n they are under existing circumstances. The South would
have been comparatively isolated from the North, and our armies could
not have reached her territory with the facility they now do. Prolonged
for years, as the war must have been under such circumstances, the North
would have grown weary of prosecuting it; the chances for intervention
would have been greater, and the establishment of a Southern nation by
no means an impossible thing.

With facilities for penetrating the country, it may be easier to reduce
a dozen rebel States than one quarter of the territory if held by
uncivilized Indians. We were longer subjugating the Seminole Indians
than we are likely to be in putting down the rebellion. The facilities
of transportation in the one case, and their absence in the other, make
part of the difference. Besides, these same facilities and their
accompaniments render Southern society a really vital and sensitive
thing, so that a wound in some vital part, as Vicksburg or Chattanooga,
is felt to the remotest ends of Secessia. It will not require
extermination of all the members; a few mere such wounds, and the
rebellious creature will have to yield.

The Tennessee River enabled us to drive the enemy out of Western
Tennessee and Northern Mississippi and Alabama. By means of the
Mississippi River we have cut away a considerable limb of the
'confederacy,' and we believe it can never be restored. Nashville has
become a depot of supplies for the army of the Cumberland, because of
the Cumberland River and the railroad to the Ohio River.

When we advanced from Murfreesboro', on the 24th of June last, the rains
fell almost incessantly, and the roads became at length really
impassable. We were at Tullahoma and beyond it, on short rations. Had
there been no means of transportation other than the army wagon and the
common road, it is doubtful whether, under the circumstances, General
Rosecrans could have held his advanced position so easily won. When some
of the teams could not draw empty wagons back to Murfreesboro', it is
not likely that such means of transportation would have been sufficient
for the subsistence of our army in and around Tullahoma. But in less
than ten days the joyful whistle of the locomotive was heard, and the
army was soon abundantly supplied.

Take our present situation. Had there been no railroad from Nashville to
the Tennessee River, the campaign of last fall could not have been
undertaken with any pro