CHAPTER XXVI. Burnside in East Tennessee

BURNSIDE IN EAST TENNESSEE

Organizing and arming the loyalists--Burnside concentrates near Greeneville--His general plan--Rumors of Confederate reinforcements--Lack of accurate information--The Ninth Corps in Kentucky--Its depletion by malarial disease--Death of General Welsh from this cause--Preparing for further work--Situation on 16th September--Dispatch from Halleck--Its apparent purpose--Necessity to dispose of the enemy near Virginia border--Burnside personally at the front--His great activity--Ignorance of Rosecrans's peril--Impossibility of joining him by the 20th--Ruinous effects of abandoning East Tennessee--Efforts to aid Rosecrans without such abandonment--Enemy duped into burning Watauga bridge themselves--Ninth Corps arriving--Willcox's division garrisons Cumberland Gap--Reinforcements sent Rosecrans from all quarters--Chattanooga made safe from attack--The supply question--Meigs's description of the roads--Burnside halted near Loudon--Halleck's misconception of the geography--The people imploring the President not to remove the troops--How Longstreet got away from Virginia--Burnside's alternate plans--Minor operations in upper Holston valley--Wolford's affair on the lower Holston.

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

MILITARY REMINISCENCES OF

THE CIVIL WAR