Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Chapter 9
Middle Tennessee, Alabama
and Georgia, 1863–1865
While Union troops along the Mississippi River struggled toward Vicksburg
in the spring of 1863, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland
faced a major Confederate force in central Tennessee. Rosecrans’ troops had
fought their opponents to a standstill near Murfreesborough at the beginning of
January and in late June began to push them southeast toward Chattanooga. The
federal base of supplies for this advance would be Nashville, on the Cumberland
River in the north-central part of the state. The Cumberland was an uncertain and
seasonal route for freight, open only from early February to late May, with 40
percent of shipments arriving in March. Neither was the Louisville and Nashville
Railroad entirely reliable. Confederate cavalry ranging through Kentucky’s Bluegrass
Region had attacked the line several times in 1862 and 1863 while the main
armies contended in Tennessee, far to the south. 1
The way out of this dilemma was to open a second railroad to connect Nashville
with the Tennessee River, seventy-eight miles to the west. There were no obstacles
to navigation on the lower Tennessee, which flowed north through the state from
Pickwick Landing near the Alabama line, crossed into Kentucky, and emptied into
the Ohio River above Paducah. A partly completed rail line already stretched twenty
miles west of Nashville. Begun in 1859 by laying track west from the city and east
from Hickman, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River, the Nashville and Northwestern
Railroad was only half finished when Tennessee seceded. When the eastern half of
the line reached the Tennessee River port of Reynoldsburg, steamboats could unload
cargo there for shipment through Nashville to the Union’s field armies (see Map 6). 2
Completion of the railroad as far as the Tennessee River would depend largely
on the men of two new black regiments raised by the military governor, Andrew
Johnson. In April 1863, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton issued instructions
1 The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies, 70 vols. in 128 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), ser. 1, vol. 16,
pt. 1, pp. 871–82, 884–87, 892–900, 906–52, 959–89, 1016–18, 1021–1162; vol. 20, pt. 1, p. 980; vol.
23, pt. 1, pp. 50–59, 165–75, 215–21, 381–84, 632–818, 828–43; vol. 52, pt. 1, p. 681 (hereafter cited
as OR). Report of the Secretary of War for 1865, 38th Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 1, vol. 3, pt. 1,
no. 1 (serial 1,249), pp. 218, 595; Maury Klein, History of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad (New
York: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 30–36.
2 J. Haden Alldredge, “A History of Navigation on the Tennessee River System,” 75th Cong., 1st
sess., H. Doc. 254 (serial 10,119), pp. 4–7.