Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/138

 132 Southern Historical Society Papers.

As shown by Colonel Mason's official report, made on the loth of December, ten days after the battle of Franklin, the effective strength of the Army of Tennessee was: Infantry, eighteen thousand three hundred and forty-two ; artillery, two thousand four hundred and five ; cavalry, two thousand three hundred and six ; total, twenty- three thousand and fifty-three. This last number, subtracted from thirty thousand six hundred, the strength of General Hood's army at Florence, shows a total loss, from all causes, of seven thousand five hundred and forty-seven from the 6th of November to the loth of December, which period embraces the engagements at Columbia, Franklin, and of Forrest's cavalry.*

At the battle of Nashville, the Army of Tennessee lost in killed and wounded about two thousand five hundred, making the total loss during the Tennessee campaign about ten thousand.

According to Colonel Mason's statement, there were, including the furloughed men, about eighteen thousand five hundred men, effectives, of the infantry and artillery at Tupelo after General Hood's retreat from Nashville. Before the advance of the army into Ten- nessee on the 6th of November, 1864, the effective strength was thirty thousand six hundred, inclusive of the cavalry.

Thus we find at Tupelo, eighteen thousand five hundred infantry and artillery, and two thousand three hundred and six Forrest's cav- alry, to which add ten thousand lost from all causes, and the total sum amounts to thirty thousand eight hundred and six effectives. General Hood thus estimates his loss in the Tennessee campaign to have been in excess of ten thousand.

Of the once proud Army of Tennessee, less than twenty thousand foot-sore, shoeless, ragged soldiers escaped with Hood's advance into Tennessee ; at the same time a large army (in numbers at least) of sick, wounded and convalescents crowded the general hospitals in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

The life of the Confederacy was bound up in its armies, and when these armies were scattered in the field and their means of sustenance and transportation destroyed, all hope of final success perished. With the Southern Confederacy, the problem was one of endurance and resources ; and no Confederate general appears to have compre- hended this truth more thoroughly than Joseph E. Johnston. In his masterly retreat from Dalton to Atlanta, he opposed successfully


 * General J. B. Hood, "Advance and Retreat" p. 298.