Sherman had “come out” at Savannah, capturing it and presenting it as a Christmas gift to the nation, after an extraordinary march from Atlanta--which he had deprived of all power for harm--directly through the heart of Georgia; a march as to which the rebel journalists made ludicrous efforts to be oracular in advance, predicting all manner of mishaps from the Georgia militia and the various “lions” in his way. Thomas had fallen back leisurely to Nashville, forcing Hood, his antagonist, who had supplanted Johnston on account of his fighting qualities, to the loss of almost his entire army in a sanguinary battle which occurred near that city, Thomas being the attacking party. With the remnants of his discomfited force, the fighting general had fallen back, where was not definitely known, but evidently to some secure support. Sherman having recuperated his army, had left Savannah and marched into South Carolina, where, according to the beforenamed veracious chroniclers, he was to flounder in bogs and quagmires, at the mercy of his valorous foes. He floundered on, truly--floundered, so as to flank Charleston, that nursery and hot-bed of treason, which had so long insulted the land--and compel its hurried evacuation; floundered, so as to capture and occupy Columbia, the capital of the Palmetto State; floundered, so as to threaten Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina; and at the time of which we write, had at last floundered to Goldsborough, where he had effected a connection with another column, which had pierced to that point after the capture of Wilmington, North Carolina, the pet port of disinterested blockade-runners--a capture rendered certain by the storming of Fort Fisher, commanding the entrance to its harbor, in connection with which one Major-General was made and another unmade--whether the latter result was brought about with or without the coöperation of the commander of the naval part of the expedition, it boots not here to inquire. Whither Sherman would flounder next became to all rebeldom a question of the very deepest interest. Davis having been compelled by his Congress to assign the discarded Johnston to a command, and Lee to the command of all the rebel armies, Johnston was dispatched to head Sherman off, should he be insane enough to attempt to move any nearer Richmond--a species of insanity to which, it must be confessed, he had shown a marked tendency. Sheridan, too, having chased Early up and out of the Shenandoah Valley--that Early the one of whom his troops were wont to remark, that his principal business seemed to be “to trade Confederate cannon for Yankee whiskey”--had been raiding around Richmond in whatsoever direction he listed, severing communications, gobbling up supplies, and creating a general consternation.