on the north, and the Potomac on the south, and here a battle between northern and southern armies might seem intended to be decisive. General Reynolds, commanding the Union advance, was ordered to march on Gettysburg from the south, at the same moment that the foe approached from the west; and there he engaged in the forenoon of July 1, and while winning the first advantage, fell mortally wounded. At this time the main body of Meade's army was very far off, but being hurried forward, and well posted on a double ridge south of the town, it was ready for the fiercer conflict of the second day. It proved very difficult to resist the attack which the rashness of General Sickles invited on the Union left, and which, for some hours, threatened the whole army with defeat, while the Union right was also turned, and danger in that quarter became imminent. But Meade and his brave men stood fast, and when, on the third day, the confederates charged the left centre under General Hancock, and threw all their passionate vigor into one convulsive effort, they were met, broken, and compelled to give up the hard-fought field. Seventeen thousand Union soldiers, and more than twenty thousand confederates, were killed or wounded in this great battle. It was won on the same afternoon of July 3 when Pemberton was arranging the terms of his surrender to Grant at Vicksburg. On the evening of the day of that surrender, Lee began his retreat, and ten days later, amid great disorder and suffering, his army, reduced by almost one half, recrossed the Potomac. It was a great disappointment to loyal men that he should have been allowed to get back into Virginia; but the army of the Potomac was in no condition to pursue with any zeal or effect. The president called upon the people to observe a day for national thanksgiving, praise, and prayer, invoking Almighty God "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." The day was kept on the 6th of August. Three months later, (November 19,) a part of the Gettysburg battle-field was dedicated as the burial-place of those who had there fallen in defence of the Union. The president was there, and when the ceremonies were performed, and the funeral oration was delivered by Edward Everett, he stood up and uttered a few words, consecrating the living to the great task which the dead had left, and saying, "Here let us resolve that they shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Attempt

Ohio.

As in 1862, so in 1863, when Lee advanced in on Indi- the east, a simultaneous attempt was made to penana and etrate the loyal states of the west. Thirty-five hundred cavalry, under General Morgan, who expected to be joined by a force then in East Tennessee, passed through Kentucky at the beginning of July, crossed into Indiana, and on being resisted there, turned into Ohio, but were pursued, and finally (July 26) captured, with the exception of a few hundred. It was more than twice as large a party as that under Grierson, which had made its way across two of the Southern States in April and May ; but while Grierson swept all before him, Morgan himself was swept before his pursuers. The governors of Indiana and Ohio both called for volunteers, Cincinnati was placed under martial law, as in the year before, and all the country round rose to repel the foe.

Conscription had been the chief means of filling Draft. the confederate armies from the beginning of the second year of war. It was a year later (May 8) when the president of the United States announced a draft to be

made in July, according to an act of Congress in March. To this measure there was great opposition, open and secret. An association, called Knights of the Golden Circle, was believed to intend revolution in the Middle and Western States. Riots broke out in New York, and for three days and nights (July 13-15) all was anarchy. Governor Seymour stood on the steps of the City Hall, calling the rioters his friends, and telling them he had sent his adjutant general to Washington "to have the draft stopped." The riot, of course, continued, until the police and rapidly gathering militia put it down, after more than four hundred, chiefly colored persons, had been killed or wounded. Disturbances broke out elsewhere, and an epidemic of disorder seemed impending. But the army of the Potomac, in saving the nation from the evil of defeat, saved it from the greater evil of sedition. The president had received formal authority from Congress to suspend the privilege of habeas corpus, (March 3,) and he now (August 19) suspended it.

Fort

The occupation of many points along the southern Sumter. coast proved highly serviceable to the blockade. It also led to various attempts upon other points not yet occupied, sometimes successful, but generally the reverse. Fort Sumter, where the war began, was like a thorn in the side of more than one commander. It was first assailed by sea alone, when (April 7, 1863) Admiral Dupont brought up his fleet of seven monitors and two iron-clads; but heavy as was their fire, it proved unavailing against that of Sumter and its encircling fortresses and batteries, so that in forty minutes the fleet withdrew, considerably injured. In the summer, Admiral Dahlgren took command, while General Gillmore was appointed to the military department in which Sumter lay. He thought it could be reached by operations on shore, the fleet assisting, and began with a few thousand men, all he had for

the purpose, on Folly Island. Hence a party was sent, under General Strong, to Morris Island, at the northern end of which stood Fort Wagner, and this was assaulted, but unsuccessfully, (July 11.) Works were then thrown up on the island, and under their cover a second assault was tried, but with even more disastrous result. Strong fell mortally wounded, and other brave officers were killed, among them Colonel Shaw of the Massachusetts 54th, a colored regiment, (July 19.) More works were constructed, and after a long bombardment, a third assault was about beginning, when Fort Wagner was found to be evacuated, (September 7.) Fort Sumter, bombarded at the same time, was much injured, but not evacuated, and a boat attack by night (September 8) was repelled with great loss. The only result of these destructive operations was to close the harbor of Charleston to blockade-runners. Colored The Massachusetts regiment, which fought as troops. bravely as the bravest at Fort Wagner, was the first recruited among the colored people of the north. Those of the south began to enlist the year before, in South Carolina and Louisiana, and Congress authorized the president to receive them into the service, (July, 1862.) But they did not generally enter it until after the emancipation of January, 1863. Willing as they were, they were hindered both by their own habitual submission and by the inveterate prejudices of their white fellowcountrymen. When the Massachusetts 54th was sent from Boston, it was by sea, in order to avoid any possible indignities in the streets of New York or other cities. Many of their white comrades shrank from them, many more treated them as inferiors, who might share in the hardships, but not in the honors, of the war. Strong as these feelings were, they yielded - they could not but yield before the great qualities which the colored troops displayed. As the president wrote, in August, 1863, "There will be

black men who will remember that with silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped on." Of course, the wrath of the confederates overflowed, at times in threats, at times in cruelties, as when a garrison at Fort Pillow, near Memphis, was put to the sword, the blacks for being black, and the whites for being their comrades, (April, 1864.)

Great

and con

Relations with Great Britain, disturbed by her Britain proclamation of neutrality, and yet more by her federate behavior in the Trent affair, were again stormy. cruisers. Iron steamers, built at Liverpool and Glasgow, were easily turned into confederate cruisers, and employed against United States merchantmen. One called the Oreto, afterwards the Florida, was armed at Mobile; but most of them never entered a confederate port, but were equipped like the "290," afterwards the Alabama, which sailed to the Azores, and there received its armament from one British vessel, and its crew from another. These rovers generally hoisted the British flag as they approached a vessel, and then, running up the confederate, used British guns and British gunners to capture or to destroy their victims. All this had been going on for a year, and exciting the utmost indignation among American merchants and the whole American people, when it became known that two ironclad rams, the most powerful ships of war that could be built, were in construction at the same ship-yard which had sent out the Alabama; and there could be no doubt of their destination. The United States minister, Mr. Adams, had done his best to prevent the sailing of the cruisers; he now attempted to prevent the sailing of the rams. On being told by the British foreign secretary that "the government cannot interfere," Mr. Adams wrote, (September 5, 1863,) “It would be superfluous for me to point out that this is war." By taking this position, he carried the day, and the rams were detained.