The formal change in department commanders took place on the 29th of March, Fremont having reached Wheeling the day before. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. i. p. 4.] Mr. Lincoln's desire by some means to free the loyal people of East Tennessee from the oppressive sway of the Confederates showed itself in the instructions given to all the military officers in the West. He had been pressing the point from the beginning. It had entered into McClellan's and Rosecrans's plans of the last campaign. It had been the object of General George H. Thomas's organization of troops at Camp Dick Robinson in Kentucky. For it General Ormsby Mitchell had labored to prepare a column at Cincinnati. It was not accomplished till the autumn of 1863, when Rosecrans occupied Chattanooga and Burnside reached Knoxville; but there had never been a day's cessation of the President's urgency to have it accomplished. It was prominent in his mind when he organized the Mountain Department, and Fremont was called upon to suggest a plan to this end as soon as he was appointed. His choice was to assemble the forces of his department in Kentucky at the southern terminus of the Central Kentucky Railroad, at Nicholasville, and to march southward directly to Knoxville, upon what was substantially the line taken by Burnside a year and a half later. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. i. p. 7.] Fremont was mistaken, however, in saying that from Nicholasville to Knoxville supplies could be "transported over level and good roads." General Buell had, on the 1st of February, [Footnote: _Id_., vol. vii. p. 931.] reported that line to be some two hundred miles long from the end of the railway to Knoxville, the whole of it mountainous, and the roads bad. He estimated a train of a thousand wagons, constantly going and returning, as needful to supply ten thousand men at Knoxville after allowance was made for what could be gathered from the country. General Buell was unquestionably correct in his view of the matter, but the strong political reasons for liberating East Tennessee made the President unwilling to be convinced that it was then impracticable. He, however, could not furnish the transportation required for the movement proposed by Fremont, and hesitated to interfere further with the conduct of military affairs within Buell's territorial limits. Besides this, Rosecrans's plan had found such favor with the Secretary of War that it was laid before Fremont with official approval. [Footnote: _Id_., vol. xii. pt, iii. p. 8.] The stripping of West Virginia of troops to make a column in Kentucky seemed too hazardous to the government, and Fremont changed his plan so as to adopt that of Rosecrans with some modifications.