ince 1836, and was
intimately associated with him in California, where we served
together on the staff of General Persifer F. Smith. He had come to
us from the East with a high reputation as a "fighter," which he
had fully justified at Chattanooga and Peach-Tree Creek; at which
latter battle I complimented him on the field for special
gallantry, and afterward in official reports. Still, I did feel a
sense of relief when he left us. We were then two hundred and
fifty miles in advance of our base, dependent on a single line of
railroad for our daily food. We had a bold, determined foe in our
immediate front, strongly intrenched, with communication open to
his rear for supplies and reenforcements, and every soldier
realized that we had plenty of hard fighting ahead, and that all
honors had to be fairly earned.

Until General Slocum joined (in the latter part of August), the
Twentieth Corps was commanded by General A. S. Williams, the senior
division commander present. On the 25th of July the army,
therefore, stood thus: the Army of the Tennessee (General O. O.
Howard commanding) was on the left, pretty much on the same ground
it had occupied during the battle of the 22d, all ready to move
rapidly by the rear to the extreme right beyond Proctor's Creek;
the Army of the Ohio (General Schofield) was next in order, with
its left flank reaching the Augusta Railroad; next in order,
conforming closely with the rebel intrenchments of Atlanta, was
General Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, in the order of--the
Fourth Corps (Stanley's), the Twentieth Corps (Williams's), and the
Fourteenth Corps (Palmer's). Palmer's right division (Jefferson C.
Davis's) was strongly refused along Proctor's Creek. This line was
about five miles long, and was intrenched as against a sally about
as strong as was our enemy. The cavalry was assembled in two
strong divisions; that of McCook (including the brigade of Harrison
which had been brought in from Opelika by General Rousseau)
numbered about thirty-five hundred effective cavalry, and was
posted to our right rear, at Turner's Ferry, where we had a good
pontoon-bridge; and to our left rear, at and about Decatur, were
the two cavalry divisions of Stoneman, twenty-five hundred, and
Garrard, four thousand, united for the time and occasion under the
command of Major-General George Stoneman, a cavalry-officer of high
repute. My plan of action was to move the Army of the Tennessee to
the right rap