ant, underlying, and controlling factor
in General Thomas's preparations brings up one of the most brilliant
chapters in our war history, and altogether the most brilliant in the
annals of cavalry operations.

In touching upon General Thomas's persistence in getting his cavalry
ready, it would be very natural for a surface student to quote Secretary
Stanton: "If he waits for Wilson to get ready, Gabriel will be blowing his
last horn," and treat it as conclusive proof of Thomas's dilatoriness and
Stanton's final opinion. But just far enough under the surface to escape
the eyes of historical amateurs, lies the splendid and unparalleled fact
that in eight winter days after the date of that dispatch General James H.
Wilson, Thomas's chief of cavalry, had impressed horses enough, with those
furnished on previous requisitions, to raise the effective mounted force
at Nashville from 5500 to 13,500, and that on the eighth day General
Wilson went into action with 12,000 mounted men, and had besides one
brigade of 1500 men engaged in an independent movement.

At this point a moment's consideration of the real reasons which caused
the outbreak against General Thomas, on the ground that he was slow, will
not be out of place. At City Point it was the perfectly natural but
sickening anxiety lest it should turn out that a great mistake had been
made in letting Sherman march away to the sea, thus possibly opening the
way for Hood to the Ohio. At Savannah it was the same fear, intensified by
the consciousness that Thomas had been left with unprepared forces to
contend against a veteran army which had stubbornly resisted both Thomas
and Sherman during the hundred days from Dalton to Atlanta.

And so, while Thomas, as all who were on the ground knew, was making
superhuman exertions to prepare fully for the task in hand, he was advised
to fight, pressed to fight, ordered to fight, threatened with removal if
he did not fight, and his successor dispatched to relieve him. And the
underlying cause of it all was the demoralizing fear that Hood might elude
or overthrow Thomas and strike for the Ohio, and the country rise in wrath
to inquire why Sherman, with 62,000 thoroughly equipped veterans,
including a larger force of mounted men than he left behind, had been
allowed to march away from the central theater of war. So great was this
fear at Savannah that even after receiving Thomas's dispatch giving an
account of the first day's battle at Nash