THOMAS, Major-General.
I answered simply: "Dispatch received--all right." About that instant of time, some of our men burnt a bridge, which severed the telegraph-wire, and all communication with the rear ceased thenceforth.
As we rode on toward Atlanta that night, I remember the railroad- trains going to the rear with a furious speed; the engineers and the few men about the trains waving us an affectionate adieu.

It surely was a strange event--two hostile armies marching in opposite directions, each in the full belief that it was achieving a final and conclusive result in a great war; and I was strongly inspired with the feeling that the movement on our part was a direct attack upon the rebel army and the rebel capital at Richmond, though a full thousand miles of hostile country intervened, and that, for better or worse, it would end the war..