Had his advice been followed, it would have completely
severed railroad communication, by way of the Shenandoah valley,
Knoxville, and Chattanooga, between Virginia and the Gulf States,
accomplishing in the winter of 1861 what was not attained until two
years later. Mr. Lincoln urged this in a second memorandum, made late in
September; and seeing that the principal objection to it lay in the long
and difficult line of land transportation, his message to Congress of
December 3, 1861, recommended, as a military measure, the construction
of a railroad to connect Cincinnati, by way of Lexington, Kentucky, with
that mountain region.
A few days after the message, he personally went to the President's room
in the Capitol building, and calling around him a number of leading
senators and representatives, and pointing out on a map before them the
East Tennessee region, said to them in substance:
I am thoroughly convinced that the closing struggle of the war will
occur somewhere in this mountain country. By our superior numbers and
strength we will everywhere drive the rebel armies back from the level
districts lying along the coast, from those lying south of the Ohio
River, and from those lying east of the Mississippi River. Yielding to
our superior force, they will gradually retreat to the more defensible
mountain districts, and make their final stand in that part of the South
where the seven States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia come together.
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