means been uniformly favorable to the South. After a series of bloody engagements, one of their best armies was cooped up in Vicksburg by General Grant, and there seemed to be but small hope that his hold upon it could be broken. Throughout the West the Union lines were steadily drifting Southerly. Not a man could the Rebellion spare to its Western generals from its resources in the East, for here every effort was making to reenforce General Lee. Unbounded confidence was reposed in him, but it was becoming painfully evident that he must do something much more productive of results than the costly winning of even such victories as that of Chancellorsville.

General Hooker was still in command of the Army of the Potomac, and the opposing forces watched each other zealously. A fierce battle of mutual interrogation as to position and purposes was fought at Brandy Station in the second week of June, but no general engagement was obtained, for various good reasons. The chief of these was, probably, that General Lee did not desire one. He was making all things ready for a second invasion of the North, and more fighting on Southern ground, just then, would but have wasted his war material.

That Lee should make such a Northward movement at all was both a dire necessity and a fatal blunder. It is not altogether fair to place either of these upon the shoulders of so good a general. The great error of the Confederate statesmen concerning the state of public opinion and feeling, as well as of material prosperity, at the North, is by no means easy to understand when their general shrewdness and ability are taken into consideration. They should have known their country and countrymen better than they did. The national resources of the North, always vastly greater than those of the South, had not been perceptibly impaired, and no acre of its area had been either devastated or rent away. As to its population, the out-and-out Vallandighams among them were not fighting men, by any means, as Mr. Lincoln contemptuously illustrated when he sent that person through the lines. Lee was quite welcome

to them all, if he had any use for them. They were, for the greater part, mere political demagogues, who talked themselves into disreputable notoriety, while all the good and strong men of their own "Democratic" party rallied like heroes around the flag of their country. The demagogues had now, indeed, been able to take advantage of a sore-hearted and weary multitude; but experienced political leaders, like Jefferson Davis and his counselors, should have understood, without being told, that the multitudes were loyal and true to their government, at the bottom of all their grumbling. The discontented elements at the North could not be handled, even in the accustomed form of a political party, without the name of a favorite Union general, McClellan, at their head. They must be able to assure themselves and everybody else that they wanted only a more vigorous and successful management of the war and, perhaps, a little less of Abolitionism. All Northern murmurs were heard by Southern political and military managers as conveyed to them by their spies and correspondents, or as expressed in wild exaggeration by "Copperhead" editors of newspapers. The rabid utterances of demagogues, and even the observations of the most cultivated and ignorant foreign tourists, were sent South and interpreted as the sincere expressions of great popular constituencies. The imported riff-raff of great cities was carefully cross-examined, and its mouthings were studied and duly reported as indicating the state of mind of our entire foreign-born citizenship.

It was a direct result of the hallucination thus created that the ineffable mistake of an invasion of the North was repeated. The best army of the South was sent across the fatal border that it might serve as a nucleus for an anticipated rising of all the friends of Secession according to their varieties. It was a splendid army of nearly ninety thousand men, and was fully competent for the conquest proposed, so soon as it should be augmented by a few hundred thousands of Northern malcontents. It was mainly composed of trained veterans, new levies

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.