The war continues to be carried on solely in the disaffected region. Threats of transferring the seat of the contest to the loyal States have constantly been made, and are now renewed with an energy of assertion equal to the longing desires with which the straitened rebels look upon the fat fields and the groaning storehouses of the Northern States. Their futile threats do indeed express their wishes or their disordered imaginations, rather than their actual intentions or their possible achievements. If they could transfer the war to Pennsylvania and Ohio, or even to Kentucky and Maryland, a new aspect would be given to the controversy, and different results might well be anticipated. But the time for such enterprises on the part of the rebels, if it ever existed, has evidently passed by, and is not likely to return. One of the strongest indications of the ultimate result of the war has been the rigid uniformity with which the military operations have been continually pushed back upon the soil of the seceded States, and maintained there in spite of all their efforts to the contrary. In all instances, their incursions into the States mentioned, though projected upon the grandest scale and with the most hopeful results, have eventually proved to be miserable failures; and if they have not always, or even in any instance, met with the severe punishment that ought to have followed them, it was only because the attempts were too preposterous to have been anticipated by a vigilant foe, and we were too confident in our strength to make the preparation necessary properly to repel them. With such experience on our part, after two years of constant efforts to invade our territories successfully met and more than merely repelled, it would be evidence of gross inefficiency and weakness in us, to permit the enemy to gain even a temporary foothold in any one of the loyal States, or even to attempt it, without the complete overthrow and destruction of the invading force. Our manifest policy is to attack them in their own country, and to hold them there, until we can annihilate their military power. We have successfully accomplished one half this programme; but so far we have failed in the other. However humiliating may be the admission, we are nevertheless compelled to make it. We have not yet overthrown their main armies in any decisive engagements; although we have achieved many important successes and made some fatal encroachments on the territory of the enemy, crippling his power and cutting off his resources. From the very inception of the rebellion, its field of operations has been gradually contracting. One after another the strongholds of the enemy have fallen into our hands, and whole regions of his territory have been over run and occupied by our forces, with every appearance of having been finally and forever lost to them. Our standards, advancing steadily, though slowly, have not