This would keep him between our garrisons in East Tennessee and the
enemy. I regarded it not impossible that in the event of the enemy
being driven from Richmond, he might fall back to Lynchburg and attempt
a raid north through East Tennessee. On the 14th of February the
following communication was sent to General Thomas:
"CITY POINT, VA., February 14, 1865.
"General Canby is preparing a movement from Mobile Bay against Mobile
and the interior of Alabama. His force will consist of about twenty
thousand men, besides A. J. Smith's command. The cavalry you have sent
to Canby will be debarked at Vicksburg. It, with the available cavalry
already in that section, will move from there eastward, in co-operation.
Hood's army has been terribly reduced by the severe punishment you gave
it in Tennessee, by desertion consequent upon their defeat, and now by
the withdrawal of many of them to oppose Sherman. (I take it a large
portion of the infantry has been so withdrawn. It is so asserted in the
Richmond papers, and a member of the rebel Congress said a few days
since in a speech, that one-half of it had been brought to South
Carolina to oppose Sherman.) This being true, or even if it is not
true, Canby's movement will attract all the attention of the enemy, and
leave the advance from your standpoint easy.
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