The _Sentinel_ with assurance declared: “It is not Sherman’s object to make his way to the Atlantic to assist Meade, leaving Thomas heir to his far higher honors and responsibilities in the West. If he shall succeed in penetrating the circle that now surrounds him, and escaping to Port Royal, his first anxiety, like Kilpatrick’s, will be for ships to take him away. Steam to Annapolis, and steam to Nashville, if Nashville be not already fallen, will be all too slow to quiet his impatience and to mollify his chagrin. While his own course through Georgia will have been that of an arrow through the air, or a ship over the sea, leaving no track behind; while his exploits and his honors will have been those of the baffled fox hounded from the barn-yard, or the disappointed wolf, chased and pelted by the shepherds; he will return to Tennessee to find Hood, we trust, in possession of the State. He will return to find that his campaign into Georgia, so boastfully entered upon, has but lost the territories won by his predecessors.” While the editors and other leading minds at the Confederate capital were thus speculating and wondering, General Sherman was having a most auspicious start on the long march over rebel soil. “The right wing moved directly south from Atlanta, which is in Fulton County, to Rough and Ready and Jonesboro’ stations on the Macon and Western Railroad, in Fayette County. On November 16th one column of the right wing passed through Jonesboro’, twenty-six miles south of Atlanta, Wheeler’s cavalry and Cobb’s militia retiring upon Griffin. Another column of the right wing occupied McDonough, November 17th, the county seat of Henry County, some distance east of Jonesboro’, and about thirty-five miles southeast of Atlanta. Henry County is one of the largest and richest of Georgia, and here our forces found large supplies of provisions and forage. On the 16th Wheeler engaged our cavalry at Bear Creek station, ten miles north of Griffin, and telegraphed General Hardee that he had ‘checked the Yankee advance.’ The very same evening, at six o’clock, his ragged troopers fell back through Griffin, in the direction of Barnesville, where Cobb’s militia had already preceded him. Our cavalry occupied Griffin, which is the county seat of Spalding County, on the 17th, and on the 18th drove Wheeler out of Barnesville, in Pike County, and through Forsyth, the county seat of Monroe County, seventy-six miles south of Atlanta and twenty-five miles northwest of Macon.”