independent nationality. Could the Confederates have held their power
over the Mississippi Valley but a few more months they would have so
connected themselves with France through Texas and with England
through the States of the great northwest as not only to have made
good their own independence but to have dwarfed the United States to
the area of their old thirteen and taken the lead as the controlling
political power on this continent.

With the Mississippi in their possession to the mouth of the Ohio,
the presence of the English and French fleets at New Orleans would
have brought about that result.

The Army of the Potomac, after having been put upon a scale of the
rarest magnificence consistent with mobility, and with several changes
of commanders, took three years and a half to reach Richmond, and was
not then half way to a decisive point, and never would have been
strong enough had the expedition to open the Mississippi been executed
on the plan as originally devised.

Strategically an invasion always leads to deep lines of operations
which, on account of the difficulty of maintaining communications with
its base, are always dangerous in a hostile country, and every mile
the national armies advanced, every victory they gained, carried them
farther from their base, and required an increase of force to protect
their communications; while every retreat of the enemy brought him
nearer to his resources, and it is mathematically certain that he
would soon have reached the point on that line where he would have
been the superior power. Nothing but the results of the Tennessee
campaign prevented Lee from recruiting his army and extorted from him
his sword at Appomatox Court-House.

The Mississippi expedition was designed by the aid of the one from the
Gulf to clear the river to the mouth, etc. Could it succeed? Could it
open the Mississippi to its mouth? These momentous questions and the
military delay were weakening the confidence of the people and
confirming foreign powers in the belief that the Government had
neither the strength nor the ability to conquer the rebellion. And
even could the expedition have opened the river, was there any point
on that river where a decisive blow could have been dealt the
Confederacy? The Memphis and Charleston railroad, the only complete
interior line of communication, would not necessarily have been
touched. So long as the Confederacy could maintain its interior lines
of communic