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[230] both sides preparations are being made for a decisive campaign. Burnside concentrates his forces on the south of Knoxville: he stations his first line at Kingston and Loudon, and the second at Lenoire and Campbell's Station on the railroad. Every piece of news that reaches the Federal authorities brings intelligence of the designs of the enemy against the Army of the Ohio. It is too late to send reinforcements to Burnside: besides, they could not subsist at the beginning of winter in an impoverished country. Halleck and Grant cannot succor him, but give him the benefit of their counsels. Since the battle of Fredericksburg, Halleck has kept up against Burnside a particular mistrust, and unjustly makes him feel it. Grant, whose mind was preoccupied solely with the military question, urgently recommends Burnside not to sacrifice his lines of communication with the west, not even to save Knoxville. He also urges him to retain Kingston at any price, and if the enemy should take up the route followed the previous year by Bragg and penetrate Middle Tennessee through McMinnville, then Burnside should pursue him with all the troops he can gather. There is a good foundation for these mental preoccupations. On the 27th of October, Cheatham's division, which had been detached by Bragg to reinforce Stevenson, arrived at Athens. The two brigades of Moore and Pettus, that had left Demopolis on the same day with General Hardee, were directed by him to move on Athens while he was proceeding to Chattanooga. Thus the Confederates have to the northward of the Hiawassee more than twelve thousand infantry and five thousand cavalry. They are more than are required to hold Burnside in check, but not enough to defeat him, and this little army would have been better employed if turned against Hooker. It is all the more difficult to imagine what Bragg intended to do with it, because he withdrew it from East Tennessee at the very time when it should have been allowed to remain there. Indeed, it seems that on no occasion do the Confederates know how to combine their efforts against Burnside. It is at the moment when Stevenson and Cheatham are idle at Athens that General Samuel Jones, who is in command in Western Virginia, receives orders to assume offensive movements with Ransom's
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1888.
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