" [Footnote: _Id_., p. 906.] If this meant anything,
it meant that Burnside was to keep within a day's march of
Rosecrans; for two days was more than enough to fight out a battle
like Chickamauga. Yet he and everybody else knew that Burnside's
supply route from Kentucky was through Cumberland Gap, and he had
warmly applauded when Burnside turned that position, and by
investing it in front and rear, had forced Frazer to surrender. He
had explicitly directed Burnside to occupy and hold the upper
Holston valley nearly or quite to the Virginia line, and one gets
weary of repeating that between these places and Chattanooga was a
breadth of two hundred miles of the kind of country Meigs had
described and more than ten days of hard marching. His present
orders are equally blind. Burnside is directed to reinforce
Rosecrans with "all your available force," yet "East Tennessee must
be held at all hazards, if possible." To "hold at all hazards" might
be understood, but what is the effect of the phrase "if possible"?
It must amount in substance to authority to do exactly what Burnside
was doing,--to hold East Tennessee with as small means as he thought
practicable, and to reinforce Rosecrans with what he could spare.
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