Having got the Army of the Cumberland in a comfortable position, I now
began to look after the remainder of my new command. Burnside was in
about as desperate a condition as the Army of the Cumberland had been, only he was not yet besieged. He was a hundred miles from the nearest possible base, Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, and much farther from any railroad we had possession of. The roads back were over mountains, and all supplies along the line had long since been exhausted. His animals, too, had been starved, and their carcasses lined the road from Cumberland Gap, and far back towards Lexington, Ky. East Tennessee still furnished supplies of beef, bread and forage, but it did not supply ammunition, clothing, medical supplies, or small rations, such as coffee, sugar, salt and rice.
Sherman had started from Memphis for Corinth on the 11th of October. His instructions required him to repair the road in his rear in order to bring up supplies. The distance was about three hundred and thirty miles through a hostile country. His entire command could not have maintained the road if it had been completed. The bridges had all been destroyed by the enemy, and much other damage done. A hostile community lived along the road; guerilla bands infested the country, and more or less of the cavalry of the enemy was still in the West. Often Sherman′s work was destroyed as soon as completed, and he only a short distance away.
The Memphis and Charleston Railroad strikes the Tennessee River at
Eastport, Mississippi. Knowing the difficulty Sherman would have to
supply himself from Memphis, I had previously ordered supplies sent from
St. Louis on small steamers, to be convoyed by the navy, to meet him at
Eastport. These he got. I now ordered him to discontinue his work of
repairing roads and to move on with his whole force to Stevenson, Alabama, without delay. This order was borne to Sherman by a messenger, who paddled down the Tennessee in a canoe and floated over Muscle Shoals; it was delivered at Iuka on the 27th. In this Sherman was notified that the rebels were moving a force towards Cleveland, East Tennessee, and might be going to Nashville, in which event his troops were in the best position to beat them there. Sherman, with his characteristic promptness, abandoned the work he was engaged upon and pushed on at once. On the 1st of November he crossed the Tennessee at Eastport, and that day was in Florence, Alabama, with the head of column, while his troops were still crossing at Eastport, with Blair bringing up the rear.
Sherman′s force made an additional army, with cavalry, artillery, and
trains, all to be supplied by the single track road from Nashville. All
indications pointed also to the probable necessity of supplying
Burnside′s command in East Tennessee, twenty-five thousand more, by the
same route. A single track could not do this. I gave, therefore, an
order to Sherman to halt General G. M. Dodge′s command, of about eight
thousand men, at Athens, and subsequently directed the latter to arrange
his troops along the railroad from Decatur north towards Nashville, and
to rebuild that road. The road from Nashville to Decatur passes over a
broken country, cut up with innumerable streams, many of them of
considerable width, and with valleys far below the road-bed. All the
bridges over these had been destroyed, and the rails taken up and
twisted by the enemy. All the cars and locomotives not carried off had
been destroyed as effectually as they knew how to destroy them. All
bridges and culverts had been destroyed between Nashville and Decatur, and thence to Stevenson, where the Memphis and Charleston and the Nashville and Chattanooga roads unite. The rebuilding of this road would give us two roads as far as Stevenson over which to supply the army. From Bridgeport, a short distance farther east, the river supplements the road.