owly away and the smoke began to lift.

An ominous sign. The grey infantry were deploying in line under Pickett
to charge the heights of Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand gallant men
against an impregnable hill held by seventy thousand intrenched
soldiers, backed by the deadliest and most powerful artillery.

They swept now into the field before the Heights, their bands playing as
if on parade--their grey ranks dressed on their colors. Down the slope
across the plain and up the hill the waves rolled, their thinning ranks
closing the wide gaps torn each moment by the fiery sleet of iron and
lead.

A handful of them lived to reach the Union lines on those heights.
Armistead, with a hundred men, broke through and lifted his battle flag
for a moment over a Federal battery, and fell mortally wounded.

And then the shattered grey wave broke into a spray of blood and slowly
ebbed down the hill. The battle of Gettysburg had ended.

For the first time the blue Army of the Potomac had won a genuine
victory. It had been gained at a frightful cost, but no price was too
high to pay for such a victory. It had saved the Capital of the Nation.
The Union army had lost twenty-three thousand men, the Confederate
twenty thousand. Meade had lost seventeen of his generals, and Lee,
fourteen.

When the thrilling news from the front reached Washington on July 4th,
the President lifted his big hands above his head and cried to the crowd
of excited men who thronged the Executive office:

"Unto God we give all the praise!"

None of those present knew the soul significance of that sentence as it
fell from his trembling lips. He seated himself at his desk and quickly
wrote a brief proclamation of thanks to Almighty God, which he
telegraphed to the Governor of each Union State, requesting them to
repeat it to their people.

While the North was still quivering with joy over the turn of the tide
at Gettysburg, Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, hurried into
the President's office and handed him a dispatch from the gunboat under
Admiral Porter cooeperating with General Grant announcing the fall of
Vicksburg, the surrender of thirty-five thousand Confederate soldiers of
its garrison, and the opening of the Mississippi River to the Gulf of
Mexico.

The President seized his hat, his dark face shining with joy:

"I will telegraph the news to General Meade myself!"

He stopped suddenly and threw his long arms around Welles:

"What can