To properly carry into effect either plan, many more troops would have been required than General Johnson had--it would have been folly to have attempted either with his handful of men.
Another line in advance of that of the Green river, might have been taken, which would have secured additional and very valuable territory. General Johnson might have established one half of his army at Muldraugh's Hill, thirty miles from Louisville, and upon the Louisville and Nashville railroad, and the other half in the country about Lexington and Frankfort, and have thus obtained possession of the greater part of central Kentucky, and the Blue-grass region. The country between the point indicated upon the Louisville and Nashville railroad, and Frankfort, and also in front of the line thus drawn, is extremely rugged and difficult of access The hills of Salt river, the Benson and Chaplin Hills, and those of the Kentucky, present a barrier not easily forced. Directly in front, too, of Frankfort and Lexington, at a distance of from twenty to forty miles stretches a belt of broken and defensible ground from the Kentucky to the main fork of the Licking river, and on to the eastward.
A thorough tearing-up of the Louisville and Nashville railroad, which would deprive the enemy of the use of the Bardstown and Lebanon junctions, and the destruction of the Lexington and Louisville, and Lexington and Covington railroads, would have rendered this line secure against any attack from the front, while the excellent roads traversing the region lying just south of it, would have made communication easy between the salient positions. But the left flank and the main line of retreat and of communication with Nashville, would have been constantly and dangerously exposed.
These were all matters for a military chief to study; but far above all mere strategic considerations, was the moral effect of these movements, and that, it is certain, had been profoundly pondered by General Johnson. The idea of an advance to the Ohio, of occupying the entire slaveholding territory east of the Mississippi, of subsidizing all of its resources, of arousing and recruiting from its whole population, was very fascinating then, and opens a wide field for speculation now. But then there was the reverse of the picture to be considered. The unsettled, bewildered condition of the Kentucky mind, has already been described. There were many who confidently predicted that the Kentuckians would flock to the Confederate standard as soon as it waved upon the banks of the Ohio, and innumerable bitter objurgations were launched against them, because so few resorted to it when it was planted upon the bluffs of Green river.