and distressing appeals from them for help kept arriving through the autumn; could they have been succoured and their mountainous country occupied by the North, a great stronghold of the Union would, it seemed to Lincoln, have been planted securely far into the midst of the Confederacy.  Therefore he persistently urged this part of his scheme on the attention of his generals.  The chief military objection raised by Buell was that his army would have to advance 150 miles from the nearest base of supply upon a railway; (for 200 miles to the west of the Alleghanies there were no railways running from north to south).  To meet this Lincoln, in September, urged upon a meeting of important Senators and Representatives the construction of a railway line from Lexington in Kentucky southwards, but his hearers, with their minds narrowed down to an advance on Richmond, seem to have thought the relatively small cost in time and money of this work too great.  Lincoln still thought an expedition to Eastern Tennessee practicable at once, and it has been argued from the circumstances in which one was made nearly two years later that he was right.  It would, one may suppose, have been unwise to separate the armies of the Ohio and of the West so widely; for the main army of the Confederates in the West, under their most trusted general, Albert Sidney Johnston, was from September onwards in South-western Kentucky, and could have struck at either of these two Northern armies; and this was in Buell’s mind.  On the other hand, Lincoln’s object was a wise one in itself and would have been worth some postponement of the advance along the Mississippi if thereby the army in the West could have been used in support of it.  However this may be, the fact is that Lincoln’s plan, as it stood, was backed up by McClellan; McClellan was perhaps unduly anxious for Buell to move on Eastern Tennessee, because this would have supported the invasion of Virginia which he himself was now contemplating, and he was probably forgetful of the West; but he was Lincoln’s highest military adviser and his capacity was still trusted.  Buell’s own view was that, when he moved, it should be towards Western Tennessee.  He would have had a railway connection behind him all his way, and Albert Johnston’s army would have lain before him.  He wished that Halleck meanwhile should advance up the courses of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers; Eastern Tennessee (he may have thought) would be in the end more effectively succoured; their two armies would thus have converged on Johnston’s.  Halleck agreed with Buell to the extent of disagreeing with Lincoln and McClellan, but no further.  He declined to move in concert with Buell.  Fremont had disorganised the army of the West, and Halleck, till he had repaired the mischief, permitted only certain minor enterprises under his command.