In Pound Gap, Colonel Williams reported that Nelson had dispersed an "unorganized and half-armed, barefooted squad" that lacked everything, but the will to fight. The "Cincinnati Commercial" noted that Nelson had shown how "troops could be moved across unforgiving terrain without adequate transportation." That determination had truly surprised Williams who believed that Nelson would continue into Virginia with the intent of destroying the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, a line that connected the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia with the Memphis, Tennessee and the Mississippi Valley at Knoxville. In the first accounts of the fighting at Ivy Mountain, Northern news correspondents grossly misrepresented events because their Northern audience wanted a quick conclusion to the war. Those mistakes led the "Cincinnati Gazette" to conclude that while a great victory had been attained, the "campaign in Eastern Kentucky has no more permanent effect than the passage of a showman's caravan. Five hundred rebel guerrilla cavalry will undo in a week the ornamental work . . . done at so great an expenditure of money and of most precious time." The latter issues were of great concern and the reason why Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell replaced Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman in Louisville. Nelson received orders to report there and his brigade followed on Sunday afternoon, November 24. As predicted, the Confederates returned and that brought Col. James A. Garfield into the region to resume the unfinished task of subduing them.