About ten days before this event Farragut, in spite of forts and batteries, iron-clads and torpedoes, had possessed himself of Mobile Bay and closed that Gulf port which had been so useful a mouth to the hungry stomach of the Confederacy.  No efficient blockade of it had ever been possible.  Through it military, industrial, and domestic supplies had been brought in, and invaluable cotton had gone out to pay for them.  Now, however, the sealing of the South was all but hermetical.  As a naval success the feat was entitled to high admiration, and as a practical injury to the Confederacy it could not be overestimated.

Achievements equally brilliant, if not quite so important, were quickly contributed by Sheridan.  In spite of objections on the part of Stanton, Grant had put this enterprising fighter in command of a strong force of cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley, where Lee was keeping Early as a constant menace upon Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington.  Three hard-fought battles followed, during September and October.  In each the Federals were thoroughly victorious.  The last of the three was that which was made famous by “Sheridan’s ride.”  He had been to Washington and was returning on horseback, when to his surprise he encountered squads of his own troops hurrying back in disorderly flight from a battle which, during his brief absence, had unexpectedly been delivered by Early.  Halting them and carrying them back with him, he was relieved, as he came upon the field, to find a part of his army still standing firm and even pressing the Confederates hard.  He communicated his own spirit to his troops, and turned partial defeat into brilliant victory.  By this gallant deed was shattered forever the Confederate Army of the Valley; and from that time forth there issued out of that fair concealment no more gray-uniformed troopers to foray Northern fields or to threaten Northern towns.  For these achievements Lincoln made Sheridan a major-general, dictating the appointment in words of unusual compliment.

Late as the Democrats were in holding their nominating convention, they would have done well to hold it a little later.  They might then have derived wisdom from these military and naval events, and not improbably they would have been less audacious in staking their success upon the issue that the war was a failure, and would have so modified that craven proposition as to make it accord with the more patriotic sentiment of their soldier candidate.  But the fortunes alike of the real war and of the political war were decidedly and happily against them.  Even while they were in session the details of Farragut’s daring and victorious battle in Mobile Bay were coming to hand.  Scarcely had they adjourned when the roar of thunderous salvos in every navy yard, fort, and arsenal of the North hailed the triumph of Sherman at Atlanta.  Before these echoes had died away the people were electrified by the three battles in Virginia which Sheridan fought and won in style so