hird Annual Message: "while I remain in my
present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the
Emancipation Proclamation; nor shall I return to Slavery any person who
is Free by the terms of that Proclamation, or by any of the Acts of
Congress."

Meantime, however, occurred the series of glorious
Union victories in the West, ending with the surrender to Grant's
triumphant Forces on the 4th of July, 1863, of Vicksburg--"the Gibraltar
of the West"--with its Garrison, Army, and enormous quantities of arms
and munitions of war; thus closing a brilliant and successful Campaign
with a blow which literally "broke the back" of the Rebellion; while,
almost simultaneously, July 1-3, the Union Forces of the East, under
Meade, gained the great victory of Gettysburg, and, driving the hosts of
Lee from Pennsylvania, put a second and final end to Rebel invasion of
Northern soil; gaining it, on ground dedicated by President Lincoln,
before that year had closed--as a place of sepulture for the
Patriot-soldiers who there had fallen in a brief, touching and immortal
Address, which every American child should learn by heart, and every
American adult ponder deeply, as embodying the very essence of true
Republicanism.

[President Lincoln's Address, when the National Cemetery at
Gettysburg, Pa., was dedicated Nov. 19, 1863, was in these
memorable words:

"Fourscore and seven years ago, our Fathers brought forth upon 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 here
to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for
those who here gave their lives that that Nation might live.

"It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate,
we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our 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 th