New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1864-03-19
alx WEEKs, PROGRESs.

SIX WEEKS, PROGRESS.
Sundry Copperhcad journals have been at great
pains to prove that the Florida expedition was
purely Presidential in its purpose. Their Rich
mond allies have gone trife further and find
themselves able to announce that the whole
war has become Presidential campaign. Not
Florida merely-that is hardly worth mention
ing-but tho recent movements in Mississippi
and Georgia were decided upon solely with refer
ence to the Presidency. The Richmond Eran,fner
will have il that Sherman meant to occupy
enough of Mississippi and Alabama TO enable
tenth part Of the people OF each to organize
State Government. and send delegates to the
Baltimore Conventions text which Demo-
cratic orators Will doubtless improve. The adj
vance On Dalton had the same object with refer
ence TO Georgia; "it was method of stumping
the South"
Bat The Eraminr ruefu,Iy confesses that
though these campaigns whether IN military
or political view, were failures, they have
nevertheless been. very costly to them, and
AYERS that the Rebel Territory cannot stand such
work much longer. The details Of the damage
which Shernans expedition did, it does not
venture to give, nor mas any Rebel paper that
we have yet s5eD printed them. They insist
that Johnston drove Thomas back from Dalton,
and that The valiant lcgionS of Polk discounted
Sherman and forced him TO retreat. But they
were Pyrrhio victories. 1t isthe oOnquerors who
are the greatest sufferers. The North, says The
EIGmipcr may carry on such a contest indel-
nitely. 1T is not their lands that ere wasted,
nor their homes that are robbed and burned
down, nor their women and children who are
cursed and bullied, and starved and turned ont
homeless and naked on the world On the
contrary, II is the COnfederates who suffer these
calamities. and who seem to be sufficiently tired
Of them. They complain that provisions ere
burned and cities sacked, and the land every
where plundered and ravaged and that, in fact,
tho Confederacy, under such an unkind method
of treatment, may be said TO be going to the
dogs. Tie Eraainer olnits TO put the obvious
questions: If these are the direlul results Of
campaigns purely political and Presidential,
what is likely to happen when we begin to
make war in earnest ?
II did not need these irritable admissions OF
the Richmond press to prove that the war dur
ing the last Elk weeks, desultory as it has been,
and checkered by undeniable defeats, has done
great damage to the Rebellion materially, and
perhaps not less morally, By exposing to the
people the defensive weakness of their military
position. Dissatisfied as the country has reason
to he with much that has been attempted, our
very failures nevertheless show how strong We
are, and how weak the enemy will prove against
rightly directed attacks. We believe, as we
have often said, in q concentration of over
whelming forces against the Rebel armies, and
by no means il Struggling expeditions for the
conquest of cotton districts, yet it would be
foolish to deny that the enemy themselves
admit that their resources have been weakened
and their confidence to some extent impaired
by every effort made against them. Our
prospects are surely not any worse
than they were at the beginning of
the year Can the Rebels truthfully say the
samef They see, and sometimes wrathfuly
confess, that the immense preponderance of the
North in numbers aud wealth tells every day
more heavily against them; that though the war
may be prolonged, as it has been, by imbecility
on our side and by obstinacy on theirs, the re-
suit is inevitable. OF course we don't want to
wait for the mathematical development of this
certainty, and we don't expect to. With a
soldier at the head of our armies who believes in
fighting, and with the unity of purpose and re-
sistless energy that he brings to the conduct of
affairs, the country has a right to hope for de-
cisive results in the coming campaign.