Price and Van Dorn coming with about fifteen thousand and the levies from all quarters, which were hastening to Corinth, would have given General Johnson nearly sixty thousand infantry. Buell, unable to cross the river or to use it for obtaining supplies, his communications with Nashville in constant danger, and hourly interrupted by the five or six thousand cavalry which General Johnson could have thrown upon them, would have been suspended without the ability to obtain foothold or prop anywhere. If nothing else could have made him retreat, a menace to Nashville, from the troops in East Tennessee, would have served the purpose. Then General Johnson could have crossed the river, and the cavalry have been pushed on to operate between Nashville and Louisville. General Buell would not have halted to fight. With the odds against him, to do _that_ (in the heart of a hostile population and far from support) would have been too hazardous. But retreat would have been almost as disastrous as defeat, and, closely pressed, would have resulted in the partial disintegration of his army. Military men, who understand the situation, and the topography of the country, will concur in the opinion that General Buell could not have halted with safety at Nashville, nor, indeed, until he had reached Munfordsville.
Gentlemen who were upon General Johnson's staff, and in his confidence, state that it was his intention to have attempted no march into Kentucky, but that if Buell retreated beyond the Cumberland river, he designed (while keeping his cavalry on the railroad between Nashville and Louisville) to have marched his army, rapidly, along the South bank of the Cumberland to the Ohio river, and, crossing that stream, to have pushed into Illinois, and (destroying the great trunk lines of railroads) have marched to Kentucky by way of Ohio. He could have made the march in less time than troops could have been organized to oppose him. The plan appeared daring to rashness, but where were the forces to endanger such a march? The militia could not have stopped it a moment. General Johnson believed that, his army would have increased as it advanced, and that vacillation and disaffection removed from Kentucky and Missouri, would be transferred to the Northwestern States, and that negotiations for peace would be entertained by those States separately.
