Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[192] later was to lead Sherman from the banks of the Tennessee to the coast of the Atlantic. In other respects all three of the plans were impracticable; the second would expose Burnside, isolated, to certain destruction, while the first presented the double inconvenience of abandoning East Tennessee and bringing to Chattanooga a new army which would have hastened the dearth of provisions in that place. They were all discarded. East Tennessee could not be used for a base of operations against the Confederates, because, there being no railway connection at the northward, the supplying of a large army was impossible in that part of the State. Burnside with his four divisions hardly found there the necessaries of life, and he had been obliged to reduce the rations allotted to his troops. On the other hand, the retreat of the Army of the Cumberland rendered the occupation of East Tennessee much more important, for, as this army no longer menaced Dalton and Cleveland, it was only on the banks of the Holston River that the Federals could occupy the direct line, so useful to the Confederacy, from Lynchburg to Atlanta. It was therefore necessary that Burnside should remain in East Tennessee. Rosecrans was asking him to collect the bulk of his troops at Kingston on the south of Knoxville, so as to place his entire cavalry en échelon down the river on the western bank of the Tennessee. He would thus have covered the left of the Army of the Cumberland, while leaving sufficient garrisons at Knoxville and Cumberland Gap, the only points within his command which it was important to preserve. But the Government at Washington would not expose to incursions by the enemy the territory the liberation of which it had just celebrated, and Halleck ordered Burnside to occupy so many different points that the latter could not conform to the desire of Rosecrans.

Later on we shall see the service which he shall indirectly render to the defenders of Chattanooga by drawing to himself with— out, however, having left Knoxville—a portion of Bragg's army. But he shall have no active part in the great struggle which is to take place around Lookout Mountain.