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Sherman soon divines the difficulty of fathoming the Texan's real designs. Hood is familiar with the ground. Drawing back to the lines of Atlanta, Hood crouches for a desperate spring. The ridges of the red clay hills, with little valleys running to the Chattahoochee in the west, and Ocmulgee in the east, cover his manoeuvres.
After referring to his arrangements to checkmate Forrest, he gave the "nub" of his own ideas as follows: "I may have to make some quick countermoves east and southeast. Keep your folks ready to send baggage into Atlanta and to start on short notice.... There are fine corn and potato fields about Covington and the Ocmulgee bottoms.
Two days of one of Kilpatrick's swift, silent marches would carry his hard-riding troopers around Hood's right flank, and into the streets of Macon, where a half hour's work with the torch on the bridges across the Ocmulgee and the creeks that enter it at that point, would have cut all of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee's communications.
A light was then hoisted at her peak; her helm lashed hard a-lee; the prize crew re-transferred to their own ship, and the Ocmulgee left to her own devices, the Alabama lying by her during the night.
Thus another of my cavalry divisions was badly damaged, and out of the fragments we hastily reorganized three small divisions under Brigadier-Generals Garrard, McCook, and Kilpatrick. Stoneman had not obeyed his orders to attack the railroad first before going to Macon and Andersonville, but had crossed the Ocmulgee River high up near Covington, and had gone down that river on the east bank.
He had to drop his prisoners and fight his way out, losing about six hundred men in killed and captured, and then returned with the remainder to his position at Turner's Ferry. This was bad enough, but not so bad as had been reported by Colonel Brownlow. Meantime, rumors came that General Stoneman was down about Mason, on the east bank of the Ocmulgee.
For a time this rage for a new country seemed to threaten Georgia and South Carolina with the loss of their best population. This probably would have been the result of the new acquisition, but, in its midst, the territory between the Ocmulgee and Chattahoochee was ceded by the Indians, and afforded a new field for settlement, which effectually arrested this emigration at its flood.
In these barrens the soil is sandy and the land level, stretching away for miles. De Soto and his men saw the primeval pines; but these have long since disappeared, and their places are taken by pines of a smaller growth. On the 21st of March, the Spaniards came to the Ocmulgee River, near which they found an Indian town called Toalli.
He knew that the Indians would have to be paid for the valuable land which the Georgians were then cultivating in the neighborhood of the Oconee, and the commissioners had been advised by the Federal authorities to pay for these lands. McGillivray broke up his encampment and retired to the Ocmulgee, nor could he be induced at that time to renew the negotiations.
Fifty years ago he had progressed to the banks of the Ocmulgee, driving before him the aboriginal inhabitant, and appropriating his domains. Here for a time his march was stayed.
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