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Officers and Soldiers of the Army of the Tennessee:
The profound gratification I feel in being authorized
to release you from the onerous obligations of the camp, and return
you, laden with laurels, to homes where warm hearts wait to welcome
you, is somewhat embittered by the painful reflection that I am
sundering the ties that trials have made true, time made tender,
suffering made sacred, perils made proud, heroism made honorable,
and fame made forever fearless of the future. It is no common
occasion that demands the disbandment of a military organization,
before the resistless power of which mountains bristling with
bayonets have bowed, cities have surrendered, and millions of
brave men been conquered. Although I have been but for a short
period your commander, we are not strangers; affections have sprung
up between us during the long years of doubt, gloom and carnage,
which we have passed through together, nurtured by common perils,
sufferings and sacrifices, and riveted by the memories of gallant
comrades, whose bones repose beneath the sod of an hundred battle-fields,
nor time nor distance will weaken or efface. The many marches
you have made, the dangers you have despised, the haughtiness
you have humbled, the duties you have discharged, the glory you
have gained, the destiny you have discovered for the country in
whose cause you have conquered, all recur at this moment in all
the vividness that marked the scenes through which we have just
passed. From the pens of the ablest historians of the land, daily
are drifting out upon the current of time, page upon page, volume
upon volume of your heroic deeds, and floating down to future
generations will inspire the student of history with admiration,
the patriot American with veneration for his ancestors, and the
lover of republican liberty with gratitude for those who, in a
fresh baptism of blood, reconsecrated the powers and energies
of the Republic to the cause of constitutional freedom. Long
may it be the happy fortune of each and every one of you to live
in the full fruition of the boundless blessings you have secured
to the human race. Only he whose heart has been thrilled with
admiration for your impetuous and unyielding valor in the thickest
of the fight, can appreciate with what pride I recount the brilliant
achievements which immortalize you, and enrich the pages of our
national history. Passing by the earlier, but not less signal
triumphs of the war, in which most of you participated, and inscribed
upon your banners such victories as Donelson and Shiloh, I recur
to campaigns, sieges and victories that challenge the admiration
of the world, and elicit the unwilling applause of all Europe.
Turning your backs upon the blood-bathed hights
of Vicksburg, you launched into a region swarming with enemies,
fighting your way, and marching without adequate supplies, to
answer the cry for succor that came to you from the noble but
beleagured
army at Chattanooga. Your steel next flashed among the mountains
of the Tennessee, and your weary limbs found rest before the embattled
hights of
Mission Ridge, and there, with dauntless courage, you breasted
again the
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