The following is transcribed from Harper's Weekly, Journal of Civilization, dated December 12, 1864:

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1864.
SHERMAN.

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          HOW often, as the alarm of SHERMAN'S march has rung into some neighborhood in Georgia which had before only heard the war afar off, it must have bitterly recalled to the mind of some thoughtful Georgian the prophecy of ALEXANDER STEPHENS four years ago. He foretold ravage and desolation. He pictured the woes of war which his mad neighbors were about beginning. He tried to show them that war was unnecessary for their own purpose and that, once begun, it would be hopeless for that purpose. Others in the same State predicted the same result. " It will be a long and cruel war to save slavery," said one of the largest slave holders in         

          Georgia, " and it will end in universal emancipation."

And now at last, after four years, the prophecy is fulfilled where it was uttered. It is fulfilled by the General who said to the Mayor of Atlanta that " war is cruelty, and you can not refine it ;" and therefore they who have brought war upon the country will be cursed forever. Every man in the State who can bear arms has been frantically summoned to the field. The seat of the Government has been hurriedly removed. The prisons have been emptied into the militia. Towns and villages are burned. Fields are wasted. There was a wild cry of universal confusion and alarm, and the whole State yet quivers with the terrible tread of SHERMAN and his men ; and as the appalled, thoughtful Georgian listens and sees, it is impossible that he should not ask himself whether it were worth while to begin a war whose pretense was puerile, whose object was revolting, and whose 

          consequences are utterly ruinous.

The Government of the United States, after a pardonable doubt whether any considerable body of citizens actually meant to bring upon the country every dire extremity of civil war after a natural delay in employing every military resource to crush the rebellion, since that employment implied such bloodshed and desolation after exhausting every hope that the rebels would listen to the dictates of common sense and a conciliatory policy, has been taught that swift war is the surest mercy, and putting its armies and navies in the hands of the most devoted and skillful soldiers and sailors, now wages destructive war, that by the flaming sword the authority of the people may be maintained, and the ferocity of rebels subdued.

Of that tremendous and inflexible purpose the late election was the evidence, and General SHERMAN'S march through Georgia is the most signal illustration. It has vindicated the truth of General GRANT'S conviction that the rebellion was a shell strong only upon the edges ; that behind the two rebel armies there is no substantial, self defending population, and that the rebellious section can be victoriously traversed from end to end by a resolute leader and a true and tried army of loyal men. It is in vain that the rebel papers and orators sneer at " merely overrunning" their territory. It is in vain that they declare SHERMAN'S movement is a retreat, and that he might as well have fallen back to Tennessee as have marched forward to the coast. The moral triumph of a movement which reveals the fact that every available rebel is in the army of LEE or HOOD, or that the home population is so indifferent to home defense that the felons must be turned loose and armed, is incalculable.

It is true that while the armies remain the rebellion survives. It is true that if Atlanta and Vicksburg, if Richmond and Wilmington, are occupied by us, and the armies that defend them escape, we must advance to the next point at which they make a stand: You may take Richmond, says DAVIS, as you have taken New Orleans and Memphis, but you have not conquered us. True ; but those events mark the rapidity with which we are conquering. Even the war waged by the rebels upon the Government must inevitably acknowledge the laws of war. It may be sternly and bravely fought, the determination may be desperate, the conversion of society into a camp may be complete ; but all wars waged with an equally inflexible purpose upon both sides end in one way, and one only, and that is the triumph of the side which is strongest in men and in resources.

          It is folly for the rebels to say that they will never be conquered, and will never yield. Their rage does not make them more than men. Sullen hate, indeed, is not easily extinguished any where. We do not expect it to be in the rebel section. The chiefs will always hate the Government, and be always ready to conspire against it. But that is the oldest fact in history. We shall " possess and occupy" the insurgent region ; and when its population learn, as they are not now permitted to know, that the people of this country mean nothing ungenerous or unfair, but that they do mean, as they will have proved, to prevent the destruction of this nation, then the same human nature which, being deceived, has led the rebels so steadily and so long to wage a wicked war, will, being enlightened, gradually assent to a righteous and prosperous peace.

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