e him
home. A great public meeting was arranged in the Academy of Music in New
York, and the Music Hall was crowded from pit to dome with the leaders
of the city and of the North. Mr. Beecher entered the room at eight
o'clock, and the whole audience rose to its feet to greet him, but not
until many minutes had passed in tumultuous cheering did he have an
opportunity to speak. From that hour his influence in the country was
second only to that of the President, two or three members of his
cabinet, and General Grant. Abraham Lincoln wrote to Mr. Beecher words
of warmest gratitude and invited him to the White House. "Often and
often," wrote Secretary Stanton, "in the dark hours you have come to me,
and I have longed to hear your voice, feeling that above all other men
you could cheer, strengthen, quiet and uplift me in this great battle,
where by God's providence it has fallen upon me to hold a part, and
perform a duty beyond my own strength." When therefore Lee surrendered,
and the war came to a close, President Lincoln and the cabinet felt that
Beecher's service to the cause of liberty had earned for him the most
unique distinction granted to any man during the war. And so it came
about that four years after Beauregard fired upon Fort Sumter, and the
flag of the Union was lowered to give place to the flag of Secession,
that not a general nor an admiral, but that a minister, Henry Ward
Beecher, was selected to lift into its place again the old flag, that
proclaimed to all the nations of the earth that government of the
people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.

X

HEROES OF BATTLE: AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND SAILORS

One of the wariest and most capable of the Confederate commanders was
General Joseph E. Johnston. In his report of the battle of Kenesaw
Mountain in Northwestern Georgia, in June, 1864, when Sherman had at
last driven him to bay, he thus describes the attack and the repulse:
"The Federal troops pressed forward with the resolution always displayed
by the American soldier when properly led. After maintaining the contest
for three-quarters of an hour, they retired unsuccessful, because they
had encountered entrenched infantry, unsurpassed by that of Napoleon's
Old Guard, or that which followed Wellington into France, out of Spain."

It would be difficult to find a more soldierly appreciation of both
officers and men of those two American armies. And in a recent
interestin