The Memphis and Charleston Railroad strikes the Tennessee River at Eastport, Mississippi.  Knowing the difficulty Sherman would have to supply himself from Memphis, I had previously ordered supplies sent from St. Louis on small steamers, to be convoyed by the navy, to meet him at Eastport.  These he got.  I now ordered him to discontinue his work of repairing roads and to move on with his whole force to Stevenson, Alabama, without delay.  This order was borne to Sherman by a messenger, who paddled down the Tennessee in a canoe and floated over Muscle Shoals; it was delivered at Iuka on the 27th.  In this Sherman was notified that the rebels were moving a force towards Cleveland, East Tennessee, and might be going to Nashville, in which event his troops were in the best position to beat them there.  Sherman, with his characteristic promptness, abandoned the work he was engaged upon and pushed on at once.  On the 1st of November he crossed the Tennessee at Eastport, and that day was in Florence, Alabama, with the head of column, while his troops were still crossing at Eastport, with Blair bringing up the rear.

Sherman’s force made an additional army, with cavalry, artillery, and trains, all to be supplied by the single track road from Nashville.  All indications pointed also to the probable necessity of supplying Burnside’s command in East Tennessee, twenty-five thousand more, by the same route.  A single track could not do this.  I gave, therefore, an order to Sherman to halt General G. M. Dodge’s command, of about eight thousand men, at Athens, and subsequently directed the latter to arrange his troops along the railroad from Decatur north towards Nashville, and to rebuild that road.  The road from Nashville to Decatur passes over a broken country, cut up with innumerable streams, many of them of considerable width, and with valleys far below the road-bed.  All the bridges over these had been destroyed, and the rails taken up and twisted by the enemy.  All the cars and locomotives not carried off had been destroyed as effectually as they knew how to destroy them.  All bridges and culverts had been destroyed between Nashville and Decatur, and thence to Stevenson, where the Memphis and Charleston and the Nashville and Chattanooga roads unite.  The rebuilding of this road would give us two roads as far as Stevenson over which to supply the army.  From Bridgeport, a short distance farther east, the river supplements the road.

General Dodge, besides being a most capable soldier, was an experienced railroad builder.  He had no tools to work with except those of the pioneers—­axes, picks, and spades.  With these he was able to intrench his men and protect them against surprises by small parties of the enemy.  As he had no base of supplies until the road could be completed back to Nashville, the first matter to consider after protecting his men was the getting in of food and forage from the surrounding country.  He had