spect of success. But allow that it had been
undertaken, and the result of the battle of Chickamauga what it was:
could our army have terminated its retreat at Chattanooga, and held this
important military position? By no means: it would have recrossed the
mountains, a broken, discouraged, and almost demoralized host. The
trains have run almost constantly from Nashville to Stevenson and
Bridgeport, and the army has been on half rations for nearly two months.
If wagons could not bring supplies fifty miles, much less one hundred
and fifty. And now (November 15th) that the distance for teams has, for
some days, been reduced to six or seven miles, we are still very short
of supplies.

Let the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad receive due credit for the
part it has played in promoting the success of the campaign and 'saving
the Army of the Cumberland.' Railroads and all other channels of
commerce contribute most efficiently to the success of the great effort
of our Government to restore the integrity of the Union: let them
receive due credit, and be rightly remembered when the great conflict
is ended.

These facts may serve to suggest the value of the various commercial
facilities as means of political unitization. A country without the
means of travel and transportation may readily separate into independent
fragments whenever any arbitrary institution, as that of slavery,
develops antagonism between different geographical sections; and in that
case the arbitrary institution would triumph, and civilization would be
thrown backward. But in a country which speaks the same language, and is
checkered all over by the pathways of commercial and social
intercourse--since there is no place for division except by the rupture
of innumerable ligaments--the integrity of its oneness will maintain
itself; and if necessary to this end, the arbitrary institution, or
cause of attempted rupture, whatever It may be, will be swept out of
existence.

The vindication of national unity is the great issue; the abasement of
slavery a subordinate one.

Here, then, may we perceive some reasons why our labor and sacrifice for
the restoration of the Union are not given in vain; that we are not
struggling to sustain a structure which will be liable at any time to
pass into the history of the 'fall of empires.' We have the
encouragement of new conditions--of conditions which give a warrant,
wherever they obtain, for the permanence of political unity