When Hood was forced to retreat from Atlanta he moved to the south-west and was followed by a portion of Sherman’s army.  He soon appeared upon the railroad in Sherman’s rear, and with his whole army began destroying the road.  At the same time also the work was begun in Tennessee and Kentucky which Mr. Davis had assured his hearers at Palmetto and Macon would take place.  He ordered Forrest (about the ablest cavalry general in the South) north for this purpose; and Forrest and Wheeler carried out their orders with more or less destruction, occasionally picking up a garrison.  Forrest indeed performed the very remarkable feat of capturing, with cavalry, two gunboats and a number of transports, something the accomplishment of which is very hard to account for.  Hood’s army had been weakened by Governor Brown’s withdrawing the Georgia State troops for the purpose of gathering in the season’s crops for the use of the people and for the use of the army.  This not only depleted Hood’s forces but it served a most excellent purpose in gathering in supplies of food and forage for the use of our army in its subsequent march.  Sherman was obliged to push on with his force and go himself with portions of it hither and thither, until it was clearly demonstrated to him that with the army he then had it would be impossible to hold the line from Atlanta back and leave him any force whatever with which to take the offensive.  Had that plan been adhered to, very large reinforcements would have been necessary; and Mr. Davis’s prediction of the destruction of the army would have been realized, or else Sherman would have been obliged to make a successful retreat, which Mr. Davis said in his speeches would prove more disastrous than Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.

These speeches of Mr. Davis were not long in reaching Sherman.  He took advantage of the information they gave, and made all the preparation possible for him to make to meet what now became expected, attempts to break his communications.  Something else had to be done:  and to Sherman’s sensible and soldierly mind the idea was not long in dawning upon him, not only that something else had to be done, but what that something else should be.

On September 10th I telegraphed Sherman as follows: 

CITY POINT, VA., Sept. 10, 1864.

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERMAN, Atlanta, Georgia.

So soon as your men are sufficiently rested, and preparations can be made, it is desirable that another campaign should be commenced.  We want to keep the enemy constantly pressed to the end of the war.  If we give him no peace whilst the war lasts, the end cannot be distant.  Now that we have all of Mobile Bay that is valuable, I do not know but it will be the best move to transfer Canby’s troops to act upon Savannah, whilst you move on Augusta.  I should like to hear from you, however, in this matter.

U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General.

Sherman replied promptly: