Upon reaching this decision, which had the approval both of General Grant and of the War Department, Sherman's first thought was to equip Thomas for the task of dealing successfully with Hood. He detached strong army corps from his own force and sent them to Thomas's reinforcement. He ordered the prompt abandonment of all unimportant posts held in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, sending their garrisons to Nashville or Chattanooga, still further to strengthen his lieutenant for independent resistance. He asked Grant to send to Thomas also all the recruits that had been gathering at various points in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. In these ways he secured for Thomas a total force much stronger than Hood's, and knowing Thomas's capacity he felt himself entirely justified in leaving the defense of the Tennessee strongholds to that general with orders to follow Hood whithersoever he should go and in the end destroy him. Then Sherman completed the work of destruction which Hood had begun upon the railway line between Atlanta and Chattanooga. By way of stripping himself for action he sent to the North every sick man, every wounded man and every other man in his army whom he deemed less than perfectly fit for the arduous work now to be undertaken and when that was done he utterly destroyed all that remained of the railroad. He stripped his army of all baggage that could in any wise be dispensed with, but organized perhaps the greatest wagon train that any army had ever carried with it, for the transportation of food supplies and ammunition. His was now an army without a base and without communications. It was his purpose to subsist his men upon such supplies as he could take from the country through which he intended to march, but for the sake of perfect security he planned to carry fully ten days' rations with him at all times, or quite enough to feed his army on short rations for three or four weeks in the event of necessity. Now that Hood had gone northward, Sherman knew that he had no enemy in his pathway except an insignificant cavalry force, and that he might march whithersoever he pleased without fear of serious molestation or opposition. With ten days' full rations in his wagon train and with the country to live upon there was simply no possibility of harm coming to him or his army. He hoped that one or other of the expeditions planned by Grant against the southern Atlantic coast might reduce the defenses of Savannah and capture that city before his arrival there. If not, he had force enough to take the town himself, or, failing that, to capture Charleston or Mobile or Wilmington, in any case establishing a new base for himself on the sea.