54 e lusive v ictories
and would force their leaders to return to the Union after the fi rst Con-
federate setbacks. Rebel resilience in the wake of a series of defeats in
the fi rst months of 1862 fi nally disabused him of this misguided confi -
dence. Still, he persisted in the notion that at least some parts of the
South were ripe to defect back to the Union. Th at the western part of
Virginia did so in 1861 (eventuating in the creation of West Virginia as
a separate state in 1863) only served to fuel his conviction.
He focused in particular on East Tennessee, a mountainous region
nearly inaccessible from the North by river or railroad. Even the roads
from Kentucky could not be traversed by armies in poor weather con-
ditions, something that became evident by the end of 1861, when a fi rst
Union campaign (under the extremely competent George H. Th omas)
simply bogged down in the deep mud. Repeatedly Lincoln called
upon his western generals to liberate the region, adding as a sweetener
the strategic rationale that a successful campaign would sever the most
direct railroad link between Virginia and the western Confederacy. But
by any measure East Tennessee was a distraction: the absence of trans-
portation meant a Union army could not launch campaigns from there
into the Deep South; freeing loyalist citizens from Confederate control
would add few troops to the North; the impoverished region provided
no important resources for the southern war economy; and disruption
in east-west Confederate rail connections would merely hamper enemy
transportation arrangements, as the rebels showed when they success-
fully reinforced their principal western army prior to its great victory at
Chickamauga in September 1863 after the direct rail line through Knox-
ville had been severed by a Union force.
Concern for foreign policy could also lead Lincoln to insist upon
ill-conceived military ventures. With the United States government
preoccupied by the rebellion, France under Napoleon III found a
pretext to move into Mexico and establish a puppet regime. Lincoln
worried that if French control reached the Texas border, resources might
fl ow across it into the Confederacy, undermining the blockade. He
plainly overestimated the danger. Even had the French wanted to assist
the South through Mexico, poor transportation and Union control of
the Mississippi would have precluded signifi cant help.
Compounding the error, Lincoln chose an ill-considered military
response. After the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson restored