efforts we covered that great distance, on that hot July day, I know not: but we did it. And I remember that the sound of artillery came nearer and nearer till at last musketry greeted our ears, and kept our souls from yielding to fatigue. Upon reaching the front, we learnt that "The Iron Brigade," composed in part of Wisconsin regiments, in which we had friends and relations, had been in the fight; that our old commander, Hancock, was wounded; and that the gallant Fairchild had lost an arm. Sad but reassuring news. The removal of Hooker had unsettled us: we feared other changes-and to know that trusted leaders, and troops of conspicuous courage, were on the field were glad tidings indeed. Our army, though outnumbered for once, was strongly posted upon Round Top and other ridges and hills near Gettysburg. There was heavy fighting on the 1st and 2nd of July; but the final, decisive, desperate effort was made on the afternoon of the 3rd, when General Longstreet made an able and gallant effort to dislodge Hancock's corps, posted on Cemetery Hill, cut our army in two, and gain possession of the Baltimore road. At one o'clock in the day, 115 guns from Hill and Longstreet's front opened fire upon our centre position. A hundred pieces from the Union lines responded to the challenge, and kept up this terrific artillery fight until, finally, our gunners were ordered to cease firing, to allow the cannons to cool in time for the expected onslaught. It was approaching four o'clock when Pickett's Division of Longstreet's Corps― the flower of the Southern army-moved forward to the charge. Pickett's command was formed three lines deep; the flanks were protected by "wings" of two brigades under General Pittigrew. The whole advanced in fine order, with steady ranks and measured tread, and with their banners floating proudly and defiantly aloft, on that awful summer day. Hancock and Doubleday's men, silent, breathless, and anxious, watched this bold advance upon their position from behind their hastily constructed breastworks. The Union guns-cool by this time-began to send shot and shell whizzing into the ranks of the advancing foe; but on and on they came. The fate of the day, of the invasion, if not of the Confederacy, was staked upon the issue. The gallant Hancock was wounded; Gibbon assumed the command. The men were ordered to reserve their fire until they could see the white of the rebel eye. Our skirmishers were driven in, and took their places in the Union lines. On reaching the Emmitsburg road the enemy delivered their first fire, and marched steadily on, as if to certain victory. Calm, yet anxious, with finger on the trigger, awaiting the order to fire, stood the men of the North. It came at last, and from 20,000 muskets the deadly Minie was sent upon its cruel mission. The earth trembled, and thousands of brave men fell to rise no more. The enemy's first line melted away, yet the second and third came sweeping along, and our advance line was hurled back. The "wings," intended to protect the flanks of the charging force, became separated from that body; Stannard's Brigade, of Doubleday's Corps, moved forward into the gap, and took Pickett's men in flank. Our artillery mowed them down at short range. The veterans of the Potomac Army now charged the enemy in front, and finished the work. The rebels threw down their arms in thousands, for escape was hopeless. "Thus the day was won, and the country saved!" General Reynolds, a noble and brave man, was killed at Gettysburg. He had fought with this army upon all its fields, and was in the advance with his corps to repel the enemy, now invading his native State, when the bullet struck him. He fell in the morning of victory, and almost within sight of his own home. Tidings of the fall of Vicksburg, and the victory at Gettysburg, reached the country on the 4th of July, and great was the rejoicing in the North. A portion of the battlefield of Gettysburg was set apart as a resting-place for the brave men who fell on that bloody ground, and the 23rd of November following the victory was appointed as the day upon which the ceremony of dedication and consecration should take place. Edward Everett, orator and scholar, delivered the address. The President, his Cabinet, and other officers, both civil and military, were in attendance. Many troops were also present on the field where their comrades had fallen, to give proper effect to the ceremonies. Mr. Everett had delivered his eloquent, finished address, when Lincoln uttered the memorable speech which is already placed among the classics of our language. "Fourscore and ten years ago," said Lincoln, "our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last H |