e march from
Vicksburg to Chattanooga, thence to Atlanta, to Savannah, and
Northward to the Potomac, is one of the longest ever made by an
army. From Vicksburg to Chattanooga the army was under command of
General Grant, but the entire march of the same body of troops must
have exceeded two thousand miles through the very heart of the
insurrectionary country. But the great operations of both Grant
and Sherman were incomplete when Congress adjourned on the Fourth
of July. Its members returned home to engage in a canvass of
extraordinary interest and critical importance.

CHARACTER OF GENERAL SHERMAN.

The character and ability of General Sherman were not fully
appreciated until the second year of the war. He had not aimed to
startle the country at the outset of his military career with any
of the brilliant performances attempted by many officers who were
heard of for a day and never afterwards. With the true instinct
and discipline of a soldier, he faithfully and skillfully did the
work assigned to him, and he gained steadily, rapidly, and enduringly
on the confidence and admiration of the people. He shared in the
successful campaigns of General Grant in the South-West, and earned
his way to the great command with which he was now intrusted,--a
command which in one sense involved the prompt success of all the
military operations of the Government. Disaster for his army did
not of course mean the triumph of the Rebellion, but it meant fresh
levies of troops, the prolongation of the struggle, and a serious
increase to the heavy task that General Grant had assumed in
Virginia.

General Sherman was a graduate of West Point, and while still a
young man had served with marked credit for some twelve years in
the army. But he had more than a military education. Through a
checkered career in civil life, he had enlarged his knowledge of
the country, his acquaintance with men, his experience in affairs.
He had been a banker in California, a lawyer in Kansas, President
of a college in Louisiana, and, when the war began, he was about
to take charge of a railroad in Missouri. It would be difficult,
if not impossible to find a man who has so thorough, so minute a
knowledge of every State and Territory of the Union. He has made
a special study of the geography and products of the country. Some
one has said of him, that if we should suddenly lose all the maps
of the United S