est. On the Fourth of July, 1863, the day on which Lee, defeated
and discouraged, was taking his shattered army out of Pennsylvania,
General Grant was placing the Stars and Stripes over the earthworks of
Vicksburg. The Mississippi was now under the control of the Federalists
from its source to the mouth, and that portion of the Confederacy lying
to the west of the river was cut off so that from this territory no
further co-operation of importance could be rendered to the armies
either of Johnston or of Lee.

Lincoln writes to Grant after the fall of Vicksburg giving, with his
word of congratulation, the admission that he (Lincoln) had doubted the
wisdom or the practicability of Grant's movement to the south of
Vicksburg and inland to Jackson. "You were right," said Lincoln, "and I
was wrong."

On the 19th of November, 1863, comes the Gettysburg address, so eloquent
in its simplicity. It is probable that no speaker in recorded history
ever succeeded in putting into so few words so much feeling, such
suggestive thought, and such high idealism. The speech is one that
children can understand and that the greatest minds must admire.

[Illustration:

FACSIMILE OF GETTYSBURG ADDRESS.

Address delivered at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come
to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for
those who here gave their lives that their nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who
struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add
or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the
living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that
from these