Three times within the same month McClellan repeated this injunction to Buell with additional emphasis.  Senator Andrew Johnson and Representative Horace Maynard telegraphed him from Washington: 

“Our people are oppressed and pursued as beasts of the forest; the government must come to their relief.”

Buell replied, keeping the word of promise to the ear, but, with his ambition fixed on a different campaign, gradually but doggedly broke it to the hope.  When, a month later, he acknowledged that his preparations and intent were to move against Nashville, the President wrote him: 

“Of the two, I would rather have a point on the railroad south of Cumberland Gap than Nashville. First, because it cuts a great artery of the enemy’s communication which Nashville does not; and, secondly, because it is in the midst of loyal people, who would rally around it, while Nashville is not....  But my distress is that our friends in East Tennessee are being hanged and driven to despair, and even now, I fear, are thinking of taking rebel arms for the sake of personal protection.  In this we lose the most valuable stake we have in the South.”

McClellan’s comment amounted to a severe censure, and this was quickly followed by an almost positive command to “advance on eastern Tennessee at once.”  Again Buell promised compliance, only, however, again to report in a few weeks his conviction “that an advance into East Tennessee is impracticable at this time on any scale which would be sufficient.”  It is difficult to speculate upon the advantages lost by this unwillingness of a commander to obey instructions.  To say nothing of the strategical value of East Tennessee to the Union, the fidelity of its people is shown in the reports sent to the Confederate government that “the whole country is now in a state of rebellion”; that “civil war has broken out in East Tennessee”; and that “they look for the reestablishment of the Federal authority in the South with as much confidence as the Jews look for the coming of the Messiah.”

Henry W. Halleck, born in 1815, graduated from West Point in 1839, who, after distinguished service in the Mexican war, had been brevetted captain of Engineers, but soon afterward resigned from the army to pursue the practice of law in San Francisco, was, perhaps, the best professionally equipped officer among the number of those called by General Scott in the summer of 1861 to assume important command in the Union army.  It is probable that Scott intended he should succeed himself as general-in-chief; but when he reached Washington the autumn was already late, and because of Fremont’s conspicuous failure it seemed necessary to send Halleck to the Department of the Missouri, which, as reconstituted, was made to include, in addition to several northwestern States, Missouri and Arkansas, and so much of Kentucky as lay west of the Cumberland River.  This change of department lines indicates the beginning of what soon became a dominant feature of military operations; namely, that instead of the vast regions lying west of the Mississippi, the great river itself, and the country lying immediately adjacent to it on either side, became the third principal field of strategy and action, under the necessity of opening and holding it as a great military and commercial highway.