nated
Vice-President of the United States. General Carter, who had asked
to be transferred from the navy to organize the refugee loyalists
into regiments, was a native of the same region. It was at the
Watauga that the neighboring opponents of secession had given the
first example of daring self-sacrifice in burning the railway
bridge. For this they were hanged, and their memory was revered by
the loyal men about them, as was Nathan Hale's by our revolutionary
fathers. East Tennessee was full of such loyalty, but here were good
reasons why Burnside should push his advance at least to the
Watauga, and if possible to the Virginia line. His sympathies were
all alive for this people. The region, he telegraphed the President,
is as loyal as any State of the North. [Footnote: Official Records,
vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 523.] It threw off all disguise, it blossomed
with National flags, it took no counsel of prudence, it refused to
think of a return of Confederate soldiers and Confederate rule as a
possibility. It exulted in every form of defiance to the Richmond
government and what had been called treason to the Confederate
States. The people had a religious faith that God would not abandon
them or suffer them to be again abandoned. If such an incredible
wrong were to happen, they must either leave their country in mass,
or they must be ready to die. They could see no other alternative.

CHAPTER XXVI

BURNSIDE IN EAST TENNESSEE

Organizing and arming the loyalists--Burnside concentrates near
Greeneville--His general plan--Rumors of Confederate
reinforcements--Lack of accurate information--The Ninth Corps in
Kentucky--Its depletion by malarial disease--Death of General Welsh
from this cause--Preparing for further work--Situation on 16th
September--Dispatch from Halleck--Its apparent purpose--Necessity to
dispose of the enemy near Virginia border--Burnside personally at
the front--His great activity--Ignorance of Rosecrans's
peril--Impossibility of joining him by the 20th--Ruinous effects of
abandoning East Tennessee--Efforts to aid Rosecrans without such
abandonment--Enemy duped into burning Watauga bridge
themselves--Ninth Corps arriving--Willcox's division garrisons
Cumberland Gap--Reinforcements sent Rosecrans from all
quarters--Chattanooga made safe from attack--The supply
question--Meigs's description of the roads--Burnside halted near
Loudon--Halleck's misconception of the geography--The people
imploring the Pre