The Daily Dispatch: September 15, 1864., [Electronic resource]

Grant writes a letter to Washburne, in which he tells him that the Confederates have their last man in the ranks, and that nothing is wanting but unity of sentiment in the North to insure a complete suppression of the rebellion in a very short time — date not mentioned. As the same Grant wrote last summer that the Confederates were "defending their last ditch" in Spotsylvania, and as that ditch turned out not to be their last, perhaps his statement ought to be received with some grains of allowance, especially when we recollect that he threatened, as long ago as the fifth of May last, "to fight it out on this line," (that is, the line from the Rapidan to Richmond,) if it took him all the summer, and that he is now, this fifteenth day of September, still twenty-five miles from Richmond, with no prospect of ever getting nearer, unless he should come as a prisoner. The threats and boasts of a general who has been so unsuccessful as Grant would amount to very little at best. In the present case, they amount to nothing at all, it being perfectly notorious that they are all designed to affect the election. The people at home perfectly understand Grant. They know that his campaign this summer was a most complete and a most disastrous failure. Nothing could exceed their despondency until the affair of Atlanta, as the following extracts from the New York Tribune and Times sufficiently prove. The first is from the Tribune, giving in its adhesion to Lincoln, after having been long in the habit of persistently assailing him every morning. It is dated the 6th instant:

‘ "It is useless to attempt to disguise the fact, patent to every intelligent person in the country, that for weeks past, until recently, there has been among all loyal people a good deal of dissatisfaction at the present aspect of affairs, and a good deal of very painful apprehension for the future. The events of the last three months, so different from the general expectation of signal and decisive results of the summer campaign, while they were the cause of this despondency, have justified the foresight of those who advised against the assembling of the Union Convention in June."

’ The following extract from the Times, which appeared about the same time, confirms this view of the Tribune:

‘ "The political skies begin to brighten. The clouds that lowered over the Union cause a month ago are breaking away. The most careless observers cannot fail to notice a marked change in the tone of public sentiment within that time. It was not to be denied, and we did not attempt to conceal, that a profound despondency had taken possession of the public mind. Distrust and dissatisfaction pervaded the Union ranks; the Union candidates seemed to be losing their hold on the public confidence; and the enemies of the Administration were open and loud in their exultant predictions of disaster to the Union cause."

’ The article of the Tribune confesses that the results of the summer campaign were far different from what it was hoped they would be when it commenced. Every Yankee heart, at that moment, beat high with hope. Never was there such boasting, such exultation, such self-congratulation, as when Grant began his march upon Richmond. In three weeks, in spite of Stanton's daily lies, all this was changed. A yell of despair was heard throughout the length and breadth of Yankeedom as the daily list of slaughtered victims was unrolled — as it became daily more evident that Grant could not take Richmond — and as, instead of entering it at the point of the bayonet, he was found to have receded twenty- five miles from the point at which he was nearest to it.

Our own people were at that time in a state of mind bordering upon exultation. What has happened since to depress them ?--for that the weak-kneed are despondent at this moment it were folly to deny. Why, Sherman has entered Atlanta — a place of no strategic importance whatever — and has fought a battle with a portion of Hood's army, in which the latter lost fifteen hundred men. In spite of the fact, notorious to all, that we have been everywhere victories this summer; that Grant has lost one hundred and fifty thousand men; that Sherman has lost seventy or eighty thousand; that Banks lost twenty-five thousand; that Hunter lost fifteen thousand; that we have penetrated to within full view of the White House at Washington; that we hold all Virginia from this to the Potomac; that Texas is clear of an enemy; that two-thirds of Louisiana have been recovered; that Arkansas has nearly been restored; that our troops are marching upon Missouri, where the whole population is ready to burst out into a blaze; that Kentucky has been thoroughly revolutionized; that Forrest holds West Tennessee; that the Yankee authority in East Tennessee is merely nominal — in spite of all these successes, some of our people allow themselves to be east down by the vaporing of the Yankees — forgetting manhood, common sense, and every sentiment that makes a freeman worthy of the name. We have no patience with such people.--Thank God, they are not the better part of our population. If they had their way, they would go with their hands crossed to the Yankees and ask to be tied. Such men are not fit for freemen. They ought to be sent to Lincoln. They are fit to be the tools and the slaves of a tyrant, and they are fit for nothing else. Grant has lost the flower of his army. His present force is made up of raw recruits, the veterans being all gone. He could not take Richmond when he had his whole force of veterans; but, according to these shivering, cowering, abject slaves of terror, he is going to do it now ! Out upon the wretches. It is they who cast a gloom over society whenever the slightest reverse to our arms occurs. Out upon them ! we say, with all the execrations that honest men can shower upon the heads of those who love themselves and their paltry ends better than honor and their country.

These gentry are frightened at the Yankee yells of triumph. Did they never hear them before ? --Have they forgotten Sharpsburg? Have they forgotten Gettysburg? Have they forgotten Vicksburg ? Were those yells less loud, less threatening, less triumphant, than they are now ? Have they been fighting them for three years and a half without having discovered that precisely at the moment when they are in the very agonies of despair they seize at the slightest pretence of a success as a pretext for indulging in the most absurd fanfaronade, the most extravagant boasts, and the most outrageous lies ? Is it because Seward tells the Yankees that volunteers are rushing forward at the rate of several thousand a day ? Do they know nothing of Seward ? Have they never heard of his speeches and letters before ? Do they not know that he is recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as the most absurd prognosticator of events and the most abandoned liar that ever disgraced a high office ? We beat the scoundrels — we beat them on every field — and then we allow them to lie us out of our victory — to convince us that it is they, and not us, who are victorious. Or is it this mightily draft, which Stanton says will be enforced, now that he sees McClellan has "done for himself" so thoroughly that there is no longer anything dangerous in him — is it this much-boasted draft that casts us down to the earth ? Do not our people know that every means to evade that draft are habitually employed by the Northern people ? That counties, cities, States, have entered into the business of kidnapping foreigners and negroes as substitutes ? Look what the New York Times, Lincoln's organ in that city, says of the species of force likely to be thus collected. Here it is:

‘ "We have got to the point where our dangers must be looked in the face and talked about. And one of the first things to be said and remembered is that the army in the field is not Lincoln's army, but ours; that the prosecution of the war is our affair, not his. And, having had this to heart, let us all be frank, and confess honestly that a people in such a state of mind as the Southerners, with armies of so much pluck, spirit and endurance, and so well led, as they put and keep in the field, cannot be subdued by any force that is not composed of the bone and sinew of the North; that is not composed of men who will fight for love of the cause; who have something more than a soldier's respect for the flag; and who are animated by higher and better motives than any hired alien or Southern field hand can ever be."

’ The Southern field hand "and the hired alien !" This is the exact description of force which this draft is to bring into the ranks of Grant; and you are told by the miserable wretches who are croaking around you that you ought to feel terribly alarmed at the approach of these recruits with guns in their hands; and that, too, after having beaten Grant and his veterans until it is almost a shame to beat them again.

Fellow-citizens of Virginia, be not deceived by croakers as you were the other day by men who told you peace was coming. We told you then we saw no signs of it, and you see we were right. We tell you now that the military affairs of the Confederacy never were in such a prosperous condition as they are at this moment at the conclusion of any summer campaign. Look around you, examine the situation, compare the facts, and you will see that we are right. It is true we see no signs of peace, yet we hold no truth to be more undeniable than that, with firmness and perseverance, our independence is as certain as that one momentous event in the history of man said alone, of all other things, to be certain — namely, death.