In looking back upon this campaign, a very remarkable feature of it was the protection of his line of communication: “It was not a little precarious, and more than once aroused the anxiety of the nation. It might well occasion solicitude. His base was, in one sense, not at Chattanooga, but at Nashville; with the former point as a secondary base. Accordingly, the enemy bent his efforts not only to breaking the railroad between Atlanta and Ringgold, striking it at Dalton and Calhoun, but also to raiding on the road from Chattanooga back to Nashville. From Atlanta to Chattanooga the railroad is one hundred and thirty-five miles long; from Chattanooga to Nashville, only a little less. With this line of two hundred and fifty miles, stretched clear across the great Alleghany chain from flank to flank, in a disputed country, filled with guerrillas and hostile inhabitants, with myriads of nooks and eyries in the mountainous region, apt for the assemblage and protection of marauding bands, with that attenuated line infested by many squadrons of the best cavalry in the Confederacy, long accustomed to be victorious everywhere—cavalry who had devastated almost with impunity the broad States of Kentucky and Tennessee again and again, under such bold and skilful leaders as John Morgan, Forrest, Wheeler, Stephen Lee, Rhoddy, and Chalmers—in spite of all, for four eventful months, through victory and repulse, in action and repose alike, Sherman has been able to keep his lines strong and clear. “While all the Southern newspapers and many Southern generals, and while even English journals of great ability were proving by all the laws of logic and strategy that Sherman _must_ now retreat, Sherman did not retreat. At the very moment, indeed, when the exultation of the Confederates was the highest at the absolute certainty of his downfall, Sherman pushed on and took Atlanta, ending logic and campaign both at once.” It was one of the grandest, most decisive and exciting scenes of the civil war, when the great leader of the Union battalions in Georgia enjoyed the pause in marches and battles afforded by the occupation of Atlanta. The sound of booming cannon, the crack of musketry, all the Babel discord of war, was comparatively hushed. In the distance the foe was reluctantly, slowly retreating; and along the track of both armies the new-made graves and the wounded were lying, the waymarks of a gigantic struggle for “The land of the brave, and the home of the free.” CHAPTER XX. The Tidings of Victory at Washington—The President’s Messages to the People and to the Army—General Sherman congratulates his Battalions—The Rebel General is indignant—The Correspondence between him and General Sherman—The authorities of Atlanta also unreconciled to the new order of things—The noble Letters and Conduct of the Conquerer.