DEAR SIR: Your proffered kindness touching my personal advancement induces me to the liberty of requesting your aid in making known to the War Department certain reasons, seeming to me proper, for removing to Tennessee, as a field of service, the Seventh and Fourteenth Tennessee Regiments, and also in calling attention of the Department to some views deemed worthy of consideration in respect to the importance of our immediately possessing, by whatever force is necessary, the sections of Southern Kentucky and all Tennessee.

First, with regard to the troops mentioned, they, with my own regiment, have for some time past composed a brigade under my command, and I have every reason to believe if they be sent to Tennessee they can be forthwith re-enlisted almost in mass; and, if not sent, I fear they may hesitate to do so. I must say, in justice to myself, I do not undertake to justify this spirit in the troops, but only mention it as an existing fact to be dealt with in the prudence of the Department. The condition of going to Tennessee can be offered and the re-enlistments secured before the troops are moved, and I think this course advisable. They are troops inured to the service, and the advantage of re-engaging such, armed and prepared for the war, is doubtless appreciated by the Department.

With respect to the territory mentioned, I am impressed that, well considered, its relative importance to the Confederacy will induce the speediest possible concentration there of sufficient forces to dispute its possession with the enemy, even if this can only be done by temporarily weakening other positions less vital in importance; for to allow the enemy possession is at once the abandonment of our most reliable cereal region, important besides for its manufacturing resources, and the section most populous with material for soldiers. Such a condition will induce many who would otherwise stand bravely in arms for us to succumb under despair of successful resistance and the hope of being unmolested in person and property. But, further, Middle and West Tennessee constitute a field for operations the possession of which will in all military respects be as positively advantageous to the enemy as its loss would be disadvantageous to us. For, first, it is a country capable of sustaining a large army; secondly, with the enemy's advantage of us in capability of manufacturing machinery for transportation and motive power by land and water, his fleets of gunboats on the Mississippi River will make safe the right flank of his army occupying the country and the Cumberland Mountains will do the same for his left, for there is no road through these mountains of sufficient capacity to transport the most necessary supplies of an army which would be adequate to seriously affect his rear. In direct terms, the position is one which, once fairly in possession of the enemy, cannot be turned. Affording <ar7_902> to us but a front exposure, with to him available lines of transportation in rear, both of railroad and navigable waters, extending to his sources of supply of all war material, a soldier will not fail to appreciate a position presenting but a front exposure to his enemy. Besides all this, does not the enemy's possession of the field in question bring him almost upon our States of sparse white and dense black population, and perhaps to some extent even threaten the rear of our army on the Potomac?

These views, it seems to me, will warrant the assertion that our immediate possession of the field in question is to us a military necessity.

I believe if we have one distinctly peculiar advantage in this war it is position; that is to say (the affirmative of the war being with the enemy), the power of making him attack us in such positions as we may select. If the enemy has one advantage peculiar, and I acknowledge it a great one, it is the inequality of results of battle between us. If we beat him, while his facilities of trade with the arms markets of the world exist, and his own to manufacture them, results to us are limited to the destruction of an army. But if he beat us, we lose what we can worse spare than an army—arms. It was, perhaps, in substance the application of these two propositions which gave us the victory at Manassas, and prevented our hazarding pursuit of the foe across the Potomac. Deeply impressed with these views of our relations to the enemy (acknowledging exceptions to the rule), I have felt it was our general policy in this war to prudently avoid unnecessary hazards, and in the main compel him to yield us the advantage of position in engagements; but I do not realize that a vigorous, even an attacking, resistance for the rescue and possession of the field in question and adopted speedily as possible, will at all violate the rule of policy stated. If it be with us a necessity to repossess these sections, and we allow the enemy to hold them until he can intrench or even examine the country sufficiently to establish for himself the best line of defense, when we shall undertake to drive him will we not find our peculiar advantage—position—has been transferred to him without diminishing his peculiar one the inequality of the results of battle?

What, then, is our capacity and true policy? I believe 50,000 troops can be promptly concentrated in Tennessee without seriously risking any other position at all equaling this in importance and that it should be done. There, from the nature of their probably attacking duties, should be, if practicable, our best troops; for, taking it that courage is common to all our army, raw troops will more nearly equal the efficiency of trained ones in defending intrenched positions than in general field service and active operations. With this number of such troops the enemy may be resisted, harassed, or even under favorable circumstances attacked in main force, though his numbers double ours; for it is not certain, and is even greatly to be doubted, if there is amongst their generals the ability to combine and use in battle more than with this number we might oppose to them. Suppose them to have double our numbers, and yet their commander be unable to make available a larger number than we oppose to him, may not his surplus become a military fungus, in that while it cannot be appropriated against, it yet may be panic-stricken or stampeded by us? On full consideration, may it not be, when armies too large to be conveniently wielded are brought in conflict, that the chances of victory are in favor of the lesser one, especially if it have advantage in spirit, training, or in being better commanded.

The advantages to us in the general economy and those of greater <ar7_903> secrecy and security in our marches and maneuvers which would accrue from our being amongst a friendly population would be worth something to our Army; but the advantage, if not necessity, to our cause of encouraging and holding the people firm in the resolve never to submit, which the pressure with them of an active army would give, is of momentous importance. Let the people be kept aroused; let them not adopt the blighting fallacy of argument, what our Army cannot do it is hopeless for us to undertake; but, on the contrary, let them be encouraged to resist and inspired with the determination never to yield, and then for us time becomes a position which neither gunboats can successfully assault nor numbers flank. Against it both are impotent. Under its pressure the enemy must go down in hopeless bankruptcy or disband his armies, perhaps do both. Either affords us the independence worth all our sacrifice and which must be won. It may be considerations touching our foreign relations, and of which I am wholly ignorant, suffice in wisdom to detract from the importance, or even directly conflict with the immediate adoption, of the views here advanced. Speedy armed intervention from abroad may be confidently relied on, or possibly pressing necessity to hold inviolate our capital, to the end of securing our recognition by foreign powers, may enhance its value politically, if not for the present give to it an essentiality even beyond what pertains to it in any strictly military sense, such as being a point strategic, strong, or otherwise important. These considerations I have not embraced, but gone upon the assumption we were alone and unaided to fight our battle out. You must take my views as a soldier, not a statesman.

In conclusion, it is my hope I am not biased by any personal or geographical circumstances. I know myself sincere in the belief that if I thought any other part of my country more immediately important to the whole than the sections mentioned I would say make all efforts to first hold that part.

The views I have expressed are the earnest convictions of one whose fortune, life, and every worldly hope have been cheerfully and without a single regret staked upon the issue of the pending contest. They are not urged with the insolence of demand or uttered with the murmur of complaint, but submitted respectfully, and with unwavering confidence in the courage, wisdom, and virtue of the Chief Magistrate directing the country.

Very truly, your friend,