CAPTURE OF ALANTA.--Davis, dissatisfied with this Fabian policy, now put Hood in command. He attacked the Union army three times with tremendous energy, but was repulsed with great slaughter. Sherman, thereupon re-enacting his favorite flank movement, filled his wagons with fifteen-days rations, dexterously shifted his whole army on Hood's line of supplies, and thus compelled the evacuation of the city. [Footnote: During this campaign, Sherman's supplies were brought up by a single line of railroad from Nashville, a distance of three hundred miles, and exposed throughout to the attacks of the enemy. Yet so carefully was it garrisoned and so rapidly were bridges built and breaks repaired, that the damages were often mended before the news of the accident had reached camp. Sherman said that the whistle of the locomotive was quite frequently heard on the camp-ground before the echoes of the skirmish-fire had died away.] _The Effect_.--This campaign during four months of fighting and marching, day and night, in its ten pitched battles and scores of lesser engagements, cost the Union army thirty thousand men, and the Confederate, thirty-five thousand. Georgia was the workshop, storehouse, granary and arsenal of the Confederacy. At Atlanta, Rome, and the neighboring towns were manufactories, foundries, and mills, where clothing, wagons, harnesses, powder, balls, and cannon were furnished to all its armies. The South was henceforth cut off from these supplies. HOOD'S INVASION OF TENNESSEE.--Sherman now longed to sweep through the Atlantic States. But this was impossible as long as Hood, with an army of forty thousand, was in front, while the cavalry under Forrest was raiding along his railroad communications toward Chattanooga and Nashville. With unconcealed joy, therefore, Sherman learned that Hood was to invade Tennessee. [Footnote: Hood's expectation was that Sherman would follow him into Tennessee, and thus Georgia be saved from invasion. Sherman had no such idea. "If Hood will go there," said he, "I will give him rations to go with." Now was presented the singular spectacle of these two armies, which had been so lately engaged in deadly combat, marching from each other as fast as they could go.] Relieved of this anxiety, he at once prepared his army for its celebrated "March to the Sea." _Battle of Nashville_ (December 15, 16)--Hood crossed the Tennessee, and after severe fighting, driving Schofield's army before him, shut up General Thomas within the fortifications at Nashville. For two weeks little was done. [Footnote: Great disappointment was felt at the North over the retreat to Nashville, and still more at Thomas's delay in that city. Grant ordered him to move, and had actually started to take charge of his troops in person, when he learned of the splendid victory his slow but sure general had achieved.]