S/icj-iiiaii's Ma)-clt to the Sea 467 knew his men and comprehended tlie conditions, lie could lay no claim to success unless Thomas should defeat Hood. Therein, as the affair turned out, lay the risk. Sherman knew Thomas through and through. Classmates at West Point they had ever since been friends, and this friendship was cemented during the vicissitudes of the Civil War despite their differences of opinion proceeding from their diverse temperaments. Sherman had implicit confidence in Thomas, thought that he had furnished him a force sufficient for all emergencies and that the defense of Tennessee was not left to chance. " If I had Schofield," Thomas wrote Halleck, November I, "I should feel perfectly safe." Sherman detached Schofield's corps from his army and sent it northward with instructions to re- port to Thomas for orders. On the day that Sherman started for the sea Thomas telegraphed to him : " I have no fear that Beau- regard [Hood] can do us any harm now, and if he attempts to fol- low you, I will follow him as far as possible. If he does not follow you I will then thoroughly organize my troops and I believe I shall have men enough to ruin him unless he gets out of the way very rapidly." The opinion of the able and experienced critics, Mr- Ropes and General Schofield, who maintain that Sherman should have given Thomas more men, are refuted by the statements of Sherman and Thomas themselves. Nor must it be forgotten that the Union commanders were at this time uncertain whether Hood would follow Sherman or move north toward Nashville. The con- ferences between Beauregard, the commander of the Department, and Hood, and Davis's despatch to Hood, which have since been disclosed, attest the wisdom of anticipation and the preparedness for contingencies on the Union side. While Hood before the end of October had won Beauregard's consent to his plan of invading Tennessee, Jefferson Davis was not of the same mind. His tele- gram of November 7 (which however was not received by Hood until the twelfth) lacks a degree of positiveness and is interpreted differently but there is little doubt that he meant to disapprove an advance into Tennessee before Sherman had been defeated. As events happened the army that marched to the sea was unneces- sarily large and 10,000 more men with Schofield might have saved some trial of soul. Nevertheless, as things looked at the time, Sherman must be sufficiently strong to defeat Hood and the scat- tered forces of uncertain number which would gather to protect Georgia. Moreover, as his ultimate purpose was to " re -enforce our armies in Virginia." he must have troops enough to cope with Lee until Grant should be at his heels. He reckoned that the force left in Tennessee was " numerically greater" than Hood's.
