we do for the Secretary of the Navy for this glorious
intelligence? He is always giving us good news. I cannot tell you my joy
over this result. It is great, Mr. Welles, it is great!"

With the eagerness of a boy he rushed to the telegraph office and sent
the message to Meade over his own signature.

For the first time in dreary months the sun had burst for a moment
through the clouds that had hung in endless gloom over the White House.
The sorrowful eyes were shining with new hope. The President felt sure
that General Lee could never succeed in leading his shattered army back
into Virginia. He had lost twenty thousand men out of his sixty-two
thousand--while Meade was still in command of a grand army of eighty-two
thousand soldiers flushed with victory. The Potomac River was in flood
and the Confederate army was on its banks unable to recross.

It was a moral certainty that the heroic Commander who had saved the
Capital at Gettysburg could, with his eighty-two thousand men, capture
or crush Lee's remaining force, caught in this trap by the swollen
river, and end the war.

The men who crowded into the Executive office the day after the news of
Vicksburg, found the Chief Magistrate in high spirits. Among the cases
of deserters, court-martialed and ordered to be shot, he was surprised
to find a negro soldier bearing the remarkable name of Julius Caesar
Thornton. John Vaughan had telegraphed the President asking his
interference with the execution of this cruel edict.

The President was deeply interested. It was the beginning of the use of
negro troops. He had consented to their employment with reluctance, but
they were proving their worth to the army, both in battle and in the
work of garrisons.

Julius was brought from prison for an interview with the Chief
Magistrate.

Stanton had sternly demanded the enforcement of the strictest military
discipline as the only way to make these black troops of any real
service to the Government. He asked that an example be made of Julius by
sending him back to the army to be publicly shot before the assembled
men of his race. He was convicted of two capital offenses. He had been
caught in Washington shamelessly flaunting the uniform he had disgraced.

Julius faced the President with an humble salute and a broad grin. The
black man liked the looks of his judge and he threw off all
embarrassment his situation had produced with the first glance at the
kindly eyes gazing at him ov