From Cumberland Gap the courier line was sixty miles shorter than from Knoxville, and the first dispatches of Burnside announcing his capture of Frazer's troops reached Washington more quickly than later ones. At noon of the 11th Mr. Lincoln answered it with hearty congratulations and thanks. This was quickly followed by a congratulatory message from Halleck accompanied by formal orders. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 555.] These last only recapitulated the points in Burnside's further operations and administration which were the simplest deductions from the situation. Burnside was to hold the country eastward to the gaps of the North Carolina mountains (the Great Smokies) and the valley of the Holston up to the Virginia line. Halleck used the phrase "the line of the Holston," which would be absurd, and was probably only a slip of the pen. The exact strength of General Jones, the Confederate commander in southwestern Virginia, was not known, but, to preserve his preponderance, Burnside could not prudently send less than a division of infantry and a couple of brigades of cavalry to the vicinity of Rogersville or Greeneville and the railroad crossing of the Watauga. This would be just about half his available force. The other division was at first divided, one of the two brigades being centrally placed at Knoxville, and the other at Sevierville, thirty miles up the French Broad River, where it covered the principal pass over the Smokies to Asheville, N. C. The rest of his cavalry was at London and Kingston, where it covered the north side of the Tennessee River and communicated with Rosecrans's outposts above Chattanooga.
Halleck further informed Burnside that the Secretary of War directed him to raise all the volunteers he could in East Tennessee and to select officers for them. If he had not already enough arms and equipments he could order them by telegraph. As to Rosecrans, the General-in-Chief stated that he would occupy Dalton or some other point south of Chattanooga, closing the enemy's line from Atlanta, and when this was done, the question would be settled whether the whole would move eastward into Virginia or southward into Georgia and Alabama. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 555.] Burnside's present work being thus cut out for him, he set himself about it with the cordial earnestness which marked his character. He had suggested the propriety of his retiring as soon as the surrender of Frazer had made his occupation of East Tennessee an assured success, but he had not formally asked to be relieved. [Footnote: Id., p. 523.] His reasons for doing so dated back to the Fredericksburg campaign, in part; for he had believed that his alternative then presented to the government, that he should be allowed to dismiss insubordinate generals or should himself resign, ought to have been accepted. His case had some resemblance to Pope's when the administration approved his conduct and his courage but retired him and restored McClellan to command, in deference to the supposed sentiment of the Army of the Potomac. Halleck's persistent ignoring of the officially recorded causes of the delay in this campaign, and his assumption that the Morgan raid was not an incident of any importance in Burnside's responsibilities, had not tended to diminish the latter's sense of discomfort in dealing with army head-quarters. A debilitating illness gave some added force to his other reasons, which, however, we who knew him well understood to be the decisive ones with him. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 523; vol. xxxi. pt. i. p. 757.] Mr. Lincoln's sincere friendship and confidence he never doubted, but his nature could not fully appreciate the President's policy of bending to existing circumstances when current opinion was contrary to his own, so that he might save his strength for more critical action at another time. Burnside had now the éclat of success in a campaign which was very near the heart of the President and full of interest for the Northern people. This, he felt, was a time when he could retire with honor. Mr. Lincoln postponed action in the kindest and most complimentary words, [Footnote: Id., vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 554. "Yours received. A thousand thanks for the late successes you have given us. We cannot allow you to resign until things shall be a little more settled in East Tennessee. If then, purely on your own account you wish to resign, we will not further refuse you.">[ and when he finally assigned another to command the department, did not allow Burnside to resign, but laid out other work for him where his patriotism and his courage could be of use to the country.
