It would have been impossible to disregard the wishes of those, who in the last resort were masters, for a vigorous attempt on Richmond, and the continually unsuccessful attempts that were made did serve a military purpose, for they kept up a constant drain upon the resources of the South. In any well-thought-out policy the objects both of Scott's plan and of the popular plan would have been borne in mind. That no such policy was consistently followed from the first was partly a result of the long-continued difficulty in finding any younger man who could adequately take the place of Scott; it was not for a want of clear ideas, right or wrong, on Lincoln's part. Only two days after the battle of Bull Run, he put on paper his own view as to the future employment of the three armies. He thought that one should "threaten" Richmond; that one should move from Cincinnati, in Ohio, by a pass called Cumberland Gap in Kentucky, upon Knoxville in Eastern Tennessee; and that the third, using Cairo on the Mississippi as its base, should advance upon Memphis, some 120 miles further south on that river. Apparently he did not at first wish to commit the army of the Potomac very deeply in its advance on Richmond, and he certainly wished throughout that it should cover Washington against any possible attack. Memphis was one of the three points at which the Southern railway system touched the great river and communicated with the States beyond--Vicksburg and New Orleans, much further south, were the others. Knoxville again is a point, by occupying which, the Northern forces would have cut the direct railway communication between Virginia and the West, but for this move into Eastern Tennessee Lincoln had other reasons nearer his heart. The people of that region were strongly for the Union; they were invaded by the Confederates and held down by severe coercion, and distressing appeals from them for help kept arriving through the autumn; could they have been succoured and their mountainous country occupied by the North, a great stronghold of the Union would, it seemed to Lincoln, have been planted securely far into the midst of the Confederacy. Therefore he persistently urged this part of his scheme on the attention of his generals. The chief military objection raised by Buell was that his army would have to advance 150 miles from the nearest base of supply upon a railway; (for 200 miles to the west of the Alleghanies there were no railways running from north to south). To meet this Lincoln, in September, urged upon a meeting of important Senators and Representatives the construction of a railway line from Lexington in Kentucky southwards, but his hearers, with their minds narrowed down to an advance on Richmond, seem to have thought the relatively small cost in time and money of this work too great. Lincoln still thought an expedition to Eastern Tennessee practicable at once, and it has been argued from the circumstances in