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Why Stanley was not immediately effaced is still a matter of controversy. Hood, who was early on the ground, declared that he gave the needful orders and tried vainly to enforce them; Cheatham, in command of his leading corps, that he did not. Doubtless the dispute is still being carried on between these chieftains from their beds of asphodel and moly in Elysium.

Thomas sent Schofield with the 4th and 23d corps, together with three brigades of Wilson's cavalry to Pulaski to watch him. On the 17th of November Hood started and moved in such a manner as to avoid Schofield, thereby turning his position. Hood had with him three infantry corps, commanded respectively by Stephen D. Lee, Stewart and Cheatham.

During the night of November 29th General Schofield passed Spring Hill with his trains and army, and took post at Franklin, on the south aide of Harpeth River. General Hood now attaches serious blame to General Cheatham for not attacking General Schofield in flank while in motion at Spring Hill, for he was bivouacked within eight hundred yards of the road at the time of the passage of our army.

Not who was the best general, or colonel, or captain but "who ranked?" I desire to state that they left the army on account of rank. O, this thing of rank! Many other generals resigned, and left us privates in the lurch. But the gallant Cheatham, Cleburne, Granberry, Gist, Strahl, Adams, John C. Brown, William B. Bate, Stewart, Lowery, and others, stuck to us to the last.

General Cheatham, all the time, was calling on the men to go forward, saying, "Come on, boys, and follow me." The impression that General Frank Cheatham made upon my mind, leading the charge on the Wilkerson turnpike, I will never forget. I saw either victory or death written on his face.

He then sent forward Cheatham's corps with plenty of time before night came for Cheatham to have made a secure lodgement on the pike, or to have run over Wagner's division, the way it was strung out, if Cleburne's attack had been promptly followed up with anything like the vigor with which he had jumped on Bradley's brigade.

Thomas sent Schofield with the 4th and 23d corps, together with three brigades of Wilson's cavalry to Pulaski to watch him. On the 17th of November Hood started and moved in such a manner as to avoid Schofield, thereby turning his position. Hood had with him three infantry corps, commanded respectively by Stephen D. Lee, Stewart and Cheatham.

Hood says that Hardee's timidity lost him a great victory at Decatur, Ga., the day the Union General McPherson fell; and that Cheatham's, at Spring Hill, during his northward pursuit of Thomas, lost him another. Yet Hooker, Hardee, and Cheatham were men to whom personal fear was a meaningless phrase.

I was in that charge at Chickamauga when General Cheatham, leading us on, shouted: 'Boys, give 'em hell'; and General Polk, who had been a bishop and couldn't swear, looked at us and said: 'Boys, do as General Cheatham says! Well, I got a bad wound in the shoulder there, and I've been invalided since in Richmond, but I'm soon going to join the Army of Northern Virginia."

The earth is crusted with snow, and the wind from the northwest is piercing our very bones. We can see our ragged soldiers, with sunken cheeks and famine-glistening eyes. Where were our generals? Alas! there were none. Not one single general out of Cheatham's division was left not one. General B. F. Cheatham himself was the only surviving general of his old division.