of our army belong to that
class which are considered among the most difficult in warfare,
requiring great skill in commanders to arrange their details, and
endurance and discipline in the troops to effect them. It is no easy
matter to change position in the face of a wary and vigorous enemy,
ready to fall upon any exposed point in the long array of a marching
column. Yet, several times, the manoeuvre has been skilfully and
successfully performed, and each time the rebels have learned it too
late to profit by the chances offered for a surprise.

Hundreds of miles distant from the principal point of attraction in
Virginia, the other great army of the Union, under Gen. Sherman, has
also been performing similar feats--turning by well-directed marches,
one after another, the intrenched positions of the enemy in the
mountainous district of Georgia. Atlanta, the object of its toils, is a
great centre of railroad communication, and when our armies obtain
possession of it, the confederacy will experience another severing
stroke, almost as severe as that which cleft it in twain by the capture
of Vicksburg and the reopening of the Mississippi. By such strokes the
pretentious imposture of a Southern nation must be broken into
fragments, even should the armies supporting it remain for a time
organized and defiant; for, under the appliances of modern civilization
and commerce, the possession of a railroad or internal depot of trade is
almost equivalent to the destruction of an army.

The campaigns of 1863 produced great results, as well geographically as
in the capture of men and munitions from the rebels. At the commencement
of the year they held the Mississippi, they threatened Kentucky and the
borders of the Ohio, they were able to draw supplies from Tennessee,
Arkansas, and Texas. They were, moreover, arrogantly defiant toward the
North, and boasted of their ability to march to its great commercial
centres. At the close of the year they were driven to the confines of
Georgia, they were separated from the trans-Mississippi region, their
boasting had been brought to humility at Gettysburg. The objects to be
accomplished in the great campaign of 1864 are to drive in upon each
other the two armies which resist our progress in Virginia and Georgia,
and to compress the rebellion into the Southern Atlantic States. This
done, the existence of secession is practically at an end, though it may
brag as loudly as ever and keep on foot its