80

NATIONAL CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG.

where, related to the writer at different times; but it is not his province to do so in this chronicle.' Yet there is one incident, related by Professor Stoever, as coming under his own observation, which so vividly illustrates the character of a true man and Christian soldier, that it should not be left unrecorded, and is here given. When orders were issued for the army to pursue Lee, General O. O. Howard, commanding the Sixth Corps, hastened to the bedside of Captain Griffith, one of his beloved staff-officers, who had received a mortal wound. After a few words, the General opened his New Testament, read the 14th chapter of John, and then, kneeling, commended his dying friend to God. An embrace and a hurried farewell followed, and so the friends parted, never to meet again on the earth. That night Captain Griffith died, and Howard, in pursuit of Lee, bivouacked in a drenching rain. near the base of the South Mountain range.

Soon after the Battle of Gettysburg the State of Pennsylvania purchased seventeen acres of land adjoining the Evergreen Cemetery, on Cemetery Hill, near that village, for the purpose of a burial-place for all the Union soldiers who fell in that battle. On the 19th of November following, the ground was consecrated, with appropriate ceremonies, in the presence of the President of the United States, members of his cabinet, the governors of several States, generals of the army, and a vast concourse of other citizens. Edward Everett delivered an oration, and President Lincoln a brief but remarkable and touching dedicatory address.

3

1 After the Battle of Gettysburg, the body of a Union soldier was found in a secluded spot, partly reclining. In his cold hand was an ambrotype likeness of three little children, upon which his open, but then rayless eye had evidently been gazing at the last moment of his life. A notice of the fact was given in a Philadelphia paper. Public curiosity was excited, for there was no clew to the name of the soldier. Copies of the ambrotype were male. The touching story found its way through numerous newspapers, with a description of the soldier and the faces of the three children. By this means the widowed mother was informed of the fate of the husband and father. The soldier proved to be Sergeant Hunniston, of Portville, in Western New York, and to his afflicted family Dr. J. F. Bourns, of Philadelphia, conveyed the precious ambrotype, and some substantial presents from citizens of Philadelphia, early in January, 1864.

2 See page 74.

3 The following is a copy of Mr. Lincoln's remarks:

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, an 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 battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of 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 or 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 that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom; and governments of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

CHARACTER OF THE VICTORY AT GETTYSBURG.

81

CHAPTER III.

POLITICAL AFFAIRS.-RIOTS IN NEW YORK.-MORGAN'S RAID NORTH OF THE OHIO.

HE escape of Lee into Virginia, with the remainder of his army, his artillery, and spoils, was a great disappointment to the loyal people of the country, and the commander of the Army of the Potomac was freely charged with tardiness, over-cautiousness, and even incompetency-alleged causes for which Hooker had been relieved of command. General officers of merit, but of different temperament, who had urged him to more energetic action, added the weight of their opinions to the censorious judgment of the unknowing multitude; and criminations and recriminations followed, which were perfectly intelligible only to military experts. It is not the province of the writer to sit in judgment upon this matter, and he leaves the recorded. facts with readers competent to do so.'

The public disappointment was of brief duration. The victory for the National cause was too decisive and substantial to allow regret to interfere with rejoicing. The battle had been won by Meade and his army, and that was quite sufficient for the contemplation of those who saw in men only the instruments for achieving the triumph of great and good principles-the principles enunciated in the golden rule. They saw in the discomfiture of the army of the conspirators against those principles a victory of righteousness over unrighteousness of light over darkness-of democracy over an oligarchy-of God over Satan. They believed that the turning point in the war had been reached, and that the victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, occurring simultaneously in widely-separated regions of the Republic, were sure prophecies of the ultimate and perhaps speedy suppression of the rebellion. And so the President, as the representative of the Government and of the faith and patriotism of the loyal people of the country, called upon the latter, in a public proclamation, to set apart a time in the near future," "to be observed as a day for National thanksgiving, praise, and prayer," to Almighty God, "for the wonderful things he had done in the nation's behalf, and to invoke the influence of

" July 15,

1868.

