Status - John Baer - 40th Indiana Regiment - Wood's Division
General Buell, having occupied Nashville, was gathering his forces there as rapidly as possible. One division was already there, another was coming up soon from Bowling Green, and another had come by river from Louisville, down the Ohio and then up the Cumberland to Nashville. Wood's division was enroute from Bowling Green to Nashville.
The Confederate army in front of Buell had moved south, and there was uncertainty as to where they were; perhaps at Chattanooga or Decatur, AL. As it turned out, most of them moved more toward Decatur, so they could move either east or west depending on where the Union army chose to advance.
Further west, another Confederate army had been at Columbus, KY for several months, but needed to retreat south due to the losses of the forts on the Cumberland and the Tennessee. These began to fall back on March 2nd. Union General John Pope had a force at New Madrid, MO, and was preparing to attack there.
The Union army under General Grant was slowly being rerouted from the Cumberland River (at Fort Donelson and Clarksville TN) back downriver, and then up the Tennessee River. The intent was to cut off navigation on the Tennessee and to break the railroad from Memphis; this was the main railroad in the north of the Confederacy and ran from Memphis through Chattanooga, and then all the way to Virginia.
More Information:
- Link: War Operation, see Volume VII, Chapter 17, pp. 671-679
- The Civil War Day by Day, John S. Bowman, Ed. pp. 59-60
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