"This permission will now be given. Your country will dispense with your services if you no longer have a regard for that fame which you have so nobly earned for yourselves and her. Yes, soldiers! You who were once so brave, and to whom honor was so dear, shall be permitted to return to your homes, if you still desire it. But in what language, when you arrive, will you address your families and friends? Will you tell them that you abandoned your general and your late associates in arms within fifty miles of a savage enemy, who equally delights in shedding the blood of the innocent female and her sleeping babe as that of the warrior contending in battle? Lamentable, disgraceful tale! If your dispositions are really changed, if you fear an enemy you so lately conquered, this day will prove it. I now put it to yourselves; determine upon the part you will act, influenced only by the suggestions of your own hearts and your own understandings. All who prefer an inglorious retirement shall be ordered to Nashville, to be discharged as the President or the Governor may direct. Those who choose to remain and unite with their general in the further prosecution of the campaign can do so, and will thereby furnish a proof that they have been greatly traduced, and that although disaffection and cowardice have reached the hearts of some, it has not reached theirs. To such my assurance is given that former irregularities will not be attributed to them. They shall be immediately organized into a separate corps, under officers of their own choice; and in a little while it is confidently believed an opportunity will be afforded of adding to the laurels you have already won." If these men had had a single spark of soldierly spirit left in them--if the manhood itself had not all gone out of them--such an appeal as this would have shamed them into their duty. It is incredible that men who had once had spirit enough to volunteer in the service of their country should have lost it so utterly that they could resist this plea to their pride, their duty, and their regard for their own good name; but such was the fact. Out of the whole brigade, officers and men, only one was found with manliness enough to stay. That one man was a Captain Wilkinson, the mention of whose name is only a just tribute to his soldierly manhood. The rest were no longer men in spirit, but homesick wretches, lusting for the flesh-pots of Tennessee, the ease, the indolence, the comfort of home.