Similar questions also went to Buell, and their replies showed that no concert, arrangement, or plans existed, and that Halleck was not ready to cooeperate.  The correspondence started by the President’s inquiry for the first time clearly brought out an estimate of the Confederate strength opposed to a southward movement in the West.  Since the Confederate invasion of Kentucky on September 4, the rebels had so strongly fortified Columbus on the Mississippi River that it came to be called the “Gibraltar of the West,” and now had a garrison of twenty thousand to hold it; while General Buckner was supposed to have a force of forty thousand at Bowling Green on the railroad between Louisville and Nashville.  For more than a month Buell and Halleck had been aware that a joint river and land expedition southward up the Tennessee or the Cumberland River, which would outflank both positions and cause their evacuation, was practicable with but little opposition.  Yet neither Buell nor Halleck had exchanged a word about it, or made the slightest preparation to begin it; each being busy in his own field, and with his own plans.  Even now, when the President had started the subject, Halleck replied that it would be bad strategy for himself to move against Columbus, or Buell against Bowling Green; but he had nothing to say about a Tennessee River expedition, or cooeperation with Buell to effect it, except by indirectly complaining that to withdraw troops from Missouri would risk the loss of that State.

The President, however, was no longer satisfied with indecision and excuses, and telegraphed to Buell on January 7: 

“Please name as early a day as you safely can on or before which you can be ready to move southward in concert with Major-General Halleck.  Delay is ruining us, and it is indispensable for me to have something definite.  I send a like despatch to Major-General Halleck.”

To this Buell made no direct reply, while Halleck answered that he had asked Buell to designate a date for a demonstration, and explained two days later:  “I can make, with the gunboats and available troops, a pretty formidable demonstration, but no real attack.”  In point of fact, Halleck had on the previous day, January 6, written to Brigadier-General U.S.  Grant:  “I wish you to make a demonstration in force”:  and he added full details, to which Grant responded on January 8:  “Your instructions of the sixth were received this morning, and immediate preparations made for carrying them out”; also adding details on his part.

Ulysses S. Grant was born on April 27, 1822, was graduated from West Point in 1843, and brevetted captain for gallant conduct in the Mexican War; but resigned from the army and was engaged with his father in a leather store at Galena, Illinois, when the Civil War broke out.  Employed by the governor of Illinois a few weeks at Springfield to assist in organizing militia regiments under the President’s first call,