Studies in American History 
269 
more population in 1860 than had the Boer Republic at the 
time of the Boer War tho this little country mustered 90,000 
men against the British. According to this ratio Texas 
should have been able to raise and feed a much larger army 
than Grant had around Vicksburg if there had been means to 
get them to the seat of war. 
While these events were happening around Vicksburg a 
more interesting scene from the standpoint of railroad trans- 
portation was being enacted around Chattanooga.^® Cumber- 
land Gap and the pass cut by the Tennessee River in the wall 
of the Cumberland plateau below Chattanooga were the two 
practicable passes into the valley of east Tennessee and were 
very valuable to the Confederates.®^ The Confederacy also 
controlled the outlets to Atlanta and the south Atlantic states 
and dominated the passage up the Great Appalachian Valley 
to Virginia and central Kentucky.®® The Confederates used 
this '‘Shenandoah of the West” in their invasions of Kentucky, 
and, so long as they held Chattanooga, could threaten Cin- 
cinnati and make flank movements against the Federals in the 
Mississippi Valley. 
Mention has already been made of a railroad line around the 
southern extremity of the Appalachians along the route used 
by the Cherokee traders. A chain of many links from Savan- 
nah and Charleston thru Atlanta and Chattanooga to river 
navigation at Nashville had been completed by 1854, while 
another line to Memphis had opened connection with the 
Mississippi by 1858. Another line starting at Norfolk on 
Chesapeake Bay reached Lynchburg in 1854, and crossing the 
Blue Ridge by the James River Gap passed southwestward in 
the valley of Virginia to Bristol and thence down the valley 
of eastern Tennessee thru Knoxville to Chattanooga, which it 
reached in 1858. A short distance to the west of Chattanooga, 
the line to Memphis connected with a northern line thru Nash- 
ville to Louisville. This latter road, tho only a single-track 
line, was the Federal line of operations against Chattanooga 
and had to be used later when Sherman was making his 
Atlanta campaign. 
55 Charles Francis Adams, Staidies Military and Diplomatic (New York, 1911), 242. 
55 Michael Hendrick Fitch, The Chattanooga Campaign (Wisconsin Historical Com- 
mission, Madison, 1911), 7, 8. 
5^ Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions, 293. 
5® E. Kirke, “Chattanooga the Southern Gateway of the Alleghanies”, in Harper’s 
Magazine, April, 1887, 
