being retained for other duties, and it look forward confidently to the career of supposed victories before it.

It was not difficult for Lee to elude any possible vigilance of Hooker. A rapid dash by a force thrown forward for the purpose cleared the Shenandoah Valley of Union troops, and then, through the broad highway thus opened, General Lee was pressing on to his mad enterprise before his purpose could be divined.

This was the culminating point of the whole war. The Draft for men had been ordered to take place in July. Murmurs of threatened resistance were ominously rising from many localities, and it was not difficult to connect the Northward march of Lee with possible conspiracies, secretly organized and prepared for co-operative action. That such conspiracies existed was beyond all doubt, although their extent and power for evil was unknown. It was now also certain that Lee would be in Pennsylvania before a single army corps could be thrown across his path.

The President called upon the States of New York, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania for 120,000 men, for temporary use; and it is interesting to note the names of these four States combined in such a call by him. In the excitement of the moment the men came fast enough, but it was not so easy to arm and equip and make a practical use of them. In like manner, at the same time, Mr. Jefferson Davis was calling out every able-bodied man or boy he could arm, to defend Richmond from a counter-attack the movement for which had been instantly ordered by Mr. Lincoln.

General Hooker moved his forces somewhat leisurely, and the result of a diversity of views between him and General Halleck was the offer and acceptance of his resignation and the appointment of General George G. Meade to the command of the Army of the Potomac.

General Meade had previously commanded the Fifth Army Corps and was an officer of tried and acknowledged ability.

He had not attained then, nor did he afterwards establish, a reputation as an exceptionally great commander, but he was in all respects eminently capable and trustworthy, and he was less of an experiment than any previous chief of that army. It never had had less need of a great commander than at that very hour. The subordinate leaders of the Army of the Potomac were now become experienced generals, familiar with their commands and duties, while its veteran soldiers were a body of men that had but one equal on earth, and that was its old antagonist, the Army of Northern Virginia, under Lee. No other large armies then in existence had added to their science and their drill the perfecting processes of so many hard marches and fights. There was a curiously high degree of mutual respect and of emulation between those two armies, for which each had many and most excellent reasons.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE TURNING POINT.

The Eve of Battle-The Surrender of Vicksburg-The Mississippi River set Free-The Three Days' Fight at Gettysburg-Lee's Retreat-The Situation Changed - The Draft Riots-The New York Mob-The President's Reply to the Unpatriotic Elements.

THE month of June was fast slipping away, and it began to look as if the gates of the North were at last open to the Confederacy. By the 24th the main body of Lee's army was north of the Potomac. On the 27th two of his army corps were at Chambersburg, well up the Cumberland Valley, west of the mountains, while a third occupied Carlisle, within striking distance of Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. General Hooker had held his old position opposite Washington, with his main body, as late as the 23d; but all doubt as to the safety of that city, for the time being, was now removed, and on the 25th he began to cross the Potomac at Edward's Ferry. From thence he advanced to Frederick, Maryland, and halted, only thirty miles, as the crow flies, from the battle-field of Gettysburg. Here, on the 28th, the change of commanders took place, and General Meade only carried out a previously expressed purpose of his predecessor in at once moving his forces towards the Susquehanna. Omitting all details of military movements as out of place here, it is enough to say that on the evening of June 30 the entire Rebel army was concentrating towards Gettysburg; the Union army lay within little more than a good day's march, and both commanders were fully aware that a great and decisive battle could not be long delayed.

What was only of a little less importance, the entire country was almost equally aware and in waiting. A Rebel force penetrated within sight of Harrisburg. The citizens of Philadelphia found themselves digging trenches and throwing up earthworks for the possible defence of that city. The Governor of Pennsylvania called for 60,000 more men. A sudden and fierce excitement spread like wildfire throughout the North, and a spasm of warlike feeling stirred the hearts of men in every community and neighborhood. The effect was not at all what the Richmond statesmen had counted upon, but it was very much what they should have expected. The presence of Lee in Pennsylvania did all that was necessary to render the Draft endurable and only failed of making it popular. Certain it is that there remained hardly a tithe of the trouble in enforcing it that there might have been but for a vague idea which almost every man unconsciously entertained that he could hear the sound of distant cannonading and possibly of drums.

The President urged forward with all his might the army movement under Meade. He did not neglect the forces in front of Washington nor the insufficient counter-movement towards Richmond. At the same time he stimulated to his uttermost, as his letters and dispatches to the commanding generals testify, the operations he was watching in the West. He pushed forward with increased vigor the now almost completely organized machinery for the enforcement of the Draft. The decisive hour had come, and he proved himself fully equal to all its demands upon him. So did the Army of the Potomac. So did the men in the West, under Grant.

The first week of July, 1863, was crowned with hard-won triumph. The garrison of Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant on the 4th, and so, a few days later, did that of Port Hudson, further down the river. With these was also surrendered the Mississippi River to its mouth. The Confederacy was cleft in twain, never more to be the compact and stubbornly resisting mass which it so long had been. In the East, on the

first day of the month, at Gettysburg, the advanced corps of the armies under Meade and Lee began a struggle as of life and death. At the end of the first day's fighting the advantage was with the Confederates; but all they had won had cost them dearly. All through the hot hours of July 2, and on into the night, the strife continued with a success so varying that the result still trembled in the balance. At night a council of war was held by Meade and his generals, and the corps commanders unanimously voted to stay and fight it out. It is recorded of General W. S. Hancock, in particular, that when his opinion was called for he added to it, in strong language, "The Army of the Potomac has retreated too often." It is a sufficient comment upon the aspect of affairs that the usual and prudent precautions for covering the retreat of the army in case of further disaster were made with special care. The fighting on the third day began with the dawn of light; but before noon its bloody tides were manifestly turning in favor of the Union. It became necessary for Lee to strike a desperate, decisive blow, and he prepared for one which, if it could have succeeded against the preparations made to receive it, would have changed the remaining history of the war. It was begun a little after 3 o'clock P.M., the best troops of the Rebel army, hitherto untouched and fresh, being hurled against the Union centre. They have been estimated at about 18,000 men, under General Pickett, sometimes termed the "Ney of the Confederate armies." It was a grand charge, well planned but for a mistaken idea as to what it was to meet, and it was made magnificently; but it failed in slaughter, rout, and ruin, and its failure terminated the Invasion of the North. The Rebel forces still held the positions to which they had fallen back, but at half past 6 o'clock P.M. they ceased firing. They still held their ground, unassailed, during all the next day; and General Meade's caution in not instantly pressing another general engagement has found able defenders as well as severe critics among military men.