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frontiers of which his forces were arrayed. His extreme right was
thrown northward under General Marshall to Prestonburg, near the
border of West Virginia, in the dangerous neighborhood of many
Union mountain folk. His southern outpost on the right was also
in the same kind of danger at Cumberland Gap, a strategic pass
into the Alleghanies at a point where Kentucky, Tennessee, and
Virginia meet. Halfway west from there, to Bowling Green the
Confederates hoped to hold the Cumberland near Logan's Cross Roads
and Mill Springs. Westwards from Bowling Green Johnston's line held
positions at Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, Fort Henry on the
Tennessee, and Columbus on the Mississippi. All his Trans-Mississippi
troops were under the command of the enthusiastic Earl Van Dorn,
who hoped to end his spring campaign in triumph at St. Louis.

The fighting began in January at the northeastern end of the line,
where the Union Government, chiefly for political reasons, was
particularly anxious to strengthen the Unionists that lived all
down the western Alleghanies and so were a thorn in the side of
the solid South beyond. On the tenth Colonel James A. Garfield, a
future President, attacked and defeated Marshall near Prestonburg
and occupied the line of Middle Creek. The Confederates, half starved,
half clad, ill armed, slightly outnumbered, and with no advantage
except their position, fought well, but unavailingly. Only some
three thousand men were engaged on both sides put together. Yet
the result was important because it meant that the Confederates
had lost their hold on the eastern end of Kentucky, which was now
in unrestricted touch with West Virginia.

Within eight days a greater Union commander, General G. H. Thomas,
emerged as the victor of a much bigger battle at Mill Springs and
Logan's Cross Roads on the upper Cumberland, ninety miles due east
of Bowling Green. The victory was complete, and Thomas's name was
made. Thomas, indeed, was known already as a man whose stentorian
orders had to be obeyed; and a clever young Confederate prisoner
used this reputation as his excuse for getting beaten: "We were doing
pretty good fighting till old man Thomas rose up in his stirrups,
and we heard him holler out: 'Attention, Creation! By kingdoms,
right wheel!' Then we knew you had us."

There were only about four thousand men a side. But in itself, and
in conjunction with Garfield's little victory at Prestonburg, the
battle of Log