ss called Cumberland Gap in Kentucky, upon Knoxville in
Eastern Tennessee; and that the third, using Cairo on the Mississippi
as its base, should advance upon Memphis, some 120 miles further south
on that river. Apparently he did not at first wish to commit the army
of the Potomac very deeply in its advance on Richmond, and he certainly
wished throughout that it should cover Washington against any possible
attack. Memphis was one of the three points at which the Southern
railway system touched the great river and communicated with the States
beyond--Vicksburg and New Orleans, much further south, were the others.
Knoxville again is a point, by occupying which, the Northern forces
would have cut the direct railway communication between Virginia and
the West, but for this move into Eastern Tennessee Lincoln had other
reasons nearer his heart. The people of that region were strongly for
the Union; they were invaded by the Confederates and held down by
severe coercion, and distressing appeals from them for help kept
arriving through the autumn; could they have been succoured and their
mountainous country occupied by the North, a great stronghold of the
Union would, it seemed to Lincoln, have been planted securely far into
the midst of the Confederacy. Therefore he persistently urged this
part of his scheme on the attention of his generals. The chief
military objection raised by Buell was that his army would have to
advance 150 miles from the nearest base of supply upon a railway; (for
200 miles to the west of the Alleghanies there were no railways running
from north to south). To meet this Lincoln, in September, urged upon a
meeting of important Senators and Representatives the construction of a
railway line from Lexington in Kentucky southwards, but his hearers,
with their minds narrowed down to an advance on Richmond, seem to have
thought the relatively small cost in time and money of this work too
great. Lincoln still thought an expedition to Eastern Tennessee
practicable at once, and it has been argued from the circumstances in
which one was made nearly two years later that he was right. It would,
one may suppose, have been unwise to separate the armies of the Ohio
and of the West so widely; for the main army of the Confederates in the
West, under their most trusted general, Albert Sidney Johnston, was
from September onwards in South-western Kentucky, and could have struck
at either of these two Northern armies; an