Forty-Six Years in the Army by John McAllister Schofield (e ink ebook reader .txt) 📖

orders and instructions General Thomas had given me for my guidance during those operations without implied criticism of General Thomas; hence it was then thought best to omit any reference to any such orders or instructions, and to limit the report to a simple recital of the facts, thus making the report strictly truthful so far as concerned my own action and that of the troops under my command, without any reference whatever to my superior at Nashville, under whose orders I was supposed to be acting; and that report of December 7 appeared to be entirely satisfactory to General Thomas in that respect as well as in all others. But when the time came to make my final report of the entire campaign, which must go upon the public records as my full and exact contribution to the history of military operations in which I had taken an important part, truth and justice to all required me to make the records complete so far as lay in my power; and if there was anything in the record, as submitted by me to General Thomas, to which he took exception, it was as plainly his duty to truth and justice to place those exceptions also on the public records. So far from suggesting in my final report any possible criticism of General Thomas, I put the best possible construction upon all the despatches I had received from him, by accepting them together as showing me that his object was "to hold the enemy in check" until he (Thomas) could concentrate his reinforcements, and not to fight Hood at Pulaski, as he (Thomas) had at first ordered. I simply submitted to him the plain record, with the best possible construction I could put upon it, and that only so far as it was necessary for me to construe it to give the general basis of my action. If any official duty remained to be done in that regard, that duty devolved on General Thomas, not on me.

In my final report, dated December 31, 1864, I said, as above indicated, that my instructions from the major-general commanding were embraced in a telegram to General Stanley (dated November 8), in which General Thomas said, "Should the enemy overpower them [the cavalry] and march on Pulaski, you must hold that place," "a copy of which was furnished with the order to assume command at Pulaski, and subsequent despatches, explaining that the object was to hold the enemy in check, should he advance, long enough to enable General A. J. Smith's corps, then expected from Missouri, to reach Nashville, other troops in the Department of the Cumberland to be concentrated, and General Wilson's cavalry to be remounted and fitted for the field. The reinforcements thus expected were about equal to the force we then had in the field, and would make our entire force, when concentrated, equal, or somewhat superior, to that of the enemy. To effect this concentration was therefore of vital importance, a consideration to which all others were secondary. This required that the enemy's advance should be delayed as much as possible, and at the same time a decisive battle avoided, unless it could be fought on favorable terms."

I refrained from quoting either of the despatches from General Thomas,—that dated November 8 to Stanley, or that dated 19, repeating in substance that of the 8th,—or my reply of November 20 pointing out the reasons by the position at Pulaski was a false one to occupy under the circumstances; and I still think, as I then thought, that that was done as delicately as possible so as to avoid suggesting to General Thomas that I thought his order a blunder. His reply of the same date shows that he so appreciated it. This despatch last referred to from General Thomas, and all the other correspondence after I reached Pulaski, fully justified to me in the statement made in my report, above mentioned, as to whence I derived my information of his plans.

INCONSISTENCIES IN GENERAL THOMAS'S REPORT

But in the report of General Thomas dated January 20, 1865, appears the following: "Directions were then sent to General Schofield to leave a sufficiently strong force for the defense of that point, and with the balance of his command proceed to carry out the instructions already given him, viz., to join the Fourth Corps at Pulaski, and assume command of all the troops in the vicinity, watch the movements of Hood, and retard his advance into Tennessee as much as possible, without risking a general engagement, until Maj.-Gen. A. J. Smith's command could arrive from Missouri, and Maj.-Gen. J. H. Wilson could have time to remount the cavalry regiments dismounted to furnish horses for Kilpatrick's division, which was to accompany General Sherman in his march through Georgia. . . . My plans and wishes were fully explained to General Schofield, and, as subsequent events will show, properly appreciated and executed by him."

Thus, General Thomas, being fully satisfied with the operations of the troops while under my immediate command in the field, asserted that those operations were based upon his "plans and wishes," which had been "fully explained" to me before I went to Pulaski, and "properly appreciated," instead of upon what I had gathered from General Thomas's orders to Stanley and subsequent orders to me about fighting Hood at Pulaski, absolutely contradictory to that stated in his report, "without risking a general engagement," and his assent to my radically different suggestions made after I assumed command at Pulaski, as stated in my report. It is not incumbent upon me to try to reconcile this statement in General Thomas's report with the correspondence, above referred to, found in the official records; and I see no reason for desiring any further corroboration of the strict accuracy of the contrary statement made by me in my report. I am entirely willing to leave any discussion of that subject to others.

