It
becomes important here to estimate these distances rightly.
Knoxville is a hundred and eleven miles distant from Chattanooga by
the railroad, and more by the country roads. From Bristol on the
northeast to Chattanooga on the southwest is two hundred and
forty-two miles, which measures the length of that part of the
Holston and Tennessee valley known as East Tennessee. If Rosecrans
were at Rome, as General Crittenden's dispatch indicated, he was
more than a hundred and seventy miles distant from Knoxville, and
nearly three hundred miles from the region about Greeneville and the
Watauga River, whose crossing would be the natural frontier of the
upper valley, if Burnside should not be able to extend his
occupation quite to the Virginia line. It will be seen therefore
that the progress of the campaign had necessarily made Rosecrans's
and Burnside's lines of operation widely divergent, and they were
far beyond supporting distance of each other, since there was no
railway communication between them, and could not be for a long
time. Burnside captured some locomotives and cars at Knoxville; but
bridges had been destroyed to such an extent that these were of
little use to him, for the road could be operated but a short
distance in either direction and the amount of rolling stock was, at
most, very little.
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