hington. It was within the
extravagant and poetic dreams of the expectant conquerors to proclaim
the success of the Confederacy from the steps of Independence Hall,
and to make a treaty with the fugitive Government of the United
States for half the territory of the Republic. But it was not so
fated. The army under Meade proved unconquerable. In conflicts
on Virginia soil the army of Lee had been victorious. Its invasion
of the North the preceding year had been checked by McClellan before
it reached the border of the free States. It was now fighting on
ground where the spirit which had nerved it in Virginia was
transferred to the soldiers of the Union. With men of the North
the struggle was now for home first, for conquest afterwards, and
the tenacity and courage with which they held their ground for
those three bloody days attest the magnificent impulse which the
defense of the fireside imparts to the heart and to the arm of the
soldier.

General Meade had not been widely known before the battle, but he
was at once elevated to the highest rank in the esteem and love of
the people. The tide of invasion had been rolled back after the
bloodiest and most stubbornly contested field of the war. The
numbers on each side differed but little from the numbers engaged
at Waterloo, and the tenacity with which the soldiers of the British
Isles stood that day against the hosts of Napoleon, was rivaled on
the field of Gettysburg by men of the same blood, fighting in the
ranks of both armies.

The relief which the victory brought to the North is indescribable.
On the morning of the Fourth of July a brief Executive order was
telegraphed from the Executive mansion to all the free States,
announcing the triumph, for which "the President especially desires
that on this day, He whose will, not ours, should ever be done, be
everywhere remembered and reverenced with the profoundest gratitude."
By one of those coincidences that have more than once happened in
our history, the Fourth of July of this year was made especially
memorable. Rejoicings over the result at Gettysburg had scarcely
begun when word came from General Grant that the Confederate forces
at Vicksburg had surrendered, and that at ten o'clock of the Fourth,
the very hour when Mr. Lincoln issued the bulletin proclaiming the
victory of Gettysburg, General Pemberton's forces marched out and
stacked arms in front of their works, prisoners of war to General
Grant. The c