Johnston, too, had noticed with alarm the tremendous outpouring of rugged men from the states beyond the Ohio and from the far northwest.  The lumbermen who came down in scores of thousands from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, were a stalwart crowd.  War, save for the bullets and shell, offered to them no hardships to which they were not used.  They had often worked for days at a time up to their waists in icy water.  They had endured thirty degrees below zero without a murmur, they had breasted blizzard and cyclone, they could live on anything, and they could sleep either in forest or on prairie, under the open sky.

It was such men as these, including men of his own state, and men of the Tennessee mountains, whom Johnston, who had all the qualities of a great commander, had to face.  The forces against him were greatly superior in number.  The eastern end of his line had been crushed already at Mill Spring, the extreme western end had suffered a severe blow at Fort Henry, but Jefferson Davis and the Government at Richmond expected everything of him.  And he manfully strove to do everything.

There was a mighty marching of men, some news of which came through to Dick and his comrades with Grant.  Johnston with his main army, the very flower of the western South, fell back from Bowling Green, in Kentucky, toward Nashville, the capital of Tennessee.  But Buckner, with his division, was sent from Bowling Green to help defend Donelson against the threatened attack by Grant, and he arrived there six days after the fall of Henry.  On the way were the troops of Floyd, defeated in West Virginia, but afterwards sent westward.  Floyd was at the head of them.  Forrest, the great cavalry leader, was also there with his horsemen.  The fort was crowded with defenders, but the slack Pillow did not yet send forward anybody to see what Grant was doing, although he was only twenty miles away.

All eyes were now turned upon the west.  The center of action had suddenly shifted from Kentucky to Tennessee.  The telegraph was young yet, but it was busy.  It carried many varying reports to the cities North and South.  The name of this new man, Grant, spelled trouble.  People were beginning to talk much about him, and already some suspected that there was more in the back of his head than in those of far better known and far more pretentious northern generals in the east.  None at least could dispute the fact that he was now the one whom everybody was watching.

But the Southern people, few of whom knew the disparity of numbers, had the fullest confidence in the brilliant Johnston.  He was more than twenty years older than his antagonist, but his years had brought only experience and many triumphs, not weakness of either mind or body.  At his right hand was the swarthy and confident Beauregard, great with the prestige of Bull Run, and Hardee, Bragg, Breckinridge and Polk.  And there were many brilliant colonels, too, foremost among whom was George Kenton.