[47] way, first to Knoxville, to attend to some official matters there, and thence to Chattanooga.
All these personal movements naturally affected me, as I was inclined to be homesick during every lengthy period of rest. I went to Atlanta toward the latter part of the month of September and had a good talk with Sherman. He would not listen to my going either on inspection duty to other parts of my department, nor to my making a brief visit to any point away from Atlanta. “No, Howard,” he said, “we don't know what the enemy now any day may undertake.” In fact, he had already had information that Hood was changing the position of his army from the vicinity of Lovejoy's Station westward to a position somewhere near Blue Mountain, Hood's headquarters to be at Palmetto Station, on the West Point Railroad.
Arriving at that road, the Confederate army took position with the left touching the Chattahoochee River, and covering the West Point road, where it remained several days to allow the accumulation of supplies at “Blue Mountain,” and secure a sufficiency with which to continue this movement. The precise situation of this “Blue Mountain” is not clear, but probably it was a railway station in Alabama on Hood's flank after he had reached his new position.
The cavalry raider, General Wheeler, had been sent early in September to go north of the Tennessee to do what he could to cut off Sherman's supplies and destroy his communications; so General Hood recalled him.
That chassez of the Confederate army to the left to touch the Chattahoochee was unique. A Confederate cavalry division beyond that river seems to have given some uneasiness in both commands on account
