armies. For without
Virginia, and without the connections of Atlanta, the existence of an
independent government in the South is impossible: sufficient country
would not remain to support so magnificent an affair. The loss of
Virginia in fact would be the fatal blow to the rebellion; for, however
South Carolina may exalt herself, and however the other States of the
South may aspire, yet it is Virginia which gives tone and respectability
to the Southern confederacy. It is for this, far more than because it is
the rebel capital, that the capture of Richmond is desirable.

But should it happen--which fortunately is not a reasonable
surmise--that the objects of this year's campaign should not be
attained, we consider that the Southern confederacy exists only in
pretence. Should its ports be to-day opened, should our armies fall back
to their primary bases of operation, should European Powers formally
declare that a slave republic exists, yet the new nation would be
practically a nonentity. Does any one suppose that the United States
would yield Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, New Orleans, and
the Mississippi; that the freemen of Western Virginia would be forsaken;
that Fortress Monroe and Port Royal would be abandoned? How long would a
nation so surrounded, so intersected, exist, or how could it achieve any
prosperity, character, and stability? Constant war, in the effort to
expand and perfect its borders, would be its necessity; but such a
necessity would be its destruction. There is no possibility of
compromise or arrangement in the contest in which we are engaged, except
with the parallel of the Potomac and the Ohio as the dividing border;
but such an arrangement is impossible; entire reconquest becomes the
imperative; it may be delayed, our present hopes may be disappointed,
but the march of our armies thus far has trodden out the life from the
Southern attempt at independence, and any future existence it may have
will be merely muscular paroxysms--not the steady, regular, automatic
movements of freedom and spontaneity.

Any notice of the operations of our armies would be incomplete without
tributes to the ability of commanders and the valor of our soldiers. In
no previous period of the war have these been more strikingly
exemplified. The capacity of man to endure and his ability to exert
himself continuously without exhausting his energy, are very wonderful.
The reader of military history is constantly struck