In the west the Federals were more successful. Sherman, starting with a splendid army from Chattanooga in May, drove Johnston before him towards Atalanta, which was evacuated by the Confederates on the 27th of September. The Confederate General, Hood, however, by a rapid movement passed round Sherman’s right wing, and cut his communications with the North. Whenever Sherman attacked him, Hood turned towards Alabama. Then the daring and original idea occurred to Sherman to quit Atalanta--which could not be conveniently held while Hood hovered over his rear--and march straight onwards through Georgia to the sea. He left Thomas with 20,000 men to hold Hood in Tennessee, whilst he himself with 50,000 men proceeded to devastate Georgia by fire and sword. His march was marked by a track of desolation from forty to fifty miles broad. As the year closed he received the capitulation of Savannah, and demonstrated to the world by his marvellous strategy that the Southern Confederacy was like a nut with a hard shell, but no kernel inside. It is the mark of genius to convert defeat into victory, and this was the feat that Sherman achieved when Hood, by cutting his communications with the North, suggested to him the daring stroke by which he pierced the very vitals of the Confederacy. It need hardly be said that Sherman’s march through Georgia was represented to the English people by many aristocratic organs as a retreat, and that his abandonment of Atalanta, when Hood worked round his right, was hailed by Society as a supreme disaster for “the bubble Republic.” At sea the Federals were also fortunate. In June the United States ship of war _Kersarge_ sank the _Alabama_ near Cherbourg, and the _Wachusett_ captured the _Florida_, though by a violation of the laws of neutrality, in the harbour of Bahia. Confederate partisans from Canada had made futile raids on the territory of New York, thereby increasing the animosity of the Americans against England. The Canadian authorities no doubt arrested the raiders, but they also discharged them because of some technical flaw in their jurisdiction. President Lincoln in July called out a fresh draft of 500,000 men for service, and this did not tend to make the war popular at the beginning of the year. The enormous sacrifices of life which Grant’s strategy involved, also strengthened the hands of the Peace Party or Democrats. When arrangements had to be made for choosing Presidential candidates there was a strange cleavage of Parties. The old Abolitionists nominated General Fremont. The Republican Party, however, at the Baltimore Convention, nominated Mr. Lincoln. The Democrats, on the other hand, selected General McClellan. His manifesto practically meant that he desired negotiations to be opened up for the purpose of restoring the Union with slavery on the old footing--but the Union must be restored. This alienated a strong faction of Democrats, who were for