“SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter touching the removal of the citizens of Atlanta, as ordered by General Sherman. Please find enclosed my reply to General Sherman’s letter. I shall do all in my power to mitigate the terrible hardship and misery that must be brought upon your people by this extraordinary order of the Federal commander. Transportation will be sent to Rough and Ready to carry the people and their effects further South. “You have my deepest sympathy in this unlooked-for and unprecedented affliction. I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, “J. B. HOOD, General.” Like his polished sword, flashes with thought and patriotism the pen of the victor in his reply: “HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIV. OF THE MISS., } IN THE FIELD, ATLANTA, GA., _Sept. 10, 1864_. } “General J. B. HOOD, _Comm’g Army of the Tenn. Confederate Army_: “GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter at the hands of Messrs. Ball and Crew, consenting to the arrangements I had proposed to facilitate the removal South of the people of Atlanta, who prefer to go in that direction. “I enclose you a copy of my orders, which will, I am satisfied, accomplish my purpose perfectly. You style the measures proposed ‘unprecedented,’ and appeal to the dark history of war for a parallel, as an act of ‘studied and ungenerous cruelty.’ It is not unprecedented, for General Johnston himself very wisely and properly removed the families all the way from Dalton down, and I see no reason why Atlanta should be excepted. Nor is it necessary to appeal to the ‘dark history of war,’ when recent and modern examples are so handy. You yourself burned dwelling-houses along your parapet, and I saw to-day fifty houses that you have rendered uninhabitable because they stood in the way of your forts and men. You defended Atlanta on a line so close to the town that every cannon-shot and many musket-shots from our line of investment, that overshot their mark, went into the habitations of women and children. General Hardee did the same at Jonesboro’, and General Johnston did the same last summer at Jackson, Miss.; I have not accused them of heartless cruelty, but merely instance these cases of very recent occurrence, and could go on and enumerate hundreds of others, and challenge any fair man to judge which of us has the heart of pity for the families of ‘a brave people.’ I say it is kindness to the families of Atlanta to remove them now at once from scenes that women and children should not be exposed to, and the ‘brave people’ should scorn to commit their wives and children to the rude barbarians who thus, as you say, violate the laws of war, as illustrated in the pages of its ‘dark