future
lent a tinge of sadness to the splendid and inspiring spectacle of the
day. The applause so heartily given for the soldiers who were present
could not be unaccompanied by tears for the fate of that vast host
which had gone down to death without even the consolation of knowing
that they had not died in vain.

In the four years of their service the armies of the Union, counting
every form of conflict, great and small, had been in twenty-two
hundred and sixty-five engagements with the Confederate troops. From
the time when active hostilities began until the last gun of the war
was fired, a fight of some kind--a raid, a skirmish, or a pitched
battle--occurred at some point on our widely extended front nearly
eleven times a week upon an average. Counting only those engagements
in which the Union loss in killed, wounded, and missing exceeded one
hundred, the total number was three hundred and thirty,--averaging one
every four and a half days. From the northernmost point of contact to
the southernmost, the distance by any practicable line of
communications was more than two thousand miles. From East to West the
extremes were fifteen hundred miles apart.

During the first year of hostilities--one of preparation on both sides
--the battles were naturally fewer in number and less decisive in
character than afterwards, when discipline had been imparted to the
troops by drill, and when the _materiel_ of war had been collected and
stored for prolonged campaigns. The engagements of all kinds in 1861
were thirty-five in number, of which the most serious was the Union
defeat at Bull Run. In 1862 the war had greatly increased in magnitude
and intensity, as is shown by the eighty-four engagements between the
armies. The net result of the year's operations was highly favorable
to the Rebellion. In 1863 the battles were one hundred and ten in
number--among them some of the most significant and important victories
for the Union. In 1864 there were seventy-three engagements, and in
the winter and early spring of 1865 there were twenty-eight.

In fact, 1864-65 was one continuous campaign. The armies of the Union
did not go into winter-quarters to the extent of abandoning or
suspending operations. They felt that it was in their power to bring
the struggle to an end at once, and they pressed forward with
prodigious vigor and with complete success. General Grant with his
characteristic energy insisted that "active and con