The Daily Dispatch: December 15, 1864., [Electronic resource]

The great strategist of the "Quadrangle" is on his high-horse again. This time he lays down a plan for Sherman to pursue in assisting Grant to "flank" Lee out of his present position. He has discovered that burning houses and barns does not pay. Therefore he opposes the further pursuit of that policy. He has no objection to it on the side of humanity or morality. But he has found that it only exasperates the "rebels" and makes them more rebellions than ever. "A people like the Anglo-American," he says, ‘"can never be reduced to submission by burning their barns or plundering their houses."’ This view of the case is eminently characteristic. Not a word is said with respect to the inhumanity of that process; nor is its abandonment recommended on that score. "It won't pay" is the sum total of the argument.

Sherman, in the opinion of our strategist, has much more important objects in view. To be sure, he has played the marauder and incendiary on a pretty large scale since he left Atlanta. But that was only by play. His real object is of far more importance. What are the cities on his line of march to him? especially, seeing that he could not take them. What is Savannah to him? especially, seeing that he has, thus far at least, given not the slightest evidence of his power to capture it. What are all the grapes, sour or sweet, to the fox who is not able to reach them? Sherman scorns Savannah, he scorns Augusta, he has a thorough contempt even for Charleston. He will have none of these things. He is bent upon the accomplishment of higher things. He is but the lieutenant of Grant, and he is assisting Grant in carrying out one great strategic plan, which embraces the whole Confederate States, and, for aught we can see, Canada too, and the rest of the continent. He is to bisect the railroad system of the South. A great man for bisecting is our strategist. It is a monomania with him. The other day he bisected the Confederacy on paper. Now he is bisecting the railroad system.--Like all his schemes, it is to be accomplished without opposition. Of course Jeff. Davis cannot be such an enemy to science as to nip such a pretty plan in the bird by violence. The bisecting operation will go on. Davis will sit by, with arms folded, and let Sherman bisect what he pleases, in order that he may exert the due degree of strategical influence upon the campaign in Virginia. Sherman is to get a new base on the Georgia coast, recruit his force, replenish his magazines, march north, pass by Savannah and Charleston in contempt, take a new base at Bull's bay. He is to have a secondary base at Branchville, operate towards North Carolina, sweeping everything before him, establish another base on the North Carolina coast, and then march into Virginia and crush Lee and the rebellion at a single blow!

This is the sort of stuff that Raymond regales his readers with, and they never seem tired of being fooled. By similar plans he has crushed the rebellion on paper at least five times this year, and yet the rebellion has not only survived the crushing, but is stronger now than it ever was before. Everybody remembers his grand plans for Grant last spring, and everybody has seen what has come of them. Yet he is not at all discomfited by the failure of his plans; but as soon as one explodes he begins to concert another. The present plan, of which he talks so gingerly, would cost the lives of at least one hundred thousand Yankees. We doubt whether it could be carried into effect, indeed, at any cost. Yet he speaks of it as the easiest thing in the world of accomplishment.