Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/175

 General Joseph Egglestcn Johnston. 175

where the enemy, if beaten, had a secure refuge behind the fortified gap at Ringgold, or in the fortress of Chattanooga, and where the odds against us were almost as ten to four. At Resaca he received five brigades, near Kingston three, and about three thousand five hundred cavalry, at New Hope church one in all about fourteen thousand infantry and artillery. The enemy received the Seventeenth corps and a number of garrisons and bridge guards from Tennessee and Kentucky that had been relieved by " one-hundred-day men."

FOUGHT EVERY DAY.

I am blamed for not fighting. Operations commenced about the 6th of May. I was relieved on the i8th of July. In that time we fought daily, always under circumstances so favorable to us as to make it certain that the sum of the enemy's losses was five times ours, which was ten thousand. Northern papers represented theirs up to about the end of June at forty-five thousand. Sherman's progress was at the rate of a mile and a quarter a day. Had this style of fighting been allowed to continue is it not clear that we would soon have been able to give battle with abundant chances of victory ?' and that the enemy, beaten on this side of the Chattahoochee would have been destroyed?

SHERMAN'S ARMY STRONGER.

It was ceriain that Sherman's army was stronger compared with that of Tennessee, than Grant's compared with that of Northern Virginia. General Bragg asserts that Sherman's was absolutely stronger than Grant's. It is well known that the Army of Virginia was much superior to that of Tennessee. Why, then should I be condemned for the defensive, while General Lee was adding to his great fame by the same course? General Bragg seems to have earned at Missionary Ridge his present high position. People report at Columbus and Montgomery that General Bragg said that my losses had been frightful; that I had disregarded the wishes and instructions of the President; that he had in vain implored me to change my course, by which I suppose it is meant assume the offensive.

UTTERLY UNTRUE.

As these things are utterly untrue it is not to be supposed that they ^ were said by General Bragg. The President gave me no instructions and expressed no wishes except just before we reached