decision. His acute perceptions, retentive memory, and unusual
power of logic enabled him to make rapid progress in the acquisition of
the fixed and accepted rules on which military writers agree. In this,
as in other sciences, the main difficulty, of course, lies in applying
fixed theories to variable conditions. When, however, we remember that
at the outbreak of hostilities all the great commanders of the Civil War
had experience only as captains and lieutenants, it is not strange that
in speculative military problems the President's mature reasoning powers
should have gained almost as rapidly by observation and criticism as
theirs by practice and experiment. The mastery he attained of the
difficult art, and how intuitively correct was his grasp of military
situations, has been attested since in the enthusiastic admiration of
brilliant technical students, amply fitted by training and intellect to
express an opinion, whose comment does not fall short of declaring Mr.
Lincoln "the ablest strategist of the war."

The President had early discerned what must become the dominating and
decisive lines of advance in gaining and holding military control of the
Southern States. Only two days after the battle of Bull Run, he had
written a memorandum suggesting three principal objects for the army
when reorganized: First, to gather a force to menace Richmond; second, a
movement from Cincinnati upon Cumberland Gap and East Tennessee; third,
an expedition from Cairo against Memphis. In his eyes, the second of
these objectives never lost its importance; and it was in fact
substantially adopted by indirection and by necessity in the closing
periods of the war. The eastern third of the State of Tennessee remained
from the first stubbornly and devotedly loyal to the Union. At an
election on June 8, 1861, the people of twenty-nine counties, by more
than two to one, voted against joining the Confederacy; and the most
rigorous military repression by the orders of Jefferson Davis and
Governor Harris was necessary to prevent a general uprising against the
rebellion.

The sympathy of the President, even more than that of the whole North,
went out warmly to these unfortunate Tennesseeans, and he desired to
convert their mountain fastnesses into an impregnable patriotic
stronghold. Had his advice been followed, it would have completely
severed railroad communication, by way of the Shenandoah valley,
Knoxville, and Chattanooga, between Virginia