On November 4, Bragg ordered Longstreet to detach his two divisions from the Army of Tennessee and use them to recapture Knoxville. Bragg was critical of Longstreet's mishandling of the Battle of Wauhatchie on October 28, in which the Confederates failed to cut the Federals' newly established Cracker Line. Also, Bragg was anxious to get rid of a general whom he regarded as a troublemaker. Longstreet wanted to be reinforced to 20,000 men for the campaign, but Bragg refused and recalled both Stevenson's and Benjamin F. Cheatham's infantry divisions that had been sent to oppose Burnside. Longstreet tried to obtain accurate maps of East Tennessee but was only able to get poor ones. Moving Longstreet's two divisions north, while Stevenson's and Cheatham's divisions moved south overtaxed the old railroad equipment, and the transfer took until November 13 to complete. Longstreet belatedly discovered that Stevenson's troops had stripped the countryside of food supplies and that his own wagon train was barely adequate to maintain an offensive. Longstreet had 10,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, and 35 guns after Bragg agreed to loan him Major General Joseph Wheeler and almost all of his army's mounted force.
