Was General Thomas Slow at Nashville?

Columbus was the great manufacturing center of the Confederacy, and this destruction inflicted irreparable damage. While little was known at the North of this sweep of Wilson's columns through the industrial centers and military storehouses of the Confederacy, it is easy to understand that these fatal blows at vital points of interior military supply added to the demoralization and discouragement attending the evacuation of Richmond and the gathering storm about the armies of Lee and Johnson.

The column moved swiftly for Macon, and about eighteen miles out from it the officer in advance was met with a flag of truce carrying a note from General Beauregard notifying the commander of the forces of General Sherman's truce with General Johnston, stating that an agreement had been entered upon that the contending forces were to occupy their present positions till forty-eight hours' notice had been given of the resumption of hostilities. As General Wilson was eight or ten miles in the rear with his main command, the note was sent to him, and the officer in the advance pushed to and into Macon, taking possession of the city. When General Wilson arrived in the city he went at once to the city hall, where Generals Howell Cobb, Gustavus W. Smith, and others had been confined. General Cobb demanded that he and his command should be released, and that General Wilson should retire to where the flag of truce had met his advance. General Wilson declared that after receiving the note he had lost no time in pushing on to the head of his column, and found it in full possession of the city. He could not accept notification of a truce through the Confederate authorities, as they were not his channel of communication with General Sherman, and ended the conference by a positive refusal to acknowledge the armistice, to retire from the town, or to release his prisoners. When he announced this decision he said to General Cobb that he could conceive of but one adequate reason for the truce, and that was that Lee's army had surrendered. Cobb, however, declined to give any information, but General Smith, to whom Wilson addressed the same remark, answered that Lee had surrendered, and that peace would soon follow. Thereupon General Wilson announced his decision to remain at Macon and conduct his future operations upon the principle that every man killed thereafter was a man murdered.