for carrying on resistance. Second, to
hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his
resources, until by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be
nothing left to him but an equal submission with the loyal section of
our common country to the constitution and laws of the land.

These views have been kept constantly in mind, and orders given and
campaigns made to carry them out. Whether they might have been better
in conception and execution is for the people, who mourn the loss of
friends fallen, and who have to pay the pecuniary cost, to say. All I
can say is, that what I have done has been done conscientiously, to the
best of my ability, and in what I conceived to be for the best interests
of the whole country.

At the date when this report begins, the situation of the contending
forces was about as follows: The Mississippi River was strongly
garrisoned by Federal troops, from St. Louis, Missouri, to its mouth.
The line of the Arkansas was also held, thus giving us armed possession
of all west of the Mississippi, north of that stream. A few points in
Southern Louisiana, not remote from the river, were held by us, together
with a small garrison at and near the mouth of the Rio Grande. All the
balance of the vast territory of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas was in
the almost undisputed possession of the enemy, with an army of probably
not less than eighty thousand effective men, that could have been
brought into the field had there been sufficient opposition to have
brought them out. The let-alone policy had demoralized this force so
that probably but little more than one-half of it was ever present in
garrison at any one time. But the one-half, or forty thousand men, with
the bands of guerillas scattered through Missouri, Arkansas, and along
the Mississippi River, and the disloyal character of much of the
population, compelled the use of a large number of troops to keep
navigation open on the river, and to protect the loyal people to the
west of it. To the east of the Mississippi we held substantially with
the line of the Tennessee and Holston rivers, running eastward to
include nearly all of the State of Tennessee. South of Chattanooga, a
small foothold had been obtained in Georgia, sufficient to protect East
Tennessee from incursions from the enemy's force at Dalton, Georgia.
West Virginia was substantially within our lines. Virginia, with the
exception of the northern border,