Orders flew around the country; dozens of trains were assembled; and forty hours after the decision, the first troops rolled out of Culpeper for a 1,233-mile trip through Union-held territory over the Appalachians and across the unbridged Ohio River twice. Eleven days later more than 20,000 men had arrived at the railhead near Chattanooga with their artillery, horses, and equipment. It was an extraordinary feat of logistics—the longest and fastest movement of such a large body of troops before the twentieth century.
