A stern martinet who suffered from indecisiveness, Buell understandably thought Lincoln’s plan infeasible, for his army faced daunting logistical problems in marching across four mountain chains in winter, then occupying eastern Tennessee, with no rail line to supply it. McClellan, however, counted on Buell to cut the railroad from Virginia to Chattanooga, isolating the Confederate forces he planned to attack in the Old Dominion; Little Mac said he would be unable to advance until Buell accomplished his mission. Buell, however, favored moving against Nashville in central Tennessee, following the line of the Cumberland River, as a more practicable alternative to Lincoln’s strategy. Impertinently, he told the president that he moved to carry out his plan with reluctance: “I have been bound to it more by, say sympathy for the people of Eastern Tennessee, and the anxiety with which yourself and the General in Chief have desired it, than by my opinion of its wisdom.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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