It was well he did so, for
otherwise his little army would have been starved before the winter
was half over.
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.
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