Grant's desire for activity in the winter--Scattering to live--Subordinate movements--The Meridian expedition--Use of the Mississippi--Sherman's estimate of it--Concentration to be made in the spring--Grant joins the Potomac Army--Motives in doing so--Meade as an army commander--Halleck on concentration--North Carolina expedition given up--Burnside to join Grant--Old relations of Sherman and Halleck--Present cordial friendship--Frank correspondence--The supply question--Railway administration--Bridge defences--Reduction of baggage--Tents--Sherman on spies and deserters--Changes in Confederate army--Bragg relieved--Hardee--Beauregard--Johnston--Davis's suggestion of plans--Correspondence with Johnston--Polk's mediation--Characteristics--Bragg's letters--Lee writes Longstreet--Johnston's dilatory discussion--No results--Longstreet joins Lee--Grant and Sherman have the initiative--Prices in the Confederacy. The threshold of the new campaign is a fit place to pick up the threads of the relations of Sherman to his superiors and his subordinates, and to notice the manner in which he laid out the responsible work before him. Grant had no thought of suspending operations in winter, further than circumstances should make it imperative. As soon as the siege of Knoxville was raised, he applied himself earnestly to the question, What next? His first choice would have been to start from Chattanooga as a base, and make the Confederate Army his object. The insuperable obstacle to this was the impossibility, at the time, of supplying the forces already collected on the upper Tennessee. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. p. 503.] The railroad to Nashville must be practically rebuilt and made much more efficient than it was, or both Thomas's and Foster's armies would be tied fast without the possibility of advancing. To make it possible to feed Sherman's auxiliary force, he sent it down the river to Bellefonte, some thirty miles below Bridgeport, opened steamboat communication with it, and set it at work repairing the railway from Nashville to Decatur and from Decatur to Stevenson. This would furnish an additional line to Chattanooga when completed, and would make an accumulation of stores there a possibility. He saw the risks involved in this scattering of forces, but he had no choice; they must scatter to live. He did not mean that the army should be inactive, however; as early as the 7th of December, 1863, he wrote quite fully to Halleck suggesting a movement from the lower Mississippi on Mobile, using for this purpose the forces that would be relieved from guarding the lines about Chattanooga. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. p. 349.]