previous next


Grand Calculations

The great military genius, the editor of the New York Times, to again programming. He carves out a mighty schedule for Halleck in the West, and, in fact, sweeps the whole South by the board by a single dash of his pen. Some of our readers may be able to peruse without fainting these vast feats on paper:


[from the New York Times.]
the work of General Halleck.

Now that the three Southwestern Military Departments lately under Buell, Halleck, and Hunter, are consolidated into one great Department, under Major-General Halleck, operations in that section will be carried on with a unity of purpose and an energy of spirit, the lack of which heretofore has produced delay and confusion. The desultory movements undertaken, and, under the circumstances, necessary, in Kentucky, Missouri, Kencas, the indian Territory, and Arkansas, will now either entirely cease or will be subordinated to the great purpose of expelling the armed rebels from the entire State of Tennessee, and from the States bordering on it southward to the Guff of Mexico. Next to Eastern Air, ints, this region is both militarily and politically, the most important part of the rebel country. If the mountain lands of Northern Georgia and Northern Alabama are held by our troops, we will, with the foothold we already have in the mountains of Tennessee and Virginia, virtually have military control of all the vast slave regions sloping for ward from the Alleghenies. If the line of the Mississippi be in our hands, we likewise control the States bordering that great river on both sides to its mouth. In a political view this region is to less important. The original school of Secession conspirators looked almost entirely to the establishment of a great slave Empire in the seme-tropical regions bordering upon the Gulf of Mexico. The Border State, to which we have thus far confined our military operations, were not expected of desired to join the black chic military Empire. They were looked upon rather in the light of outworks, to belong to the South, or to remain central, as they pleased, but really to be used as a barrier against the abolition encroachments of the Northern States. At first extending from South Carolina to Florida, and sweeping from thence in a semi-circle to the Rio Grande, the new Empire would speedily. subjugate the feeble States of Mexico. Cuba and other West India Islands would be annexed, and all the negroes and peoples of other inferior races reduced to their normal condition of slavery. The Gulf of Mexico would then form a central lake, round which would circle the States of the grand Confederation, whose corner-stone should be slavery, and its rulers the lords of the plantation. This was the dream, fevered but gorgeous, of the conspirators who imagined they had fallen their to the visions of Asron Burr — such as Slidell, J ff Davis, Toomb, Rhett, and Wigfall. The military possession of the States immediately south of Tennessee by our troops will at once and forever destroy all such hopes. Further, in the five or six State continuous to the line of operation of which we are writing, the slave system of the South, to sustain which this rebellion was really and ostensibly inaugurated, has its greatest development. In the States bordering on the Gulf, and for some distance up the Mississippi, the population is divided into about one-half slave and the other hall nominally free; while the slave element to messed in various districts, so as to give it there a prodigious predominance This element is as once strength and weakness to the rebellion, but is at our option to dispose of it in such a way as that it shall at least not add to the rebel power. Of this whole section of country, from our present lines of operation on the Southern Gulf coast we give this morning a compact map; and in the brief space which it occupies will be seen the whole surface over which Gen. Halleck has now to extend the national authority. As soon as that able commander can march from his present position at Nashville and take possession of Chattanooga in the east and Memphis in the west, and when, in addition, our forces on the coast take possession of Pennacoly, Mobile and New Orleans, the whole of the States of the Southwest and the Gulf will fill into our contact, It would be utterly impossible to maintain a rebel army in the low, flat cotton and slave regions of central Alabama and Mississippi, while the national forces held possession of all the lines of communication, and stand invincible upon the front and rear. The rebels are now expelled from Missouri the rebel army of Arkansas is routed, and we believe that to-day there is not, west of the Mississippi, five thousand effective rebels under arms. So that, to the work on the Gulf States, and against the rebels there concentrated. Gen. a bring the whole of the vast army lately in his own command, as well as the army lately in Kansas and Kentucky, It is probable that the national forces in Kentucky, aided to that ready to begin operations in the Gulf, numbers not short of one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers. The field for their conquest is a vast one the work is difficult; but with such a force, united under and inspired by such a leader, we doubt not that the task will be done, and effectively care, to met than most people anticipate. When done, it will end what at one time appeared the difficult labor in putting down the great revolt. It will then remain only that the rebel army in Eastern Virginia be destroyed and South Carolina well chastised; after which the rebellion, as a military fact, will be essentially disposed of.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Halleck (5)
Wigfall (1)
Toomb (1)
Slidell (1)
Rhett (1)
Hunter (1)
Jefferson Davis (1)
Asron Burr (1)
Buell (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: