Explore "Our Standard-Bearer" by Oliver Optic on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The great strategic line of the rebels in the West had been broken; all its strong places had been taken or evacuated; and the network of railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee was in possession of the national troops. The new line of defence was along the railroad extending from Memphis on the Mississippi to Charleston on the Atlantic. As the rebels had fought for Nashville at Fort Donelson, and lost it, so they indicated their intention to fight for Memphis at Island No. 10.
It was of the utmost importance to the Confederacy that the new line of defence should be held, in order to control one of the principal means of communication with the Atlantic States, by which the army and the people were to be supplied with food. This line included several important railway junctions, from which roads extended down to New Orleans and Mobile. From Chattanooga a road passed through Eastern Tennessee, then in possession of the rebels, to Virginia, being the most direct route to Richmond; and another went to Atlanta, where lines diverged to the east, west, and south, by which all the southern and eastern cities of the Confederacy were reached.