The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 8: Soldier Life and Secret Service.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

‘ [34] Rosey’ to Tullahoma and then beyond the Tennessee, well-nigh starved to death in their Bragg-beleaguered camps about Chattanooga, until Hooker came to their relief and established the famous ‘cracker line’ beyond reach of shot and shell.

Then came long weeks in which, day by day, the freight trains, squirming slowly down that long, sinuous, single-track road from the Ohio River, reached the wide supply camps at Chattanooga, dumped their huge crates of bacon and hardtack, or the big boxes of clothing, accouterments, and ammunition, and went rumbling and whistling back, laden with sick or wounded soldiery, creeping to the sidings every thirty miles or so to give the troop and ‘cracker’ trains right of way. Nearly four long months it took Sherman, newly commanding in the West, to accumulate the vast supplies he would need for his big army of one hundred thousand men, ere again he started forth another two hundred miles into the bowels of the land, and every mile he marched took his men further from the bakeries, the butcher-shops, the commissary and quartermaster's stores from which the ‘boys’ had received their daily bread or monthly socks, shoes, and tobacco. Another long, sinuous, slender thread of railway, guarded at every bridge, siding, and trestle, was reeled off as fast as Sherman fought on southward, until at last he reached the prize and paused again to draw breath, rations, and clothing at Atlanta before determining the next move.

And then, as in the Eastern armies, there loomed up still another factor in the problems of the campaign—a factor that European writers and critics seem rarely to take into account. From the days of the Roman Empire, Italy, France, Switzerland, and even England were seamed with admirable highways. The campaigns of Turenne, of Frederick the Great, of Napoleon were planned and marched over the best of roads, firm and hard, high and dry. The campaigns of Grant, Lee, Sherman, Johnston, Sheridan, Stuart, Thomas, Hood, Hooker, Burnside, and Jackson were ploughed at times