After the surrender of Fort Donelson, the force confronting Halleck was the command of General Beauregard, stationed at Columbus, Island Number Ten, at Forts Pillow and Randolph, at Memphis, and at convenient points on the railroads in Mississippi. The next objective point that presented itself was Memphis, and, as preliminary, the fortified points on the river above it. But Memphis had large railway connections. The direct road to Nashville was cut at its crossing over the Tennessee River, but at Humboldt it intersected the Mobile and Ohio, which joined Columbus with Mobile. The Memphis and Charleston, running nearly due east to Chattanooga, also intersected the Mobile and Ohio at Corinth. The Mississippi and Tennessee, in connection with the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern, gave a route nearly due south to New Orleans, and this intersected at Jackson, Mississippi, another road running east, and which needed only a connecting link between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, to make it also a through route to the Atlantic States. To destroy the junction at Humboldt would cut off railway connection with Columbus. To destroy the junction at Corinth would cut off connection with the east. A little eastwardly of Corinth, near Eastport, was a considerable railroad bridge over Bear Creek. General Halleck's first step, therefore, was to break these railway connections, and as General A.S. Johnston was falling back southwardly, it became doubly important to sever these connections for the purpose of preventing a conjunction of the forces under Johnston and Beauregard. Lieutenant-Commander Phelps had gone up to Florence, at the foot of Muscle Shoals, immediately after the surrender of Fort Henry, without difficulty. An expedition up the Tennessee, to send out strong, light parties, suggested itself as the natural means of accomplishing the first step. General Halleck proposed to accomplish this by his lieutenants before taking the field in person.