The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1865-02-14
TUESDAY MORNING FEBRUARY IA, 1865

AS if it were not enough humiliation
that Sherman had made a triumphfu
procession through the State of Georgia
the New York Times expresses its con
temptuous opinion of the people thereo
for permitting him to do it. That pape,
says that the most remarkable and sig,
nifcant revelation made by Shcrman's
march through Georgia was not, perhaps,
the internal weakness Of the Confedera
cy; but the entire absence of despera-
ton on the part of that portion OF the
population which remains at home. "Ir,"
says the Times, "the war were felt by
them to bca National war, in the sense
in which this phrase is ordinarily under
stood, a war in which everything that
men hold dear was at stake, and in which
death was preferable to submission, it is
impossible to believe that their resistance
to Sherman's progress would have been
so feeble. The proclamations Of the
leaders, Of the Governor and Generals,
of the Senators and Congressman, and
the articles in the newspapers, were
eouched in terms worthy of the occasion.
They were just such as ought to have
been issued by revolutionary chiefs to
followers who were really and terribly
in earnest. They called on the Georgians
to come in squads or come singly,' to
bring such weapons as they could find,'
to rise to man in the invaders path
to bushwhack him without mercy.'-
The planters were to shoot at him from
behind fences; the negroes to be en-
ployed in cutting down trees across the
road and breaking down bridges and
last, and greatest sacrifice of all, they
were to lay waste everything before him,
to drive off the cattle and horses, and
burn and destroy what they could not.
convey away.
"Nor were these appeals extravagant.
Efforts as heroic as these here called for
have been made in various ages by the
people, whom the appearance of an in
vader had wrought up to the highest
pitch of patriotic excitement. Almost
in our own day, both the Russians and
Tyrolese have opposed just such obsta-
cles to the progress of French armies of
INVASION. as the Georgians were asked
to oppose to that of Sherman. They
either rose en- madsse in their front,
'bushwhacked' them along every mile
Of the road, from behind every rock and
tree and fence, or else convicted their
line of march into bowling waste, and
left them no better fruits of victory than
desolated fields and charred ruins.
"In Georgia, on the contrary, it ap-
pears we'll ascertained that the great ma
ority Of the inhabitants staid quietly at
home, and awaited the invaders ap-
proach in respectable quiet. So far from
destroying their property in order to
deprive him of the means of subsistence,
they did not even drive off their mules,
horses or cattle, though this would have
been one of the easiest and most obvious
modes of damaging him. In fact, it is
hard to see that any Georgian farmers,
except those who joined the militia, made
the smallest personal sacrifice in aid of
the Confederacy, at the most important
juncture in its history, and when they
were most earnestly and solemnly en-
reated to make every sacrifice, by the
men who are supposed to have, and who
ought to have, if the concern were .
sound one, their fullest confidence.
"There is only one Interpretation that
can be put on this extraordinary apathy,
and that is, that confidence in the sue
cess Of tho rebellion no longer exists
anywhere outside of the official class
and the army, if it exist there. The
Governors Of States who write the
flaming appeals whenever our raiders
make their appearance, are, Of course, as
members OF the oligarchy, closely allied