256 
THE OPERATIONS IN VIRGINIA—APPENDIX. 
the works, and when our fire slackened jump over and surrender, and 
others were crowded down to fill their places. . . It was there that 
the somewhat celebrated tree was cut off by bullets, there that the brush 
and logs were cut to pieces and whipped into basket-stuff ; . . . 
there that the rebel ditches and cross-sections were filled with dead men 
several deep. ... I was at the Angle the next day. The sight was 
terrible and sickening, much worse than at Bloody Lane (Antietam). 
There a great many dead men were lying in the road and across the 
rails of the torn-down fences, and out in the cornfield ; but they were 
not piled up several deep and their flesh was not so torn and mangled 
as at the Angle.”— Humphrey's, pp. 99 and 100. 
Character of Joseph Johnston. —Johnston was an officer who, 
by the common consent of the military men of both sides, was reckoned 
second only to Lee, if second, in the qualities which fit an officer for the 
responsibility of great commands. His military experience and know¬ 
ledge were large, his mind eminently systematic, his judgment sound, 
his courage imperturbable. He was not sanguine in temperament, and, 
therefore, was liable to lack in audacity. Inclined by nature to a fabian 
policy, it was a settled conviction with him that, in the existing 
conditions of the Confederacy, such a policy should be imposed on the 
most audacious, unless a great blunder on the other side should reveal 
an opportunity for a decisive advantage. The results which followed a 
change of policy later in the campaign, go far to justify him in his 
judgment. Right or wrong, he deliberately adopted a plan of carefully 
entrenched lines, one succeeding the other, as he might be compelled to 
retire. He practiced a lynx-eyed watchfulness of his adversary, 
tempting him constantly to assault his intrenchments, holding his 
fortified positions to the last moment, but choosing that last moment so 
well as to save nearly every gun and wagon in the final withdrawal, 
and always presenting a front covered by such defences that one man 
in the line was, by all sound military rules, equal to three or four in the 
attack. In this way he constantly neutralized the superiority of force 
his opponent wielded, and made his campaign from Dalton to the 
Chattahoochee a model of defensive warfare.—“ Atlanta ,” Jacob D. Cox, 
ch. Hi., p. 27. 
Field Transport of Sherman’s Army.— The field transportation 
of the army was also regulated. Each regiment on the march was 
allowed one wagon and one ambulance, and to the company officers of 
each company was assigned a pack-mule in common for carrying their 
mess-kit and personal baggage. A similar reduction to the minimum 
reached through brigade division, and corps headquarters, and the 
impedimenta were everywhere as small as was consistent with the 
performance of the necessary official work of an army organization. 
The greater part of all clerical duty was performed at offices in the rear, 
to which the field reports of various kinds were sent for record and for 
proper transmission, only the absolutely necessary work being done in 
the field. The army was thus stripped for its work, and its commander 
went even beyond what was necessary in setting an example of 
contempt for personal comfort and convenience, and of the subordina¬ 
tion of every other consideration to the single purpose of uniting 
moiblity with strength in the great army.—“ Atlanta ,” Jacob D. Cox, 
ch. iii.,p. 23. 
