l influence--leaving it almost
four days before the battle when both armies were scattered and fifty
miles apart! Was ever claim so absurd? Hooker, and he alone, won the
result at Chancellorsville. "Gen. Howard won Gettysburg!" "Sickles saved
the day!" Just Heaven, save the poor Army of the Potomac from its
friends! It has more to dread and less to hope from them than from the
red bannered hosts of the rebellion. The states prefer each her claim
for the sole brunt and winning of the fight. "Pennsylvania won it!" "New
York won it!" "Did not Old Greece, or some tribe from about the sources
of the Nile win it?" For modern Greeks--from Cork--and African Hannibals
were there. Those intermingled graves along the crest bearing the names
of every loyal state, save one or two, should admonish these geese to
cease to cackle. One of the armies of the country won the battle, and
that army supposes that Gen. Meade led it upon that occasion. If it be
not one of the lessons that this war teaches, that we have a country
paramount and supreme over faction, and party, and state, then was the
blood of fifty thousand citizens shed on this field in vain. For the
reasons mentioned, of this battle, greater than that of Waterloo, a
history, just, comprehensive, complete will never be written.
By-and-by, out of the chaos of trash and falsehood that the newspapers
hold, out of the disjointed mass of reports, out of the traditions and
tales that come down from the field, some eye that never saw the battle
will select, and some pen will write what will be named _the history_.
With that the world will be and, if we are alive, we must be, content.

Already, as I rode down from the heights, nature's mysterious loom was
at work, joining and weaving on her ceaseless web the shells had broken
there. Another spring shall green these trampled slopes, and flowers,
planted by unseen hands, shall bloom upon these graves; another autumn
and the yellow harvest shall ripen there--all not in less, but in higher
perfection for this poured out blood. In another decade of years, in
another century, or age, we hope that the Union, by the same means, may
repose in a securer peace and bloom in a higher civilization. Then what
matter if it lame Tradition glean on this field and hand down her
garbled sheaf--if deft story with furtive fingers plait her ballad
wreaths, deeds of her heroes here? or if stately history fill as she
list her arbitrary tablet, the sounding recor