We have conflicting testimony. Young Wade Hampton, of Joe
Johnston's staff, says Hood lost 12,000 men in the battles of the 22d1
and 24th, but Brewster, of Hood's staff, says not three thousand at the utmost.
Now here are two people strictly truthful, who tell things so differently. In
this war people see the same things so oddly one does not know what to believe.
Brewster says when he was in Richmond Mr. Davis said
Johnston would have to be removed and Sherman blocked. He could not make Hardee
full general because, when he had command of an army he was always importuning
the War Department for a general-in-chief to be sent there over him. Polk would
not do, brave soldier and patriot as he was. He was a good soldier, and would
do his best for his country, and do his duty under whomever was put over him by
those in authority. Mr. Davis did not once intimate to him who it was that he
intended to promote to the head of the Western Army.
Brewster said to-day that this “blow at Joe Johnston,
cutting off his head, ruins the schemes of the enemies of the government.
Wigfall asked me to go at once, and get Hood to decline to take this command,
for it will destroy him if he accepts it. He will have to fight under Jeff
Davis's orders; no one can do that now and not lose caste in the Western Army.
Joe Johnston does not exactly say that Jeff Davis betrays his plans to the
enemy, but he says he dares not let the President know his plans, as there is a
spy in the War Office who invariably warns the Yankees in time. Consulting the
government on military movements is played out. That's Wigfall's way of
talking. “Now," added Brewster, “I blame the President for keeping a man
at the head of his armies who treats the government with open scorn and
contumely, no matter how the people at large rate this disrespectful general.”
_______________
1 On July 22d, Hood made a sortie from Atlanta,
but after a battle was obliged to return.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 319-20
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