no enemy to confront except the troops of a few garrison, who were in no condition to penetrate the interior of the country or do any serious damage. He has also, if correctly reported, had about 20,000 men, under General Early, invading Maryland and Pennsylvania, thereby uniting Northern sentiment against us and aiding President Lincoln to rally his people to re-enforce his armies. About the same time General Morgan was raiding in Kentucky, and General Forrest, the great cavalry leader, has been kept in Northern Mississippi to repel raids, after the country had been so often overrun as to leave but little public property for themto destroy. Thus, reversing the rule upon which most great generals who have been successful have acted, of rapid concentration of his forces at vital points to destroy the inading army, the President has scattered his forces from Texas to Pennsylvania while a severe blow was being struck at the heart of the Confederacy; and Atlanta has been sacrificed and the interior of Georgia thrown open to further invasion for want of re-enforcements to the Army of Tennessee. Probably few intelligent men in the country, except the President and his advisers, have failed to see that if General Forrest and Morgan had been sent to destroy the railroads over which General Sherman's supplies have been transported for 300 miles through an enemy; s country, and to keep the road cut for a few weeks, and at the same time the forces of General E. Kirby Smith and Major-General Early, or even half of them, had been sent to re-enforce General Johnston or, after he was superseded, General Hood, the army of invasion might not only have been repulsed and driven back, but routed and destroyed.

This would instantly have relieved Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee frominvasion and raids, and have thrown open the green fields of Kentucky for the supprot of our gallant troops. As the army of General Sherman is the only protection provided by the Lincoln Government for the Western States, and as the battle for the possession of a large portion of the Mississippi Valley, as well as of the Gulf States, was to be fought in Georgia, justice, not only to the people of Georgia but the people of all the States, required that all the troops which were not actually necessary to the defense of Richmond and to hold the enemy in check at the most vital points on the coast should have been concentrated for the destruction of the Federal army in Georgia, which would, inall probability, have brought the war to a speedy termination. I have begged the President to send re-enforcements to the army for the defense of Atlanta ever since the enemy were at Etowah. But a very small number have been send and, if I am correctly informed, part of the troops under General Hood's command have been ordered fromthis to other States. While we have been sorely pressed by the enemy, a campof 30,000 Federal prisoners has been kept in the rear of our army, which has added greatly to our embarrasments, and has, it seems, required all the small force of Confederate reserves, organized by Major-Cobb, with other occasional re-enforcements, to guard them. The reserve force organized under the late conscript act for State defense has been this employed, I presume, by order of the President, and in the hour of her peril Georgia has not had a single one of them at the front with a musket in his hand to aid in her defense. Had the militia been at his command for such service as he might have ordered, and at such place as he might designate, the presumation is that the same remark might have been applicable to them, as other emploeyment could, as in case

47 R R - VOL LII, PT II