York, drew a deplorable picture of the straits to which the nation was at last reduced, with the enemy marching defiantly across the fertile fields of Pennsylvania, and men's hearts failing them for fear of danger, not alone to the political capital, Washington, but also to the financial capital, New York; and that, even while the words fell from the speaker's lips, that defiant enemy, already beaten, was rapidly retreating before the magnificent old Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg: while victorious Grant had already broken the left of the rebel line, and was celebrating the nation's anniversary in the triumph of Vicksburg. Even so, let it never be forgotten that the delegates who adopted this second resolution, so burdened with despair, had scarcely reached their homes, ere the stronghold of the Southern Confederacy, which, ever since the war was begun, has been boastfully proclaimed the key of its military lines, and as impregnable as Gibraltar, fell before the unconquerable progress of the armies of the West, under General Sherman; and thus the rebel centre, as well as left, had been broken, and only the rebel right, at Richmond, yet remains to the Southern army. In further answer to the discouraging language of this resolution, let us offset the following terse and comprehensive statement of what has been accomplished in the course of the nation's 'experiment of war.' It is copied from _The Evening Post_ of a recent date, and the writer supposes the soldiers to speak thus: 'We have not failed; on the contrary, we have fought bravely and conquered splendidly. In proof of our words we can point to such trophies as few wars can equal and none surpass. Besides defending with unusual vigilance and completeness two thousand miles of frontier, in three years we have taken from the enemies of the Union, by valor and generalship, thirty complete and thoroughly furnished fortresses; we have captured over two thousand cannon; we have reconquered and now hold nearly four thousand miles of navigable river courses; we have taken ten of the enemy's principal cities, three of them capitals of States; in thirty days last summer we captured sixty thousand prisoners; we have penetrated more than three hundred miles into the territory claimed by the enemy; we have cut that territory into strips, leaving his armies without effectual communication with each other; the main operations and interests of the war, which were lately concentrated about Baltimore, Paducah, and St. Louis, have been transferred, by our steady and constant advance, to the narrow limits of the seaboard Slave States; we hold every harbor but one, of a coast six thousand miles long. And whatever we have taken we hold; we have never turned back, or given up that which we once fairly possessed.'