The necessity of delivering a blow at General Jones was afterwards
criticised by Halleck, but it was in accordance with the sound rules
of conducting war. To have called back his troops without a fight
would have been to give the enemy double courage by his retreat, and
his brigades would have been chased by the exulting foe. They would
either have been forced to halt and fight their pursuers under every
disadvantage of loss of prestige and of the initiative, or have made
a precipitate flight which would have gone far to ruin the whole
command as well as the Tennessee people they had just liberated. It
is true that this involved an advance from Greeneville upon
Jonesboro, but the cavalry were already in contact with the enemy
near there, and this was the only successful mode of accomplishing
his purpose. [Footnote: Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, in their "Life of
Lincoln," give the draft of a letter to Burnside which Mr. Lincoln
wrote but did not send, in which he expressed his surprise that
Burnside should be moving toward Virginia when they at Washington
were so anxious to have him in Georgia. Mr. Lincoln's judgments of
military affairs were excellent when he was fully possessed of the
facts; and I have elaborated somewhat my statement of the
circumstances in East Tennessee, and of the distances, etc.
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