'Well, if we shall not have to go any farther--if we can hold Chattanooga, we are not defeated;--it is even a victory, and we have won Chattanooga at the battle of Chickamauga.' 'We want none of your speculations,' retorted our Prussian commander; 'it is a soldier's business to obey, and not to think.' But, it is hardly natural for an American soldier to execute a movement without inquiring the wherefore. And if we are marched over mountains, and down the Lookout at Alpine Pass, within a few miles of Rome; and then marched back again, up the perilous steep, and northward to Stevens's Gap, and down again;--why, even common soldiers, without the evidence of brains which there is, or ought to be, in shoulder straps, inquire of each other for the strategic value there may be in all this marching and countermarching, and find it hard to believe that it was all provided for in the original programme. But in a still higher sense is the American soldier given to thinking. He is quite likely to have an opinion as to the origin and cause of the war--as to the issues involved therein, and the results which it is likely to bring about. There is, moreover, a multiplicity of views, and not the unanimity of dulness. The causes, the issues, the results of the war--momentous themes! and likely to be thoroughly canvassed by those whom they so vitally concern--the American citizen and our citizen soldiery. The causes, issues, and results of the war are so intimately related that we can scarcely think of one without also thinking of the others. The causes are more especially a thing of the past--they already belong to history: the results belong more particularly to the future; the issues pertain to the present. It is these with which we have more immediately to do, and which it behooves us, as intelligent actors in the great drama, to understand. We should not be indifferent to results, and we are not; but if there are real issues of right and wrong involved in the contest, and we are in the right, we may rest assured that the results of a successful prosecution of the war will be worthy of all our sacrifices, and honorable to us as a people and nation. In the midst of a beleaguered camp, with no notes of former reading, or books of reference, it is a poor place for the elaboration of one's ideas;--the writer, nevertheless, proposes to make a brief inquiry into the issues involved in this terrible war.