forty-six pieces of cannon, five thousand muskets, valuable stores, and seven thousand prisoners, besides killing and wounding great numbers.  All these successes were gained at a cost of only forty-five hundred men.  The skill of General Grant and his lieutenants, and the valor of their troops, were signally displayed in these operations, the first assured intelligence of which reached the North in time to add to the pleasures of the National Thanksgiving, as the first news of Gettysburg had come to us on the Fourth of July.

The November victories put an end to all fear that the enemy might be able to carry out their original project, while it seemed to be certain that the scene of active operations would be transferred from East Tennessee to Northern Georgia.  General Burnside still held Knoxville, and it was supposed that General Longstreet would find it difficult to escape destruction.  General Bragg had retreated to Dalton, which is about a hundred miles from Atlanta, and is reported to have summoned General Longstreet to rejoin him.  The Army of the Potomac, which had borne itself very gallantly in some of the autumnal operations consequent on Lee’s advance, had followed the army commanded by this General when it retreated, inflicting on it considerable loss, and crossing the Rapid Ann.[C]

Victories have been gained by the Unionists in other quarters,—­in Missouri, in Arkansas, in Louisiana, and in Mississippi,—­whereby the enemy’s numbers have been diminished, and territory brought under the Union flag that until recently was held by the Rebels, and from which they drew means of subsistence now no longer available to them.

The effects of all the successes which have been mentioned are various.  We have deprived the enemy of extensive portions of territory, in most of their States.  Tennessee is rescued; Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri are placed beyond all danger of being taken by the Rebels; in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas we hold places of much political and military importance; Mississippi is practically ours; Alabama yields little to our foe; Georgia is invaded, instead of remaining the basis of a grand attack on Tennessee and Kentucky; the Carolinas, greatly favored by geographical circumstances, are barely able to hold out against attacks that are not made in force, and portions of their territory are ours; Virginia is exhausted, and there the enemy cannot long remain, even should they meet with no reverses in the field; and, finally, as General Grant’s successes at Vicksburg halved the Confederacy, so have his Chattanooga successes quartered it.  The Rebels are no longer one people, but are divided into a number of communities, which cannot act together, even if we could suppose their populations to be animated by one spirit, which certainly they are not.  Of the inhabitants of the original Confederacy probably two-fifths are no longer under the control of the Richmond Government; and of the remainder a very large