These men had been wounded in the battle of Gettysburg, and were present in a delegation to pay this just tribute to the remains of their fallen comrades. These scarred veterans came and dropped the tear of sorrow on the last resting-place of those companions by whose sides they had so nobly fought, and, lingering over the graves after the crowd had dispersed, slowly went away, strengthened in their faith in a nation's gratitude. LETTERS OF GEN. MEADE, GEN. SCOTT, ADMIRAL STEWART, AND S. P. CHASE. HEAD-QUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, November 13th, 1863. DAVID WILLS, Esq., Agent for the Governor of Pennsylvania, etc. : SIR, I have the honor to acknowledge the invitation which, on behalf of the Governor of Pennsylvania and other States interested, you extend to me and the officers and men of my command, to be present on the nineteenth instant, at the consecration of the burial-place of those who fell on the field of Gettysburg. It seems almost unnecessary for me to say that none can have a deeper interest in your good work than comrades in arms, bound in close ties of long association and mutual confidence and support with those to whom you are paying this last tribute of respect; nor could the presence of any be more appropriate than that of those who stood side by side in the struggle, shared the peril, and the vacant places in whose ranks bear sad testimony to the loss they have sustained. But this army has duties to perform which will not admit of its being represented on the occasion; and it only remains for me in its name, with deep and grateful feelings, to thank you and those you represent for your tender care of its heroic dead, and for your patriotic zeal, which, in honoring the martyr, gives a fresh incentive to all who do battle for the maintenance of the integrity of the government. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, GEORGE G. MEADE, Major-General Commanding. DAVID WILLS, Esq., Agent, etc.: NEW YORK, November 19th, 1863. DEAR SIR, I have had the honor to receive your invitation, on the part of the Governors of the loyal States, to be present at the consecration of the Military Cemetery at Gettysburg, this day. Besides the determination, on account of infirmities, never again to participate in any public meeting or entertainment, I was too sick at the time to do more than write a short telegram in reply to His Excellency Governor Curtin. Having long lived with and participated in the hardships and dangers of our soldiers, I can never fail to honor "the brave, who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes blest." None deserve this tribute from their countrymen more than those who have fallen in defence of the Constitution and Union of the thirty-four United States. I remain yours most respectfully, WINFIELD SCOTT. BORDENTOWN, N. J., November 21st, 1863. MY DEAR SIR,-I regret extremely that, in consequence of the invitation you did me the honor to send me remaining for several days among the advertised letters in the Philadelphia post-office, I was not able to accept the same by appearing in person at the interesting consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, on the nineteenth of this month. On an occasion so solemn, awakening every patriotic emotion of the human heart, I cannot but deplore that I was not able to be present, to shed a tear over the remains of these gallant men, who gave by their lives to their God in defence of their country. Accept for yourself, my dear sir, and be pleased to present to the Committee, my thanks for your kind invitation, and believe me, with great respect, TO DAVID WILLS, ESQ., Agent, etc. Your obedient servant, CHARLES STEWART. TREASURY DEPARTMENT, November 16th, 1863. DEAR SIR,-It disappoints me greatly to find that imperative public duties make it impossible for me to be present at the consecration of the grounds selected as the last resting-place of the soldiers who fell in battle for their country at Gettysburg. It consoles me to think what tears of mingled grief and triumph will fall upon their graves, and what benedictions of the country saved by their heroism will make their memories sacred among men. Very respectfully yours, S. P. CHASE. DAVID WILLS, Esq., Agent for the Governors of the States. REMARKS BY THE HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, SECRETARY OF STATE. In the afternoon of the eighteenth, the President and the distinguished personages accompanying him arrived at Gettysburg by a special train. In the course of the evening, the President and Secretary of State were serenaded, and the following remarks were made by Mr. Seward, in response to the call: FELLOW-CITIZENS: I am now sixty years old and upward; I have been in public life practically forty years of that time, and yet this is the first time that ever any people or community so near to the border of Maryland was found willing to listen to my voice; and the reason was that I saw, forty years ago, that slavery was opening before this people a graveyard that was to be filled with brothers falling in mutual political combat. I knew that the cause that was hurrying the Union into this dreadful strife was slavery; and when during all the intervening period I elevated my voice, it was to warn the people to remove that cause while they could by constitutional means, and so avert the catastrophe of civil war which has fallen upon the nation. I am thankful that you are willing to hear me at last. I thank my God that I believe this strife is going to end in the removal of that evil which ought to have been removed by deliberate councils and peaceful means (good). I thank my God for the hope that this is the last fratricidal war which will fall upon the country which is vouchsafed to us by Heaven,-the richest, the broadest, the most beautiful, the most magnificent and capable of a great destiny, that has