ders of his superior, Halleck, and became irritable and
querulous; Lincoln had to exercise his simple arts to keep him to his
duty and to soothe him, and was for the moment successful. Suddenly on
June 27, with a battle in near prospect, Hooker sent in his resignation;
probably he meant it, but there was no time to debate the matter.
Probably he had lost confidence in himself, as he did before at
Chancellorsville. Lincoln evidently judged that his state of mind made
it wise to accept this resignation. He promptly appointed in Hooker's
place one of his subordinates, General George Meade, a lean, tall,
studious, somewhat sharp-tongued man, not brilliant or popular or the
choice that the army would have expected, but with a record in previous
campaigns which made him seem to Lincoln trustworthy, as he was. A
subordinate command in which he could really distinguish himself was
later found for Hooker, who now took leave of his army in words of marked
generosity towards Meade. All this while there was great excitement in
the North. Urgent demands had been raised for the recall of McClellan, a
course of which, Lincoln justly observed, no one could measure the
inconvenience so well as he.

Lee was now feeling his way, somewhat in the dark as to his enemy's
movements, because he had despatched most of his cavalry upon raiding
expeditions towards the important industrial centre of Harrisburg. Meade
continued on a parallel course to him, with his army spread out to guard
against any movements of Lee's to the eastward. Each commander would
have preferred to fight the other upon the defensive. Suddenly on July
1, three days after Meade had taken command, a chance collision took
place north of the town of Gettysburg between the advance guards of the
two armies. It developed into a general engagement, of which the result
must partly depend on the speed with which each commander could bring up
the remainder of his army. On the first day Lee achieved a decided
success. The Northern troops were driven back upon steep heights just
south of Gettysburg, of which the contour made it difficult for the enemy
to co-ordinate his movements in any attack on them. Here Meade, who when
the battle began was ten miles away and did not expect it, was able by
the morning of the 2nd or during that day to bring up his full force; and
here, contrary to his original choice of a position for bringing on a
battle, he made his stand. The attack pl