his corps at the time when the Eleventh and Twelfth were united and
made the Twentieth.

General Hooker was offended because he was not chosen to succeed
McPherson; but his chances were not even considered; indeed, I had
never been satisfied with him since his affair at the Gulp House,
and had been more than once disposed to relieve him of his corps,
because of his repeated attempts to interfere with Generals
McPherson and Schofield. I had known Hooker since 1836, and was
intimately associated with him in California, where we served
together on the staff of General Persifer F. Smith. He had come to
us from the East with a high reputation as a "fighter," which he
had fully justified at Chattanooga and Peach-Tree Creek; at which
latter battle I complimented him on the field for special
gallantry, and afterward in official reports. Still, I did feel a
sense of relief when he left us. We were then two hundred and
fifty miles in advance of our base, dependent on a single line of
railroad for our daily food. We had a bold, determined foe in our
immediate front, strongly intrenched, with communication open to
his rear for supplies and reenforcements, and every soldier
realized that we had plenty of hard fighting ahead, and that all
honors had to be fairly earned.

Until General Slocum joined (in the latter part of August), the
Twentieth Corps was commanded by General A. S. Williams, the senior
division commander present. On the 25th of July the army,
therefore, stood thus: the Army of the Tennessee (General O. O.
Howard commanding) was on the left, pretty much on the same ground
it had occupied during the battle of the 22d, all ready to move
rapidly by the rear to the extreme right beyond Proctor's Creek;