hier situation
50 miles further south. Beauregard would have been obliged either to
fight him with inferior numbers or to shut himself up in the fortress of
Vicksburg. As it was, Halleck spent the month of June merely in
repairing the railway line which runs from Corinth in the direction of
Chattanooga. When he was called to Washington he left Grant, who for
several months past had been kept idle as his second in command, in
independent command of a force which was to remain near the Mississippi
confronting Beauregard, but he restricted him to a merely defensive part
by ordering him to keep a part of his army ready to send to Buell
whenever that general needed it, as he soon did. Buell, who again took
over his former independent command, was ordered by Halleck to advance on
Chattanooga, using Corinth as his base of supply. Buell had wished that
the base for the advance upon Chattanooga should be transferred to
Nashville, in the centre of Tennessee, in which case the line of railway
communication would have been shorter and also less exposed to raids by
the Southern cavalry. After Halleck had gone, Buell obtained permission
to effect this change of base. The whole month of June had been wasted
in repairing the railway with a view to Halleck's faulty plan. When
Buell himself was allowed to proceed on his own lines and was approaching
Chattanooga, his communications with Nashville were twice, in the middle
of July and in the middle of August, cut by Confederate cavalry raids,
which did such serious damage as to impose great delay upon him. In the
end of August and beginning of September Kirby Smith, whose army had been
strengthened by troops transferred from Beauregard, crossed the mountains
from East Tennessee by passes some distance northeast of Chattanooga, and
invaded Kentucky, sending detachments to threaten Louisville on the
Indiana border of Kentucky and Cincinnati in Ohio. It was necessary for
Buell to retreat, when, after a week or more of uncertainty, it became
clear that Kirby Smith's main force was committed to this invasion.
Meanwhile General Bragg, who, owing to the illness of Beauregard, had
succeeded to his command, left part of his force to hold Grant in check,
marched with the remainder to support Kirby Smith, and succeeded in
placing himself between Buell's army and Louisville, to protect which
from Kirby Smith had become Buell's first object. It seems that Bragg,
who could easily have been rein