ABSTRACT
The Union had the means to win the war; conscription and the raising of black regiments had strengthened its armies although not quite in the way Sherman had wished and it was now well positioned via the Mississippi to strike at the heart of the Confederacy. The Confederacy was cut in two, and the South could readily be beaten in detail by the concentration of Federal forces, first on one side of the Mississippi and then on the other the drums that beat for the advance into Pennsylvania seemed too many of us to be beating the funeral march of the dead Confederacy. Union General William Rosecran's had finally run out of reasons to delay an advance any longer, and had begun to move against Bragg and the Army of Tennessee, pushing the Confederates back toward Chattanooga on the Tennessee River.
