total effective strength as reported by him at Bowling Green. In
a report to Richmond, he gave the total of his command as barely
forty-three thousand men.

General Buell's army amounted to over seventy-five thousand men, not
all of these available for field duty, as a very large proportion
of the command was needed to maintain his line of supplies, and
the farther his advance the greater the drain on his command for
railroad guards.

With the fall of Donelson, Johnston modified his plans of operations,
and then determined to relinquish the defensive, and to concentrate
all available forces of the Confederacy in the southwest for offensive
operations. He had, as early as January, 1862, contemplated the
possibility of the disasters that had taken place, and the retreat
consequent upon them, and at that time indicated Corinth, Miss.,
as being the proper place to concentrate the troops.

On January 3d General Buell wrote at length to General Halleck,
proposing a joint campaign against the enemy in "a combined attack
on its centre and flanks," moving the troops by water under protection
of the gunboats, striking for the railroad communications of the
enemy, and destroying his bridges over the Cumberland and Tennessee
Rivers, both of which were protected by batteries, the first at
Dover--Fort Donelson--and the other at Fort Henry, respectively
thirty-one and eighteen miles below the bridges. To this, on the
6th, General Halleck replied that, situated as he was, he could
render no assistance to Buell's forward movement on Bowling Green,
and advised the delay of the movement, if such co-operation by troops
sent to Cairo and Paducah should be deemed necessary to the plan