You overstate my strength, placing it at seven thousand effective,
when it was but six. The nominal strength of my command was seven
thousand.
You understate the strength of my enemy, putting Forrest's force at
four thousand. On our return to Nashville, you stated it, in
General Grant's presence, to have been but twenty-five hundred.
Before and during my movement I positively knew Forrest's strength
to be full six thousand, and he has since told me so himself.
Instead of delaying from the 1st to the 11th of February for "some
regiment that was ice-bound near Columbus, Kentucky," it was an
entire brigade, Colonel Waring's, without which your orders to me
were peremptory not to move. I asked you if I should wait its
arrival, and you answered: "Certainly; if you go without it, you
will be, too weak, and I want you strong enough to go where you
please."
The time set for our arrival at Meridian, the 10th of February, had
arrived before it was possible for me, under your orders, to move
from Memphis, and I would have been entirely justifiable if I had
not started at all. But I was at that time, and at all times
during the war, as earnest and anxious to carry out my orders, and
do my full duty as you or any other officer could be, and I set out
to make a march of two hundred and fifty miles into the
Confederacy, having to drive back a rebel force equal to my own.
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