The Manchester Journal

The Mississippi.
During the war of Revolution strenuous efforts were made by the English Generals to carry out a plan which the best military authorities declared would render the success of the Americans impossible. This was to seize the line of the Hudson and Lake Champlain, and fortify it with a chain of military posts, thus entirely separating the New England states from the rest of the confederacy. The attempt failed, and the colonies achieved their independence.
In crushing this rebellion, we are carrying out the same plan, and with good prospect of success. We are endeavoring to gain possession of the Mississippi and by so doing cut the confederacy in two parts, one of which can have no connection with the other. Banks is moving up the Mississippi from New Orleans as Sir Henry Clinton moved up the Hudson from New York. Grant is going down the Mississippi as Burgoyne went down the shores of Champlain. The result however promises to be different. One achieves a glorious victory at the same stage in which the other met with complete and overwhelming ruin. We cannot over-estimate the good results of our victory at Vicksburg. It is the death wound of the confederacy. It may exert for a long time its usual strength, but it has received a blow which will sometime make itself felt on its vitals. The fall of Port Hudson will soon follow as a necessary consequence. The great army of Gen. Grant is left at liberty to join its efforts with those of the gallant troops around Port Hudson. If the confederacy could not gather up an army of size sufficient to raise the siege of Vicksburg, it certainly cannot prevent the fall of Port Hudson before the combined forces of Grant and Banks.
When Banks and Grant shake hands beside the Mississippi-when the veterans of the army of the Gulf greet with shouts the warriors of Shiloh and Vicksburg, that will be a happy day for the nation. Port Hudson will fall and the Father of Waters will be open from its source to the Gulf. Once in its possession, the West will never suffer it to be lost- The South thought that by seizing the Mississippi, they could compel the West to purchase the right to use it by acceding to the claims of the confederacy. They little knew the spirit of the West. The Western States have shown the South that they had rather strew its shores with the graves of a hundred thousand of their sons to obtain it, than purchase it by consenting to the dismemberment of their country. If with two years to fortify, the South could not keep possession of a river the importance of which they so well understood, they certainly can never regain it when once lost. Thus one half of her territory will be swept away at a blow. Deprived of the vast crops. growing fields beyond the Mississippi, famine will be experienced as well as dreaded. Losing the strength of prestige and the strength of arm, the South can only retire to the interior, to delay a result which cannot ultimately be prevented.