In view of the fact that I was not one of General Thomas's corps commanders, but an army commander, holding the same grade of command, by special assignment of the President under the law, as General Thomas himself, he might without military impropriety have left to me in his report, as he had before done in fact, whether intentionally or not, the entire responsibility of the operations of the army under my immediate command from Pulaski to Nashville. The record shows that, from the necessities of the case, I was compelled to act, and did act, upon my own judgment from the beginning to the end, not only without any timely orders, but generally without timely or accurate information from General Thomas; and that he approved, from time to time and finally, all that I had done. The question as to why he afterward claimed that all had been done in pursuance of his plans and wishes, fully explained to me in advance, I must leave to others. He was certainly under no official obligation to take upon himself any such responsibility. It may be true, as General Sherman said and General Thomas admitted, that it was his duty to take command in the field himself. But it was not his duty, being in the rear, to hamper the actual army commander in the field with embarrassing orders or instructions, nor to take upon himself the responsibility of failure or success. If I had failed in those hazardous operations, nobody could have held General Thomas responsible, unless for neglect of duty in not commanding himself in person, or in not sending me possible reinforcements. No obedience to any erroneous orders or instructions of his, sent from a distance whence the actual situation could not be seen as clearly as at the front, could have justified me in case of failure. The actual commander of an army in the field must act upon his own judgment and responsibility, though with due deference to the plans and wishes of his superior, so far as they are made known to him, having in view the general object of a campaign. This sound military principle appears to have been fully recognized by General Thomas when he made his report. He only claimed that his "plans and wishes were fully explained" and "properly appreciated and executed," not that he had given any specific orders or instructions. Why, then, did he assert, in contradiction of my statement previously made to him, and in contradiction of the official record I had submitted to him with that statement in my report, that those "plans and wishes" of his had been "fully explained" to me before instead of after I went to Pulaski? What possible difference could it have made to General Thomas, personally or officially, whether the records showed that his plans and wishes were made known to me before or after I assumed command, provided they were received by me in due time for my action? What possible motive could General Thomas have had in putting on the public records what was in substance a flat contradiction of an official statement I had made to him with full documentary evidence to support it, and that in the absence of any possible ground for his own contradictory statement, except his own recollection of some conversation we may have had more than two months before, in which he might have explained to me his "plans and wishes"? I cannot believe that General Thomas ever consciously did any such thing. That feature of the report must have had some other author besides George H. Thomas. It is true that the orders telegraphed to me by General Thomas, November 19, "to fight him [Hood] at Pulaski, if he advances against that place," were inconsistent with the statement in his report that he had fully explained to me his plans and wishes as specified in that report, and in plain disregard of the general principle recognized in his report, as well as likely to lead to disastrous results if obeyed. But those orders were on the records, and could not be expunged, even if such a man as General Thomas could possibly have wished to expunge anything from his official record. Hence, I repeat, that feature of the report signed by General Thomas could not have been his.

INCONSISTENCIES IN GENERAL THOMAS'S REPORT

In this connection it is to be observed that General Thomas had not, at the time I went back to report to him in Tennessee, any anxiety about his inability to cope with Hood after the arrival of the Twenty-third Corps. He had assured General Sherman of his entire confidence.( 1) He had ordered me to march, as Stanley had done, from Tullahoma to Pulaski; but the action of Forrest at Johnsonville about that time caused General Thomas to change his orders and hurry me by rail to Nashville, and thence to Johnsonville, with the advance of my troops, he wishing to see me in person as I passed through Nashville.( 2) It would not be an unreasonable presumption that the burden of conversation in that brief interview was in respect to the alarming condition of Johnsonville at that time, rather than in respect to some future defensive operations against Hood, then hardly anticipated. Indeed, the entire correspondence of that period, including that which occurred between General Thomas and General Sherman, about which it is important to note that I knew nothing at that time, shows that General Thomas then expected to concentrate his troops at Columbia or Pulaski, or both, in a very short time, take command in the field in person, and begin aggressive operations against Hood. It seems extremely probable that General Thomas had given very little thought at that time to the subject of defensive action, except as against what that troublesome cavalryman Forrest might do. It seems far more probable from the record that General Thomas's "plans and wishes" in respect to defensive action against Hood's advance into Tennessee, which I had so "properly appreciated and executed," were, like the plans of the battle of December 16 at Nashville, matured after the event, or at least after Hood's advance into Tennessee had actually begun, and after I had, in my telegram to General Thomas of November 20, pointed out to him the dangers of his previous plan, telegraphed to me the day before.

I do not think much importance is generally to be attached to what any man may or may