re their repulse was much worse
than was Lee's at Gettysburg. That Lincoln's first feelings of
disappointment and dissatisfaction with General Meade were greatly
modified with fuller knowledge of the actual situation after the battle
of Gettysburg is shown by a remark made by him to Senator Cameron,
referring to Meade: "Why should we censure a man who has done so much
for his country because he did not do a little more?" And if any debt
of recognition or of gratitude yet remained due from him, it was more
than paid a few months later in the unsurpassed tribute at Gettysburg to
"the brave men, living and dead," who gained the victory on that
hallowed field.

The improved condition of public affairs, and the increasing
cheerfulness of the President, after the victories at Gettysburg and
Vicksburg, are exhibited in a letter written by him a few weeks later to
friends at Springfield, Illinois, who had urgently invited him to attend
"a mass-meeting of Unconditional Union men" at his old home. In this
letter he took occasion to declare his sentiments on various questions
paramount at the time. Among these was the subject of a compromise with
the South, against which he argued with great force and feeling. Again,
he defended the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure to which many Union
men were still unreconciled. He referred also to the arming of the
negroes as a just and wise expedient; finally concluding with these
expressive and felicitous words:

The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to
the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor yet wholly to
them. Three hundred miles up they met New England, Empire,
Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The sunny
South, too, in more colors than one, also lent a helping hand. On
the spot, their part of the history was jotted down in black and
white. The job was a great national one, and let none be slighted
who bore an honorable part in it. And while those who have cleared
the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard
to say that anything has been more bravely and well done than at
Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on many fields of less
note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the
watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep sea,
the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy
bayou, and