session: if not, to Savannah; and in this manner to get possession
of the only east and west railroad that would then be left to the enemy.
But the spring campaign against Mobile was not made.

The Army of the Ohio had been getting supplies over Cumberland Gap until
their animals had nearly all starved. I now determined to go myself to
see if there was any possible chance of using that route in the spring,
and if not to abandon it. Accordingly I left Nashville in the latter
part of December by rail for Chattanooga. From Chattanooga I took one of
the little steamers previously spoken of as having been built there,
and, putting my horses aboard, went up to the junction of the Clinch
with the Tennessee. From that point the railroad had been repaired up
to Knoxville and out east to Strawberry Plains. I went by rail
therefore to Knoxville, where I remained for several days. General John
G. Foster was then commanding the Department of the Ohio. It was an
intensely cold winter, the thermometer being down as low as zero every
morning for more than a week while I was at Knoxville and on my way from
there on horseback to Lexington, Kentucky, the first point where I could
reach rail to carry me back to my headquarters at Nashville.

The road over Cumberland Gap, and back of it, was strewn with debris of
broken wagons and dead animals, much as I had found it on my first trip
to Chattanooga over Waldron's Ridge. The road had been cut up to as
great a depth as clay could be by mules and wagons, and in that
condition frozen; so that the ride of six days from Strawberry Plains to
Lexington over these holes and knobs in the road was a very cheerless
one, and very disagreeable.

I found a great many people at home along that route, both in Tennessee
and Kentucky, and, almost universally, intensely loyal. They would
collect in little places where we would stop of evenings, to see me,
generally hearing of my approach before we arrived. The people
naturally expected to see the commanding general the oldest person in
the party. I was then forty-one years of age, while my medical director
was gray-haired and probably twelve or more years my senior. The crowds
would generally swarm around him, and thus give me an opportunity of
quietly dismounting and getting into the house. It also gave me an
opportunity of hearing passing remarks from one spectator to another
about their general. Those remarks were apt to be more complimentary