“So near have our skirmishers advanced to the enemy’s front, that last night, while a prayer-meeting was being held in the rebel camps, our troops could hear quite distinctly their appeals to Heaven for peace. I regret to state that some of the ‘Yankees’ were sacrilegious enough to interpolate the names of Grant and Sherman, just at the point where the traitors invoked health and strength to Lee and Johnston. The tone of their petitions was for peace, which Gen. Sherman is determined they shall not enjoy until he secures that piece of Georgia which he has marked out as the reward for his invincible army.” At this crisis in the march, already among the rivers flowing to the Gulf, with the iron-works on their banks at different points, General Sherman issued an order containing directions respecting care of the wounded, who were to be carried from the field by the musicians and others not in the ranks; and requiring hospitals to be kept nearer the moving columns, protecting them by the irregularities on the surface, and not by distance. Here is what he says of cowards: “Skulking, shirking, and straggling behind in time of danger, are such high detestable crimes that the General Commanding would hardly presume them possible, were it not for his own observation, and the report that at this moment soldiers are found loafing in the cabins, to the rear, as far back as Kingston. The only proper fate of such miscreants is that they be shot, as common enemies to their profession and country; and all officers and patrols sent back to arrest them, will shoot them without mercy, on the slightest impudence or resistance. By thus wandering in the rear they desert their fellows, who expose themselves in battle in the full faith that all on the rolls are present, and they expose themselves to capture and exchange as good soldiers, to which they have no title. It is hereby made the duty of every officer who finds such skulkers, to deliver them to any provost guard, regardless of corps, to be employed in menial or hard work, such as repairing roads, digging drains, sinks, &c. Officers, if found skulking, will be subjected to the same penalty as enlisted men, viz., instant death, or the hardest labor and treatment. Absentees not accounted for, should always be mustered as deserters, to deprive them of their pay and bounties, reserved for honest soldiers.” We cannot chronicle all the battles and skirmishes of the “running fight”—not _from_ the enemy, but after him. The charge upon Allatoona Pass by the Union cavalry, June 2d, where General Sherman had flanked General Johnston a week before, was a brilliant display of valor baptized in blood.