scandal, and Benham was transferred to another department. It is
very improbable that Schenck's contemplated movement across New
River at Townsend's Ferry could have been made successfully; for his
boats were few and small, and the ferrying would have been slow and
tedious. Floyd would pretty surely learn of it soon after it began,
and would hasten his retreat instead of waiting to be surrounded. It
would have been better to join Schenck to Benham by a forced march
as soon as the latter was at the mouth of Loup Creek, and then to
push the whole to the Fayette and Raleigh road, Rosecrans leading
the column in person. As Floyd seems to have been ignorant of what
was going on in Loup Creek valley, decisive results might have
followed from anticipating him on his line of retreat. Capturing
such a force, or, as the phrase then went, "bagging it," is easier
talked of than done; but it is quite probable that it might have
been so scattered and demoralized as to be of little further value
as an army, and considerable parts of it might have been taken
prisoners.

Rosecrans had begun the campaign in August with the announced
purpose of marching to Wytheville and Abingdon in the Holston
valley, and thence into East Tennessee. McClellan had cherished the
idea of making the Kanawha line the base of operations into the same
region; still later Fremont, and after him Halleck did the same.
Looking only at the map, it seemed an easy thing to do; but the
almost wilderness character of the intervening country with its poor
and sparsely scattered people, the weary miles of steep
mountain-roads becoming impassable in rainy weather, and the total
absence of forage for animals, were elements of the problem which
they all ignored or greatly underestimated. It was easy, sitting at
one's office table, to sweep the hand over a few inches of chart