CHAPTER XLVII.
THE MILITARY SITUATION--PLANS FOR THE CAMPAIGN--SHERIDAN ASSIGNED TO COMMAND OF THE CAVALRY--FLANK MOVEMENTS--FORREST AT FORT PILLOW--GENERAL BANKS'S EXPEDITION--COLONEL MOSBY--AN INCIDENT OF THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN.
When I assumed command of all the armies the situation was about this: the Mississippi River was guarded from St.Louis to its mouth; the line of the Arkansas was held, thus giving us all the North-west north of that river.

A few points in Louisiana not remote from the river were held by the Federal troops, as was also the mouth of the Rio Grande.
East of the Mississippi we held substantially all north of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad as far east as Chattanooga, thence along the line of the Tennessee and Holston rivers, taking in nearly all of the State of Tennessee.

West Virginia was in our hands; and that part of old Virginia north of the Rapidan and east of the Blue Ridge we also held.

On the sea-coast we had Fortress Monroe and Norfolk in Virginia; Plymouth, Washington and New Berne in North Carolina; Beaufort, Folly and Morris islands, Hilton Head, Port Royal and Fort Pulaski in South Carolina and Georgia; Fernandina, St.Augustine, Key West and Pensacola in Florida.

The balance of the Southern territory, an empire in extent, was still in the hands of the enemy.
Sherman, who had succeeded me in the command of the military division of the Mississippi, commanded all the troops in the territory west of the Alleghanies and north of Natchez, with a large movable force about Chattanooga.