Although efforts have been made at various times and by various writers, to minimize these perils and difficulties, it cannot be denied that the situation of that army was at that epoch an exceedingly grave one. It had been rudely checked, if not completely beaten, in one of the most desperate and bloody battles of the war, and shut up in Chattanooga by Bragg's army on the south, and by an almost impassable mountain region on the north and west. Its communication by rail with its secondary base at Bridgeport, and with its primary base at Nashville, had been broken by the Confederate cavalry and rendered most uncertain. Its supplies were scanty and growing daily less, while its artillery horses and draft mules were dying by hundreds, for lack of forage. The only safe wagon roads to the rear were by a long and circuitous route through the mountains north of the Tennessee River, which was besides so rough and muddy that the teams could haul hardly enough for their own subsistence, much less an adequate supply for the troops. All the contemporary accounts go to show that Rosecrans, while personally brave enough, was himself more or less confused and excited by the great disaster which had overtaken his army at Chickamauga. He had been cut off and greatly shaken by the overthrow of his right wing, and consequently retired with it to Chattanooga. Notwithstanding this unfortunate withdrawal and his failure to rejoin the organized portion of his army, which under General George H. Thomas, held on firmly to its position against every attack, those who knew Rosecrans best still believed him to be a most loyal and gallant gentleman who was anxious and willing to do all that could be done to save his army and maintain its advanced position. But there is no satisfactory evidence that up to the time he turned over his command to his successor, he had formed any adequate or comprehensive plan for supplying it or getting it ready to resume the offensive. Every general in it knew that it needed and must have supplies, and that the only way to get them, without falling back, was to open and keep open the direct road or "cracker line" to Bridgeport. But how and when this was to be done was the great question.