scale, and was the necessary condition of Sherman's Atlanta campaign
of 1864. Taken as a whole, Halleck's instructions to Burnside
presented no definite objective, and were a perfunctory sort of
introduction to his new command, which raises a doubt whether the
organization of a little army in the Department of the Ohio met his
approval.

The fact was that Burnside was acting on an understanding with
President Lincoln himself, whose ardent wish to send a column for
the relief of the loyal people of East Tennessee never slumbered,
and who was already beginning to despair of its accomplishment by
Rosecrans's army. The uneasiness at Washington over Rosecrans's
inaction was becoming acute, and Mr. Lincoln was evidently turning
to Burnside's department in hope of an energetic movement there. In
this hope Burnside was sent West, and the Ninth Corps was detached
from the Army of the Potomac and sent after him. The project of
following up his advance by the construction of a railroad from
Danville, then the terminus of the railway line reaching southward
from Cincinnati, was discussed, and the President recommended it to
Congress, but no appropriation of money was made. The scheme was
hardly within the limits of practicable plans, for the building of a
railway through such difficult country as the Cumberland mountain
region implied laborious engineering surveys which could only be
made when the country was reduced to secure possession, and the
expenditure of time as well as of money would be likely to exceed
the measure of reasonable plans for a military campaign. The true
thing to do was to push Rosecrans's army to Chattanooga and beyond.
With the valley of the Tennessee in our possession, and Chattanooga
held as a new base of supply for a column in East Tennessee as well
as another in Georgia, the occupation of Knoxville and the Clinch
and Holston valleys to the Virginia line was easy. Without it, all
East Tennessee campaigns were visionary. It was easy enough to get
there; the trouble was to stay. Buell's original lesson in
logistics, in which he gave the War Department a computation of the
wagons and mules necessary to supply ten thousand men at Knoxville,
was a solid piece of military arithmetic from which there was no
escape. [Footnote: _Ante_, p. 199. Official Records, vol. vii. p.
931.]

When Burnside reached Cincinnati and applied himself practically to
the task of organizing his little army for a march over the
mo