'62, fixed his headquarters at St. Louis. From this main base his
right wing had rails as far as Rolla, whence the mail road went
on southwest, straight across Missouri. At Lebanon, near the
middle of the State, General Samuel R. Curtis was concentrating,
before advancing still farther southwest against the Confederates
whom he eventually fought at Pea Ridge. From St. Louis there was
good river, rail, and road connection south to Halleck's center
in the neighborhood of Cairo, where General Ulysses S. Grant had
his chief field base, at the junction of the Mississippi and
Ohio. A little farther east Grant had another excellent position
at Paducah, beside the junction of the Ohio and the Tennessee.
Naval forces were of course indispensable for this amphibious
campaign; and in Flag-Officer Andrew Hull Foote the Western
Flotilla had a commander able to cooperate with the best of his
military colleagues. Halleck's left--a semi-independent
command--was based on the Ohio, stretched clear across Kentucky,
and was commanded by a good organizer and disciplinarian, General
Don Carlos Buell, whose own position at Munfordville was not only
near the middle of the State but about midway between the
important railway junctions of Louisville and Nashville.

Henry W. Halleck was a middle-aged, commonplace, and very
cautious general, who faithfully plodded through the war without
defeat or victory. He looked so long before he leaped that he
never leaped at all--not even on retreating enemies. Good for the
regular officework routine, he was like a hen with ducklings for
this river war, in which Curtis, Grant, Buell, and his naval
colleague Foote, were all his betters on the fighting line.

His opponent, Albert Sidney Johnston, was also middle-aged, being