When at the end of January, 1862, the War Department asked General Beauregard to go to that region as second in command under General Albert Sydney Johnston, it confidently assured him that the troops under General Johnston's command exceeded seventy thousand in number. On his arrival there General Beauregard found that in fact these widely and dangerously scattered forces numbered less than forty-five thousand and that the several parts could not possibly be made to support each other. He found also that the strength in fortification, in guns and in men, which should have been concentrated mainly in Forts Henry and Donelson, had been largely wasted at Columbus, a position naturally indefensible or defensible by a small as easily as by a large force. He found that vast quantities of precious stores had been warehoused there in face of the fact that Columbus was the most northerly and the most exposed point on the entire defensive line. When General Beauregard joined General Johnston and made his study of conditions, he pointed out all these defects in the line and all the dangers they involved. General Beauregard had, since the battle of Manassas, developed an aggressive tendency which he had strangely lacked in the earlier months of his career as a general. He had grown into a real general. He therefore proposed to General Johnston an instant offensive movement. Here it is important for the reader clearly to understand the situation. General Polk, commanding the Confederates at Columbus, was threatened by a superior force under General Pope in Missouri, on the other side of the river. General Johnston's position at Bowling Green was threatened by a distinctly superior army under General Buell which lay scarcely more than a two days' march to the north and east. Moreover the position of Bowling Green was already in effect turned by Thomas's advance from eastern Kentucky towards eastern Tennessee. In the meanwhile General Grant, supported by the gunboats, was in possession of Paducah and threatening to advance with 15,000 men for the reduction of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. The Confederate forces were scattered beyond all possibility of effective coöperation except by a concentration in advance involving a radical change in the scheme and line of defense. There were at that time about 14,000 Confederate effectives at Bowling Green; about 5,500 at Forts Henry and Donelson; about 8,000 near Clarksville; and about 15,000 at and near Columbus. Other detached forces at various points swelled the total of the Confederate forces in Kentucky and Tennessee to about 45,000 fighting men. Grant was threatening the river forts with 15,000 men. Pope had 30,000 men or more in southeast Missouri, threatening Columbus. Buell had a large and rapidly increasing army, numbering from 40,000 to 60,000 men (overestimated by Beauregard at 75,000 or 80,000) at Bacon's Creek, within striking distance, forty miles, of Bowling Green.