought were extra-hazardous, and our path carried us by a fire at which a soldier was roasting his corn.  The fire was built artistically; the man was stripping the ears of their husks, standing them in front of his fire, watching them carefully, and turning each ear little by little, so as to roast it nicely.  He was down on his knees intent on his business, paying little heed to the stately and serious deliberations of his leaders.  Thomas’s mind was running on the fact that we had cut loose from our base of supplies, and that seventy thousand men were then dependent for their food on the chance supplies of the country (already impoverished by the requisitions of the enemy), and on the contents of our wagons.  Between Thomas and his men there existed a most kindly relation, and he frequently talked with them in the most familiar way.  Pausing awhile, and watching the operations of this man roasting his corn, he said, “What are you doing?” The man looked up smilingly “Why, general, I am laying in a supply of provisions.”  “That is right, my man, but don’t waste your provisions.”  As we resumed our walk, the man remarked, in a sort of musing way, but loud enough for me to hear:  “There he goes, there goes the old man, economizing as usual.”  “Economizing” with corn, which cost only the labor of gathering and roasting!

As we walked, we could hear General Howard’s guns at intervals, away off to our right front, but an ominous silence continued toward our left, where I was expecting at each moment to hear the sound of battle.  That night we reached Renfrew’s, and had reports from left to right (from General Schofield, about Morrow’s Mills, to General Howard, within a couple of miles of Jonesboro).  The next morning