The Daily Dispatch: March 3, 1865., [Electronic resource]

The New York Tribune, in an article on the interesting question, "Can the rebels overwhelm Sherman?" neume rates various reasons for its hopes of his decisive success, such as the veteran character and large numbers of his troops; that strength in cavalry which enables him to mask his movements; his successful emergence from the morasses of the Savannah and the Combahee to the more healthful middle-ground between the Alleghanies and the lowland marshes; to the alleged Union proclivities of a majority of the people of North Carolina not in the army; and, finally, to an element which we never before heard of as having anything to do with this contest: the former political principles of a number of the North Carolina counties through which he will have to pass. In its own words, the Tribune. speaks of the "Whig strongholds" of North Carolina as eager to welcome Sherman as their deliverer.

The ancient accuracy of the Tribune in political statistics cannot be expected, perhaps, with such sources of information as the war permits, or it would have been aware that the party once known as Whig yields to no other in its devotion to the cause of civil liberty and national independence. Always comprising its full share of the intelligence, the statesmanship, the property, the heroism, the conservatism, the public virtue of the South, it was never wanting, at any time, in profound and enlightened devotion to the Southern soil and to the interests of Southern society. As gentlemen and patriots, the world might be searched in vain for a purer and nobler body of men. The war has set the seal to a fact the Tribune might have known before, that the Whigs of the South were as deeply devoted to the land that gave them birth as any other portion of her citizens, and that they loved her with a devotion that was as passionate as it was intelligent, and have offered, in their lives, the unanswerable proof of their loyalty. They have contributed to this war as much treasure, as much blood, as much toil, as much sacrifice, as any other class of the population. Their representatives among the heroes in the field are as numerous, as brave, as determined, as the representatives of any other party. In every State, in every county, in every town and village of the South, they have stood like a wall of fire by the colors of the Confederacy. It was the "Whig strongholds" of Augusta, Rockbridge, &c., which sent forth that "Stonewall Brigade" which emulated the valor and energy of the Old Guard of Napoleon, and which was, in its glorious and self- sacrificing devotion, a type and emblem of the disinterested patriotism and heroic self- sacrifice of the men once known as the "Whigs of the South."

As to the imputation which the Tribune deems it expedient to cast in general upon the loyalty of North Carolina. we leave that old State, not so famous for words as deeds, to answer by her action. Whether Sherman will find it as easy to march through that Commonwealth as other States remains to be seen. Even if he does, we do not see why an achievement which does not involve the patriotism of other communities should be taken as evidence against her character. North Carolina has contributed as largely in men and means to this contest as any State in the Confederacy. Her soldiers in the armies of the South have been surpassed neither in numbers nor valor by those of any other State. The Tribune will do well not to base its calculations of Sherman's success upon the disloyalty of any portion of the Southern community.