[
358]
General — At dark you will withdraw your division within the city defences.
You will not take position on the line, but bivouac your troops with your left to the right (looking from
Atlanta) of the railroad.
Your skirmishers will be left out, and will occupy your present line of defence.
It is proper to inform you that
Cheatham's corps will also withdraw into the city defences.
The General enjoins watchfulness upon your skirmishers.
By command of Lieutenant-General Hardee,
By direction of
Lieutenant-General Hardee your division will move at (1) one o'clock to-night on the road which will be indicated by the guide.
Your skirmishers will be left on the line you occupied to-day.
Respectfully,
Your division follows
Walker's.
Respectfully,
Your skirmishers remain out until
driven in.
By order of Lieutenant-General Hardee,
And from the animus of this book it is quite certain that if any portion of Hardee's troops had not moved until one o'clock A. M. on the 22d, when it had been practicable, and they had been ordered to move at dusk on the 21st, that matter would have been specially adverted to.
General Hood says he was out on the line near Cheatham's right at dawn on the 22d, expecting momentarily to hear the initiation of the battle by Hardee, “who was supposed to be at that moment in rear of the adversary's flank” (179). The movement of Cleburne's division, as we have seen, was fixed for one o'clock A. M. General Hood, as he states, expected the action to open at dawn.
It is impossible that he could have expected the troops in the intervening