Aug. 6.

1 On the 28th of August, an elegant sword was presented to General Meade by the officers of the division of Pennsylvania Reserves-a token of affection and esteem which had been ordered before the Battle of Gettysburg. The presentation ceremonies took place at the head-quarters of General Crawford, in Virginia, and the presentation speech was made by him. The handle of the sword was gold, inlaid with diamonds and rubies, and on the scabbard were inscribed the names of eleven battles in which the Pennsylvania Reserves had been engaged, from Mechanicsville to Gettysburg. A large number of officers of the army, the Governor of Pennsylvania, and several members of Congress, were present. A similar token of esteem had been agreed upon, to be presented to the now slain General Reynolds.

On the 26th of August, a horse and accouterments, sword and belt, were presented to General Sedgwick, commanding the Sixth Corps, by the officers of the second division of the Second Corps, which he had commanded. The ceremony was at Warrenton, and General Meade and staff participated in it.

VOL. III.-84

82

FALSE CHARGES BY JEFFERSON DAVIS,

His Holy Spirit, to subdue the anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion; to change the hearts of the insurgents; to guide the counsels of the Government with wisdom adequate to so great a national emergency, and to visit with tender care and consolation, throughout the length and breadth of our land, all those who, through the vicissitudes and marches, voyages, battles, and sieges, had been brought to suffer in mind, body, or estate; and finally to lead the whole nation, through paths of repentance and submission to the Divine will, back to the perfect enjoyment of union and fraternal peace." And the Secretary of State, satisfied that the rebellion would soon be crushed, sent a cheering circular Aug. 12, letter to the diplomatic agents of the Republic abroad, in which 1863. he recited the most important events of the war to that time; declared that "the country showed no sign of exhaustion of money, material, or men;" that our loan was "purchased at par by our citizens at the average of $1,200,000 daily," and that gold was selling in our market at 23 to 28 per cent. premium, while in the insurrectionary region it commanded twelve hundred per cent. premium."

But while the loyal people were rejoicing because of the great deliverance at Gettysburg, and the Government was preparing for a final and decisive

success.

1 On the day when the loyal people were assembled for the purposes set forth in this proclamation, so glowing with the spirit of Christianity, an official address by the leader of the Conspirators, at Richmond, was read to the soldiers of Lee's army, then confronting Meade's on the Rappahannock, in which the following paragraph occurred: "Your enemy continues a struggle, in which our final triumph must be inevitable. Unduly elated with their recent successes, they imagine that temporary reverses can quell your spirits or shake your determination, and they are now gathering heavy masses for a general invasion, in the vain hope that by desperate efforts success may at length be reached. You know too well, my countrymen, what they mean by Their malignant rage aims at nothing less than the extermination of yourselves, your wives, and your children. They seek to destroy what they cannot plunder. They propose as spoils of victory that your homes shall be partitioned among wretches whose atrocious cruelty has stamped infamy on their government. They design to incite servile insurrection and light the fires of incendiarism whenever they can reach your homes, and they debauch an inferior race, heretofore docile and contented, by promising them the indulgence of the evilest passions as the price of their treachery. Conscious of their inability to prevail by legitimate warfare, not daring to make peace, lest they should be hurled from their seats of power, the men who now rule in Washington refuse even to confer on the subject of putting an end to outrages which disgrace our age, or listen to a suggestion for conducting the war according to the usages of civilization."

No man in the Confederacy knew better than Robert E. Lee, the willing associate of the Conspirators in crime, the absolute untruthfulness of the charges with which that paragraph was burdened; yet, in obedience to the diabolical spirit which incited the rebellion, he allowed his soldiers and the people to be thus deceived and wronged, that he might, aided by a merciless conscription then in operation, fill his shattered army, and to make the soldiers fight with the idea that they were contending with cruel savages, who deserved no quarter. The raising of the black flag could not have been more wicked in intent.

