maintained.

In October, Anderson, who had never recovered from the strain of
defending Fort Sumter, turned over to Sherman the very
troublesome Kentucky command. Sherman pointed out to the visiting
Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, that while McClellan had a
hundred thousand men for a front of a hundred miles in Virginia,
and Fremont had sixty thousand for about the same distance, he
(Sherman) had been given only eighteen thousand to guard the link
between them, although this link stretched out three hundred
miles. Sherman then asked for sixty thousand men at once; and
said two hundred thousand would be needed later on. "Good God!"
said Cameron, "where are they to come from?" Come they had to, as
Sherman foresaw. Cameron made trouble at Washington by calling
Sherman's words "insane"; and Sherman's "insanity" became a
stumbling-block that took a long time to remove.

Grant, in command at Cairo, began his career as a general by
cleverly forestalling the enemy at Paducah, where the Tennessee
flows into the Ohio. Then, on the seventh of November, he closed
the first confused campaign on the Mississippi by attacking
Belmont, Missouri, twenty miles downstream from Cairo, in order
to prevent the Confederates at Columbus, Kentucky, right
opposite, from sending reinforcements to Sterling Price in
Arkansas. There was a stiff fight, in which the Union gunboats
did good work. Grant handled his soldiers equally well; and the
Union objective was fully attained.


Halleck, the Federal Commander-in-Chief for the river campaign of