The advent of the army into East Tennessee was, to its loyal people, a resurrection from the grave. Their joy had an exultation which seemed almost beyond the power of expression. Old men fell down fainting and unconscious under the stress of their emotions as they saw the flag at the head of the column and tried to cheer it! Women wept with happiness as their husbands stepped out of the ranks of the loyal Tennessee regiments when these came marching by the home. [Footnote: Temple's East Tennessee and the Civil War, pp. 476, 478. Humes's The Loyal Mountaineers, pp. 211, 218.] These men had gathered in little recruiting camps on the mountain-sides and had found their way to Kentucky, travelling by night and guided by the pole-star, as the dark-skinned fugitives from bondage had used to make their way to freedom. Their families had been marked as traitors to the Confederacy, and had suffered sharpest privations and cruel wrong on account of the absence of the husband and father, the brother, or the son. Now it was all over, and a jubilee began in those picturesque valleys in the mountains, which none can understand who had not seen the former despair and the present revulsion of happiness. The mountain coves and nooks far up toward the Virginia line had been among the most intense in loyalty to the nation. Andrew Johnson's home was at Greeneville, and he was now the loyal provisional governor of Tennessee, soon to be nominated Vice-President of the United States. General Carter, who had asked to be transferred from the navy to organize the refugee loyalists into regiments, was a native of the same region. It was at the Watauga that the neighboring opponents of secession had given the first example of daring self-sacrifice in burning the railway bridge. For this they were hanged, and their memory was revered by the loyal men about them, as was Nathan Hale's by our revolutionary fathers. East Tennessee was full of such loyalty, but here were good reasons why Burnside should push his advance at least to the Watauga, and if possible to the Virginia line. His sympathies were all alive for this people. The region, he telegraphed the President, is as loyal as any State of the North. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 523.] It threw off all disguise, it blossomed with National flags, it took no counsel of prudence, it refused to think of a return of Confederate soldiers and Confederate rule as a possibility. It exulted in every form of defiance to the Richmond government and what had been called treason to the Confederate States. The people had a religious faith that God would not abandon them or suffer them to be again abandoned. If such an incredible wrong were to happen, they must either leave their country in mass, or they must be ready to die. They could see no other alternative.
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.
For a week after the capture of Cumberland Gap Burnside devoted himself to the pleasing task of organizing the native loyalists into a National Guard for home defence, issuing arms to them upon condition that they should, as a local militia, respond to his call and reinforce for temporary work his regular forces whenever the need should arise. The detailed reports from the upper valley reported the enemy under Jones at first to be 4000, and later to be 6000 strong. These estimates came through cool-headed and prudent officers, and were based upon information brought in by loyal men who had proven singularly accurate in their knowledge throughout the campaign. Point was added to these reports by the experience of one of his regiments. A detachment of 300 men of the One Hundredth Ohio had been sent to support a cavalry reconnoissance near Limestone Station on the railroad, whilst Burnside was investing Cumberland Gap, and these had been surrounded and forced to surrender by the enemy. This showed the presence of a considerable body of Confederates in the upper valley, and that they were bold and aggressive. It was the part of prudence to act upon this information, and Burnside ordered all his infantry except one brigade to march toward Greeneville. Two brigades of cavalry were already there, and his purpose was to concentrate about 6000 infantry, try to obtain a decisive engagement with the Confederates, and to punish them so severely that the upper valley would be safe, for a time at least, from invasion by them, so that he might be free to withdraw most of his troops to co-operate with Rosecrans in a Georgia campaign, if that alternative in Halleck's plans should be adopted. He felt the importance of this the more, as the news received from Virginia mentioned the movement of railway rolling-stock to the East to bring, as rumor had it, Ewell's corps from Lee to reinforce Jones. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. pp. 661, 717.] The sending of the railway trains was a fact, but the object, as it turned out, was to transport Longstreet's corps to reinforce Bragg. [Footnote: Id., p. 731.] Of this, however, Burnside had no intimation, and must act upon the information which came to him.
The Ninth Corps began to arrive at Cincinnati from Vicksburg on the 12th of August, half of it coming then, and the second division arriving on the 20th. It was reduced to 6000 by casualties and by sickness, and was in a pitiable condition. Being made up of troops which had served in the East, the men were not acclimated to the Mississippi valley, and in the bayous and marshes about Vicksburg had suffered greatly. Malarial fevers ate out their vitality, and even those who reported for duty dragged themselves about, the mere shadows of what they had been. General Parke reported their arrival and was then obliged to go upon sick-leave himself. General Welsh, who had distinguished himself at Antietam, reported that his division must recuperate for a few weeks before it could take the field. He made a heroic effort to remain on duty, but died suddenly on the 14th, and his loss was deeply felt by the corps. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. iii. p. 45.] Potter's division was as badly off as Welsh's, and both were for a short time scattered at healthful camps in the Kentucky hills. Each camp was, at first, a hospital; but the change of climate and diet rapidly restored the tone of the hardy soldiery.
General Willcox, who commanded the Indiana district, belonged to the corps, and asked to be returned to duty with it. He was allowed to do so on the 11th of September, and the War Department sent with him a new division of Indiana troops which had been recruited and organized during the summer. Burnside had ordered recruits and new regiments to rendezvous in Kentucky, and prepared to bring them as well as the Ninth Corps forward as soon as the latter should be fit to march. Every camp and station at the rear was full of busy preparation during the last of August and the beginning of September, and at the front the general himself was now concentrating his little forces to strike a blow near the Virginia line which would make him free to move afterward in any direction the General-in-Chief should determine.