ever been given to any part of the human race (applause). And I thank Him for the hope that when that cause is removed, simply by the operation of abolishing it, as the origin and agent of the treason that is without justification and without parallel, we shall thenceforth be united, be only one country, having only one hope, one ambition, and one destiny (applause). Tomorrow, at least, we shall feel that we are not enemies, but that we are friends and brothers, that this Union is a reality, and we shall mourn together for the evil wrought by this rebellion. We are now near the graves of the misguided, whom we have consigned to their last resting-place, with pity for their errors, and with the same heart full of grief with which we mourn over a brother by whose hand, raised in defence of his government, that misguided brother perished. When we part to-morrow night, let us remember that we owe it to our country and to mankind that this war shall have for its conclusion the establishing of the principle of democratic government, -the simple principle that whatever party, whatever portion of the community, prevails by constitional suffrage in an election, that party is to be respected and maintained in power until it shall give place, on another trial and another verdict, to a different portion of the people. If you do not do this, you are drifting at once and irresistibly to the very verge of universal, cheerless, and hopeless anarchy. But with that principle this goverment of ours-the purest, the best, the wisest, and the happiest in the world-must be, and, so far as we are concerned, practically will be, immortal (cheers). Fellowcitizens, good night. The military present at the exercises on the nineteenth of November, were under the command of Major-General Couch. The prayer of consecration was made by the Rev. Dr. Stockton. ADDRESS OF THE HONORABLE EDWARD EVERETT. STANDING beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghanies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed:-grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy. It was appointed by law in Athens, that the obsequies of the citizens who fell in battle should be performed at the public expense, and in the most honorable manner. Their bones were carefully gathered up from the funeral pyre, where their bodies were consumed, and brought home to the city. There, for three days before the interment, they lay in state, beneath tents of honor, to receive the voting offerings of friends and relatives, flowers, weapons, precious ornaments, painted vases (wonders of art, which after two thousand years adorn the museums of modern Europe),—the last tributes of surviving affection. Ten coffins of funereal cypress received the honorable deposit, one for each of the tribes of the city, and an eleventh in memory of the unrecognized, but not therefore unhonored, dead, and of those whose remains could not be recovered. On the fourth day the mournful procession was formed : mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, led the way, and to them it was permitted by the simplicity of ancient manners to utter aloud their lamentations for the beloved and the lost; the male relatives and friends of the deceased followed; citizens and strangers closed the train. Thus marshalled, they moved to the place of interment in that famous Ceramicus, the most beautiful suburb of Athens, which had been adorned by Cimon, the son of Miltiades, with walks and fountains and columns.whose groves were filled with altars, shrines, and temples,-whose gardens were kept for ever green by the streams from the neighboring hills, and shaded with the trees sacred to Minerva and coeval with the foundation of the city,-whose circuit enclosed "the olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trilled his thick-warbled note the summer long," whose pathways gleamed with the monuments of the illustrious dead, the work of the most consummate masters that ever gave life to marble. There, beneath the overarching plane-trees, upon a lofty stage erected for the purpose, it was ordained that a funeral oration should be pronounced by some citizen of Athens, in the presence of the assembled multitude. Such were the tokens of respect required to be paid at Athens to the memory of those who had fallen in the cause of their country. For those alone who fell at Marathon a peculiar honor was reserved. As the battle fought upon that immortal field was distinguished from all others in Grecian history for its influence over the fortunes of Hellas, as it depended upon the event of that day whether Greece should live, a glory and a light to all coming time, or should expire, like the meteor of a moment; so the honors awarded to its martyr-heroes were such as were bestowed by Athens on no other occasion. They alone of all her sons were entombed upon the spot which they had forever rendered famous. Their names were inscribed upon ten pillars erected upon the monumental tumulus which covered their ashes (where, after six hundred years, they were read by the traveller Pausanias), and although the columns, beneath the hand of time and barbaric violence, have long since disappeared, the venerable mound still marks the spot where they fought and fell, "That battle-field where Persia's victim-horde And shall I, fellow-citizens, who, after an interval of twenty-three centuries, a youthful pilgrim from the world unknown to ancient Greece, have wandered over that illustrious plain, ready to put off the shoes from off my feet, as one that stands on holy ground,-who have gazed with respectful emotion on the mound which still protects the dust of those who rolled back the tide of Persian invasion, and rescued the land of popular liberty, of letters, and of arts, from the ruthless foe,-stand unmoved over the graves of our dear brethren, who so lately, on three of those all-important |