The Daily Dispatch: January 14, 1865., [Electronic resource]

The moral effect of the capture of Savannah has not been as great even as that of Atlanta. The two together were no such disaster as the defeat of Hood's army. If that army had remained intact, we could have permitted the Federal forces to make as many flying trips through the South as suited their convenience, and establish their headquarters in Savannah or any other Yankee towns that they could fairly capture.--We do not despair of the efficient reorganization of Hood's army and its ultimate recovery from the losses it has suffered; but its defeats have done more to produce the existing depression than the capture of a hundred Savannahs. The only important loss in that place is the cotton, which ought to have been destroyed, even if it involved the destruction of that enterprising New England city.

The Northern sentiment expressed at the late peace meeting in Savannah is only what might have been expected from the Northern men engaged in it. Whilst it is true that among the most loyal citizens and soldiers of the Confederacy are men of Northern birth, it cannot be denied that those who have come to the South merely for purposes of trade and traffic are not infallible exponents and representatives of the real sentiments of the Southern people.--This is eminently true of Savannah. It has long had more than its proportion of New England trading adventurers, who went there with the single idea of cotton, and who stamped the cotton idea upon the whole aspect of society in that town. We should have been surprised beyond measure if these New Englanders had not produced an Arnold, and had hesitated to endorse Major-General Sherman. But their opinions are not of as much value to us as their cotton. Nothing in the surrender of Savannah has surprised or mortified us, save the loss of that commodity.