At Jackson, Tennessee, the Mississippi Central railroad coming up from New Orleans and the Mobile and Ohio line running north from Mobile formed a junction. From that point north to Columbus, there was but one fragile line of single track, earth-ballasted railroad, serving as a connecting link between the South and its excessively advanced western position at Columbus. It is difficult to imagine a line of military communication more vulnerable than this little thread. The country between the Tennessee river and this railroad line was quite open and there was neither fortress nor force, except here and there an easily conquerable picket post to defend the communication. If Grant had been left with a free hand there is no doubt whatever that he would instantly have sent westward a force too small in itself for its detachment to weaken him, but large enough to make itself instantly and completely master of this railroad line. He would thus have cut off all communication between Columbus and the South. He would have made himself quickly master of all the forces and all the supplies and all the ordnance that had been foolishly concentrated at Columbus. He would without a battle have compelled the surrender of that stronghold, with all its preposterously numerous garrison, with all its great guns, and with all of the rich store of supplies and ammunition and other war material collected there. It was another absurdity of the early war that Grant was forbidden to do any of these things, when the time for their doing was ripe. By orders of his "superior officer" Halleck, Grant was held idle at the forts that he had conquered while this opportunity slipped away. From the sixteenth of February to the thirteenth of March this only general who knew how to do things and how to get things done was condemned to idleness and inaction by the absurd order of a distinctly unfriendly martinet. In the meantime the Confederates, not being fools, utilized the opportunity given them by this delay, to rescue themselves from their peculiarly perilous position. Johnston withdrew the eastern half of the Confederate army from Bowling Green to the line of the railroad that led from Memphis eastward. Beauregard, in command of the western half of the army which Grant had so completely sundered, clearly saw the situation and promptly retired his forces from Columbus to Corinth, Mississippi, on the line of the Memphis and Charleston railroad at its intersection of the Mobile and Ohio line. He had in the meantime transferred to New Madrid on the Mississippi, and to Island Number 10 in that stream, the best of the ordnance in Columbus, thus providing as effectually as he could for the defense of the great river and for its blockading against Federal gunboats and still more important Federal transports bearing troops and supplies to points below.