Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

The whole system of water-courses in that vast region of country may be divided into two parts, entirely distinct and separated by a long line, which, broken at a single point, extends from the banks of the Mississippi to those of the Potomac. Formed at first by an insignificant chain of hills, this line runs from west to east, from the great river to a point south of Chattanooga; leaving this point, it follows the chain of the Alleghanies, from south-west to north-east as far as the gap made by the Potomac, and to the boundary of the free States. To the south and south-east of this great division, the waters flow directly into the sea, emptying either into the Atlantic or into the Gulf of Mexico. On the opposite slope, these waters rush from every point of the horizon to meet again in the Mississippi, that immense and only drainage of half a continent. This dividing line, uninterrupted by any water communication, proved a very serious obstacle throughout the entire war.

The Atlantic basin is an elongated triangle extending between the Alleghanies and the sea, its highest elevation being on the estuary of the Potomac at Washington, and the base lying from Chattanooga to the peninsula of Florida, comprising the States that were the earliest colonized. The James, the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamaha, and other streams which descend from the mountains to lose themselves in deep bays or vast swamps, intersect this triangle perpendicularly to the coast.

A slight undulation of surface, connecting the Alleghanies with Florida, separates the Atlantic slope from that portion of the basin of the Gulf of Mexico which lies east of the Mississippi; it is a fertile country, very well watered, but more recently settled and less populated. Consequently, its importance in connection with the war was only secondary. Although Sherman crossed, near their sources in Georgia, the three large rivers which flow through the State from north to south, the Chattahoochee, the Alabama, and the Tombigbee, the fantastic names of the first and the last are still as little known as when they were only uttered by Indian warriors. The Alabama owes its celebrity, not to the insignificant battles fought upon its banks, but to the