required for its suitable and thorough performance. The positions of the various armies, at the beginning of 1864, should here be noted. General Meade, commanding the Army of the Potomac, was posted near Culpepper Court House, in Virginia, whither he had arrived, after a variety of manœuvres, in the latter part of 1863. General Lee confronted him with the finest army of the rebellion. The Union forces occupied Winchester, Martinsburg, and Harper’s Ferry, and held the line of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, thus blocking all possible advance of the rebels up the Shenandoah valley. A rebel force, however, was in the valley, led on by General Jubal Early, whose headquarters were at Staunton. General Bragg’s rebel forces were massed in the vicinity of Dalton, Georgia, opposed by the Union armies under General Grant, in front of Chattanooga, Tennessee. General Burnside—whose resignation had not yet been given in—was at Knoxville, and not far to the eastward of that point was General Longstreet’s division of the rebel army. General Banks held command in New Orleans, and had detachments of troops in Texas. General Rosecrans was at the head of a small force in Missouri. General Steele commanded the Union troops at Little Rock, in Arkansas. Military fortifications were established, all along the Mississippi river. The United States had about six hundred thousand men in the field: the Confederates about four hundred thousand. General Lee’s forces, in Virginia and North Carolina, numbered at least one hundred and ten thousand. The other great army of the Confederacy was commanded by General J. C. Johnston, whose department included Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The rebel troops at Mobile were commanded by Generals Maury and Clairborne. The great operations of the year 1864 were, Sherman’s march from Atlanta to Savannah—including, of course, the preliminary manœuvres and battles, which prepared his way—and General Grant’s advance on Richmond, by way of the Wilderness. Before describing these, however, a considerable space must be devoted to miscellaneous operations in various parts of the country. SHERMAN’S EXPEDITION AGAINST MERIDIAN, MISS. FEBRUARY 3, 1864.