Chapter XL: Appendix: NOTE U: Page 282

Gen. Sherman found on Gen. Burnside’s table such a good dinner, that he exclaimed at its contradiction of statements he had heard, that the besieged army was starving. Gen. Burnside explained that he had access to supplies from farmers on the south side of the river. No doubt the dinner was exceptional in the family and had been provided at extra pains, in honor of the guest. Had he shared the rations of the soldiers during the siege, he could have verified the reported scarcity.

The Comte de Paris seems to have read between the lines of Gen. Sherman’s Memoirs, for he represents that “Gen. Sherman relates his astonishment when entering a place (Knoxville) which he believed to be reduced to the last extremities, he beheld a park of the finest cattle, and when afterwards, Burnside bade him sit down to a table abundantly served, he understands that the peril has been exaggerated.” (History of the Civil War in America: By the Comte de Paris, Vol. IV., page 329.)

The Count is here distressingly inaccurate. Gen. Sherman does not say that at Knoxville he beheld a park filled with the finest cattle. He could not have done so, for they were not there to be seen. The “park and the finest cattle” are figments of the imagination.