. Life and deeds of General Sherman, including the story of his great march to the sea .. . i6, 1862,completely broke up the line of defence stretchingfrom Bowling Green to Columbus—a line of defencewhich the Confederates fondly imagined to be in-vulnerable. It carried the whole Union front forwardtwo hundred miles. It had the immediate effect ofdriving the insurgents completely out of threw them back into the centre of Tennessee, andbrought the capital of that State under Union au-thority. It practically unbound both the Cumberlandand Tennessee rivers—an immense gain to the Unionc
. Life and deeds of General Sherman, including the story of his great march to the sea .. . i6, 1862,completely broke up the line of defence stretchingfrom Bowling Green to Columbus—a line of defencewhich the Confederates fondly imagined to be in-vulnerable. It carried the whole Union front forwardtwo hundred miles. It had the immediate effect ofdriving the insurgents completely out of threw them back into the centre of Tennessee, andbrought the capital of that State under Union au-thority. It practically unbound both the Cumberlandand Tennessee rivers—an immense gain to the Unioncommanders, as they fully appreciated the great ad-vantage of gunboats on those inland rivers. There can now be no doubt in any mind at allfamiliar with the subject that the Union victories atForts Henry and Donelson were rendered compar-atively easy by the bad management of the Confed-erate commander-in-chief Had General Johnston,in place of attaching so much importance to the pro-tection of the two forts on the Tennessee and theCumberland respectively, concentrated his various 189. 190 BEFORE THE BATTLE OF SHILOH. 191 armies and forced either Grant or Buell or both torisk the chances of battle in the open ground, theresult might have been very different. Johnston sawthis himself when it was too late, and in a remarkableletter addressed from Murfreesboro to JeffersonDavis, he said, If I join this corps to the forces ofGeneral Beauregard, then those who are declaimingao^ainst me will be without an aroument. It was thebest he could do under the circumstances. Bowling Green had been evacuated before FortDonelson fell; for, believing it to be untenable, John-
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