Davis's address, countersigned by Judah P. Benjamin, was dated August 1, 1868. The allusion in the closing sentence of the above paragraph is explained by the fact that, on the 4th of July, when Davis felt confident that Lee was victorious at Gettysburg, instead of preparing to fly before a conquering army, as he really was, he sent Alexander H. Stephens, "Vice-President" of the Confederacy, to Fortress Monroe, with instructions to proceed to Washington and lay before the President "a communication in writing from Jefferson Davis, Commander-in-Chief of the land and naval forces of the Confederate States, to Abraham Lincoln, Commanderin-Chief of the land and naval forces of the United States." Stephens proceeded to Fortress Monroe in the flagof-truce boat, and said in a note addressed to Admiral S. H. Lee, "I desire to proceed directly to Washington in the steamer Torpedo." Lee referred the matter to the Secretary of the Navy, who refused to allow Stephens to go to Washington, the customary channels for communication being all that was needful.

Stephens's mission seemed to have a twofold object, namely, to seek, by an official reception at Washington, a recognition by the Government of the existence of a real government at Richmond; also if Lee (as it was expected he would by the time Stephens should reach the capital) was marching in triumph on Philadelphia, to demand peace upon terms of the absolute independence of the "Confederate States." A "Rebel War Clerk," in his diary, under date of July 10th, wrote: "We know all about the mission of Vice-President Stephens. It was 'll-timed for success. On the 16th he At Washington news had been received of the defeat of General Lee."

recorded: "Again the Enquirer, edited by Mitchell, the Irishman, is urging the President to seize arbitrary power." On that day news reached Richmond that Lee had been driven across the Potomac.

2 According to a report of Memminger, the Confederate "Secretary of the Treasury," the Confederate debt, on the 24th of August, 1863, was over $600,000,000, equally divided between Treasury notes, and bonds into which eurrency had been funded.

struggle with its foes, leading politicians of the Peace Faction, evidently in affiliation with the disloyal secret organization known as Knights of the Golden Circle, were using every means in their power to defeat the patriotic purposes of the loyalists, and to stir up the people of the Free-labor States. to a counter-revolution. This had been their course for several months during the dark hours of the Republic, before the dawn at Gettysburg; and the more strenuous appeared the efforts of the Government to suppress the rebellion, the more intense was their zeal in opposing them.

1863.

This opposition was specially exhibited when the President acted in accordance with the law of Congress, passed in April, 1862, "for the enrollment of the National forces," and authorizing the Executive to make drafts, at his discretion, from such enrolled citizens for service in the army. The President refrained from resorting to this extreme measure so long as the public safety would allow. Finally, in consequence of the great discouragements to volunteering produced by the Peace Faction, he issued a May 8, proclamation for a Draft to begin in July, and caused the appointment of an enrolling board in every Congressional district. This was made the pretext for inaugurating a counter-revolution in the Free-labor States, which the leaders of the rebellion had been promised, and which their dupes were expecting; and organized resistance to the measure instantly appeared, general and formidable. The politicians of the Peace Faction denounced the law and all acts under it as despotic and unconstitutional, and a hitherto obscure lawyer, named McCunn, who had been elected to the bench in the city of New York by the Opposition, so formally decided. He was sustained by the decision of three respectable judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania-Lowrie, Woodward, and Thompson-and, with this legal sanction, the politicians opposed the Draft with a high hand.

3

In the mean time the suspension of the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus and the practice of arbitrary arrests had become a subject for the bitter denunciations of the Peace Faction. They were specially excited to opposition by the arrest and punishment, under military authority, of C. L. Vallandigham, late member of Congress from Ohio, and the most conspicuous leader of the Opposition, in the West. This politician, possessing ability and pluck, was very busy in sowing the seeds of disaffection to the Government in the spring of 1863. On the 13th of April, General Burnside, then in command of a military department which included Ohio, issued a general order for the suppression of seditious speech and action, then seriously affecting the public service by discouraging enlistments. It declared that

See page 187, volume I.

