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  volunteered in a dispute in which he has no interest.

Having, in an address delivered at Lexington on the 19th of January, 1872, undertaken to establish what was the strength of our army around Richmond in June, 1862, and Mr. Jones having done me the honor of promulgating that address to the world (in his "Personal Reminiscences of General Lee"), I have felt that it was incumbent on me to vindicate the correctness of my estimates, which are so much at variance with your own. In doing so I have intended to be entirely respectful and courteous to you, and I trust you will so understand me.

With the assurance of my highest esteem, I am, very respectfully and truly, your obedient servant, . General Joseph E. Johnston. 



The History of the Army of the Cumberland follows hard upon Sherman's Memoirs of his own life and campaigns, and differs from that work as widely as the character and nature of the commander of the Army of the Cumberland differed from that of "the General of the Army."

The publication of General Sherman is not without its value of a procreative sort. It may be likened to that stimulating fertilizer, from the Chinco Islands, for, unsavory in itself, and yielding no fruit to the toiler after historical truth, yet it draws from all the land rich stores of facts for the future historians of the great struggle for power between the States of the South and the States of the North. The very vain glory and self conceit which breathe from every line of Sherman's remarkable narrative are eminently provocative of the rejoinders which clever and dignified writers are now preparing and publishing. Men who bore the brunt of the fierce conflicts, General Sherman so flippantly discusses and so often avoided, are not satisfied that he shall be the historian or the critic of their brave endeavor. They will write now, though they could never be brought to do so until "the General of the Army" assumed to be their historiographer. They cannot keep silent after reading their record from his reckless pen. 