Henry W. Halleck was a middle-aged, commonplace, and very cautious general, who faithfully plodded through the war without defeat or victory. He looked so long before he leaped that he never leaped at all--not even on retreating enemies. Good for the regular office-work routine, he was like a hen with ducklings for this river war, in which Curtis, Grant, Buell, and his naval colleague Foote, were all his betters on the fighting line. His opponent, Albert Sidney Johnston, was also middle-aged, being fifty-nine; but quite fit for active service. Johnston had had a picturesque career, both in and out of the army; and many on both sides thought him likely to prove the greatest leader of the war. He was, however, a less formidable opponent than Northerners were apt to think. He was not a consummate genius like Lee. He had inferior numbers and resources; and the Confederate Government interfered with him. Yet they did have the good sense to put both sides of the Mississippi under his unified command, including not only Kentucky and Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas, but the whole of the crucial stretch from Vicksburg to Port Hudson. In this they were wiser than the Federal Government with Halleck's command, which was neither so extensive nor so completely unified. Johnston took post in his own front line at Bowling Green, Kentucky, not far south of Buell's position at Munfordville. He was very anxious to keep a hold on Kentucky and Missouri, along the southern 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.