General Hood has published his report on his operations in
Georgia and 'Tennessee, to which he has prefixed a sharp criticism on General Johnston's retreat from Dalton to Atlanta. It is at least evident that General Johnston got no cordial support from his
subordinates in command. Hood says General Johnston had 70,000 effective men, instead of 40,000, as had been generally Supposed,— that General Sherman's force was very slightly superior to it,— that " the habit to retreat soon became a routine of the army." The retreats being always at night, and the earthworks thrown up in the day not being meant for help in fighting, " the men became travellers by night an 1 labourers by day. They were ceasing to be soldiers by the disuse of military duty. Thus for seventy-four days and nights that noble army which, if ordered to resist, no force that the enemy could assemble would dislodge from a battlefield, continued to abandon their country, to see their strength departing, and their flag waving only in retreat or in partial engagements." The army lost, he says, 22,700 men in this retreat, while Sherman's lost comparatively few in his long ad- vance. General Hood of course defends his great blunder in invading Tennessee, and promises himself that he should have gained a great victory over General Thomas but for some event which he could not have foreseen. What general might not have seemed great, if something or other had not happened which he had not the wit to foresee ?
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