Centre General Buell was on his way to Louisville and Bragg marching
parallel to him with a large Confederate force for the Ohio River.

I had been constantly called upon to reinforce Buell until at this time
my entire force numbered less than 50,000 men, of all arms. This
included everything from Cairo south within my jurisdiction. If I too
should be driven back, the Ohio River would become the line dividing the
belligerents west of the Alleghanies, while at the East the line was
already farther north than when hostilities commenced at the opening of
the war. It is true Nashville was never given up after its first
capture, but it would have been isolated and the garrison there would
have been obliged to beat a hasty retreat if the troops in West
Tennessee had been compelled to fall back. To say at the end of the
second year of the war the line dividing the contestants at the East was
pushed north of Maryland, a State that had not seceded, and at the West
beyond Kentucky, another State which had been always loyal, would have
been discouraging indeed. As it was, many loyal people despaired in the
fall of 1862 of ever saving the Union. The administration at Washington
was much concerned for the safety of the cause it held so dear. But I
believe there was never a day when the President did not think that, in
some way or other, a cause so just as ours would come out triumphant.

Up to the 11th of September Rosecrans still had troops on the railroad
east of Corinth, but they had all been ordered in. By the 12th all were
in except a small force under Colonel Murphy of the 8th Wisconsin. He
had been detained to guard the remainder of the stores which had not yet
been brought in to Corinth.

On the 13th of September General Sterling Price entered Iuka, a town
about twenty miles east of Corinth on the Memphis and Charleston