ake command in person, and to drive Longstreet
"beyond the confines of East Tennessee." The enemy's cavalry was
thrown forward, and part of Longstreet's command having been ordered
East, the movement was abandoned; the inclemency of the weather, if no
other cause, was sufficient to delay operations. Foster being greatly
reinforced, and Longstreet's forces reduced by a part of his cavalry
going to join Johnston in Georgia, and a brigade of infantry ordered
to reinforce Lee, the commanding General determined to retire higher
up the Holston, behind a mountain chain, near Bull's Gap.

On the 22d of February we quit our winter quarters, and took up our
march towards Bull's Gap, and after a few days of severe marching we
were again snugly encamped behind a spur of the mountain, jutting out
from the Holston and on to the Nolachucky River. A vote of thanks from
the Confederate States Congress was here read to the troops:

"Thanking Lieutenant General James Longstreet and the officers and men
of his command for their patriotic services and brilliant achievements
in the present war, sharing as they have the arduous fatigues and
privations of many campaigns in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania,
Georgia, and Tennessee," etc.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXVIII

In Camp on the Holston, East Tennessee. Return to Virginia.

While Longstreet's Corps had done some of the most stubborn fighting,
and the results, as far as victories in battle were concerned, were
all that could be expected, still it seemed, from some faults of the
Generals commanding departments, or the war department in Richmond,
that the fruits of such victories were not what the country or General
Longstreet expected. To merely hold our own, in the face of such
overwhelming numbers, while great armies were springing up all over
the North, was not the true policy of the South, as General Longstreet
saw and felt it. We should go forward and gain every inch of ground
lost in the last campaign, make all that was possible out of our
partial successes, drive the enemy out of our country wherever he had
a foot-hold, otherwise the South would slowly but surely crumble away.
So much had been expected of Longstreet's Corps in East Tennessee, and
so little lasting advantage gained, that bickering among the officers
began. Brigadier Generals were jealous of Major Generals, and even
some became jealous or dissatisfied with General Longstreet himself.