[Footnote A:  Richmond Examiner, January 20th, 1863.]

“It is not altogether an empty boast on the part of the Yankees, that they hold all that they have ever held, and that another year or two of such progress as they have already made will find them masters of the Southern Confederacy.  They who think independence is to be achieved by brilliant but inconsequential victories would do well to look at the magnitude of Yankee possessions in our country.  Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri are claimed as constituent parts of the Confederation:  they are as much in the power of Lincoln as Maine and Minnesota.  The pledge once deemed foolish by the South, that he would ‘hold, occupy, and possess’ all the forts belonging to the United States Government, has been redeemed almost to the letter by Lincoln.  Forts Pickens, [Sumter?] and Morgan we still retain; but, with these exceptions, all the strongholds on the seaboard, from Fortress Monroe to the Rio Grande, are in the hands of the enemy.  Very consoling and very easy to say that it was impossible to prevent all this, and that the occupation of the outer edge of the Republic amounts to nothing.  Drowry’s Bluff and Vicksburg give the lie to the first assertion; and the onward movement of Rosecrans towards Alabama, the presence of Grant in North Mississippi and of Curtis in Middle Arkansas, to say nothing of Banks at New Orleans and Baton Rouge, set at rest the silly dream that a thin strip of sea-coast only is in possession of our foes.  The truth is, the Yankees are in great force in the very heart of the Confederacy; they swarm on all our borders; they threaten every important city yet belonging to us; and nearly two hundred thousand of them are within two days’ march of the Confederate capital.  This is no fiction.  It is a fact so positive that no one can deny it.”

But this reluctant recital by no means exhausts the record of our successes.  We have put into the field a volunteer force, fully armed and equipped, which, whether we consider its magnitude, the rapidity with which it has been raised, its fighting qualities, its patient endurance of unaccustomed hardships, or its intelligent appreciation of the principles involved in the contest, is without a counterpart in history.  And yet more, from the invention and achievements of our iron-clads dates a new era in naval warfare, while in the value and variety of our ordnance we have taken the lead of all civilized nations.  Can you find in all this nothing to quicken the pulse of your patriotism?  Is here no ground for encouragement, no incitement to renewed effort?