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Epilogue WHILE SHERMAN'S COLUMNS tramped through Georgia, Hood kept his army, now reduced to 30,600 men, on the move. He crossed the Tennessee River at Tuscumbia, Alabama, and raided into Tennessee. The IV and XXIII Corps finally concentrated at Franklin, their flanks firmly anchored on the Harpeth River, and watched as the Rebels approached. Shortly after noon on November 30, two of Hood's corps arrived . At 4:00 P.M. a frontal assault of 18,000 Rebels advanced astride the Columbia Pike, their hundred banners snapping in the warm autumn breeze. Two brigades of the IV Corps, foolishly positioned a half mile in advance of the Union line, were routed. The Confederates penetrated to the edge of town before a Union counterattack hurled them back. Although left in possession of the battlefield, Hood's army had been wrecked, losing a staggering 6,700 men to the Federals 2,300, General Stanley among the wounded of the latter. The Federals fell back to Nashville.1 Despite the hard-fought Federal victory, Grant and Sherman remained perturbed . "Why he [Thomas] did not turn on Hood at Franklin, after checking and discomforting him, surpasses my understanding. I know full well that General Thomas is slow in mind and in action, but he is judicious and brave, and the troops feel great confidence in him. I still hope he will out-maneuver and destroy Hood," Sherman summarized. A week and a half into December, after the Federal army at Nashville had increased to sixty thousand, Grant applied great pressure for an immediate offensive. When no action was forthcoming, he considered replacing Thomas with either Schofield or John Logan. On the seventh Secretary of War Stanton wrote Grant that if Thomas planned to wait on his cavalry to get ready, "Gabriel will be blowing his last horn." The next day Grant noted to Halleck, "There is no better man to repel an attack than Thomas, but I fear he is too cautious to ever take the initiative." The next day he sternly wrote the Virginian, "It seemed to me that you have been slow, and I had no explanation of affairs to convince me otherwise." Thomas called the general in chief's hand: "If you should deem it necessary to relieve me I shall submit without a murmur." To some officers Thomas mused about i. Castel, Decision in the West, 556-57. E P I L O G U E 433 Grant's foolish order to attack at Chattanooga in the fall of 1863before the Army of the Tennessee had come up.2 The issue soon came to a head. In a two-day battle waged on December 15-16, Thomas, in a spectacular "right hook" assault, overran Hood's entrenched troops at Nashville, routing them and sending them fleeing. Bythe time Hood returned to the Tennessee River, he had only twenty thousand men remaining. The Army of Tennessee had been effectively eliminated from the war. Yet Thomas halted to refit the army rather than continue a relentless pursuit, again evoking the anger of Grant. "His pursuit of Hood indicated a sluggishnessthat satisfied me he would never do to conduct one of your campaigns," Grant confided to Sherman. Thomas's army was eventually dispersed to other sectors.3 Nonetheless, on Christmas Eve, Thomas received a telegram from Stanton informing him that the president had submitted his nomination as major general in the U.S. Army to the Senate. At his Pulaski, Tennessee, headquarters, when he received the message, Thomas turned to his chief surgeon, George E. Cooper, handed him the telegram, and asked: "What do you think of that?" Reading it, Cooper replied : "It is better late than never." Thomas testily responded: "It is better late than never but it is too late to be appreciated. I earned this at Chattanooga." He was wrong; he had earned it at Chickamauga.4 On May 9,1865, Thomas held a spectacular review; his farewell to the IV Corps. He took his place in a stand constructed outside the city. Leading the march was David Stanley, having recovered from his Franklin wound. In the ranks were such officers as Thomas Wood, who was with the original Ohio army; Emerson Opdycke; and Charles Harker. Perhaps they, and the troops who marched with them, thought back to the immortal charge up Missionary Ridge—the pinnacle of the Army of the 2. OR, 44:728, 45(2)117, 55, 97,115; Simon, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 13...

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