2 So early as the 20th of August, 1861, General McClellan, then in command of the Army of the Potomac, had recommended such enrollment and conscription. The Act of April 18, 1862, provided for the enrollment of all able-bodied masculine citizens, including aliens who had declared their intentions to become naturalized, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years; those between twenty and thirty-five to constitute the first class, and all others the second class. The President was authorized to make a draft from these after the 1st of July next succeeding (1862), the person so drafted not to serve in the armies for more than three years. A commutation of three hundred dollars might be received in lieu of such service; and the heads of executive departments, National judges, Governors of States, the only son of a widow, or of an aged and infirm father, dependent for his support on the labor of such son; the father of motherless dependent children under twelve years of age, or the only adult brother of such children, being orphans; or the residue of a family, of which two members might be in the service, were exempted. This Act was passed in each house of Congress by a party vote, the Republicans in its favor and the Opposition against it. It received in the Senate 35 yeas to 11 nays, and in the other House 115 yeas to 49 nays.

See page 48,

84

VALLANDIGHAM SENT TO THE CONFEDERATES.

persons who should "commit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country should be tried as spies and traitors, and, if convicted, should suffer death." "It must be distinctly understood," said the order, "that trea son, expressed or implied, will not be tolerated in this department." In defiance of this order (whose specifications of offenses were clear'), Vallandigham continued his seditious speeches, and denounced the order itself. He was arrested at his own house in Dayton, Ohio,"

May 16.

CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM.

1863.

• May 4 on a charge of having been guilty of treasonable conduct. He was tried by a courtmartial convened at Cin¿April 22. cinnati, over which Brigadier-General R. B. Potter presided;

and was convicted, and sentenced to close confinement in a fortress for the remainder of the war. This sentence was modified by the President, who directed him to be sent within the military lines of the Confederates, and, in the event of his returning without leave, to suffer the penalty prescribed by the court. Judge Leavitt, of the United States Dis trict Court of Ohio, refused an application for a writ of Habeas Corpus in his case, and the convict was passed by General Rosecrans toward the Confederate lines. Vallandigham being of use to the conspirators in Ohio, and none at all in their own dominions, his ungrateful "Southern friends," for whose cause he had labored, treated him with the indifference they would exhibit toward a poor relation. Disappointed and disgusted, he soon left their society, escaped from Wilmington, and sailed to Nassau in a blockaderunner, and finally found his way to Canada, where he enjoyed congenial society among his refugee friends from the "Confederate States," with whom he was in sympathy. Meanwhile, the Democratic Convention of Ohio had nominated him for Governor.

The arrest of Vallandigham produced intense excitement throughout the country, and its wisdom and lawfulness were questioned by a few of the

1 One specification was as follows: "The habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy will not be allowed in this department. Persons committing such offenses will be at once arrested, with a view to being tried as above stated, or sent beyond our lines into the lines of their friends."

2 There appeared real fanaticism among the followers of this man, while he was engaged in this campaign against the Government. While he was riding in a procession at Batavia, in Ohio, some of his abject admirers took the more noble horses from his carriage, and drew the vehicle through the village themselves.-Letter of an eyewitness, a friend of the author.

3 Lieutenant-Colonel Freemantle, of the British army, already mentioned, was then with the Confederate forces in Tennessee, below Murfreesboro'. In his Diary, under date of "May 28, 1863," he wrote: "When I arrived [at Wartrace], I found that General Hardee was in company with General Polk and Bishop Elliott of Georgia, and also with Mr. Vallandigham. The latter (called the Apostle of Liberty) is a good-looking man, apparently not much over forty, and had been turned out of the North three days before. Rosecrans had wished to hand him over to Bragg by flag of truce; but as the latter declined to receive him in that manner, he was, as General Hardee expressed it, 'dumped down' in the neutral ground between the lines, and left there. He thus received hospitality from the Confederates in the capacity of a destitute stranger. They do not in any way receive him officially, and it does not suit the policy of either party to be identified with one another. He told the generals that if Grant was severely beaten in Mississippi by Johnston, he did not think the war could be continued on its present great scale."-Three Months in the Southern States, page 137.