spoke the few simple
words which enshrine the significance of the great controversy and which
have become a part of this historic scene, to endure with the memory of
Gettysburg, and to touch the heart and exalt the hope of every American
from the gulf to the lakes and from ocean to ocean, so long as this
valley shall smile with spring and glow with autumn, and day and night
and seed time and harvest shall not fail.

To-day his prophetic vision is fulfilled. The murmur of these hosts of
peace encamped upon this field of war, this universal voice of friendly
greeting and congratulation, these cheers of the gray echoing the cheers
of the blue, what are they but the answering music of those chords of
memory; the swelling chorus of the Union responding to the better
angels of our nature? If there be joy in Heaven this day, it is in the
heart of Abraham Lincoln as he looks down upon this field of Gettysburg.

But that the glory of this day, and of America, and of human nature, may
be full, it is the veterans and survivors of the armies whose tremendous
conflict interpreted the Constitution, who to-day, here upon the field
of battle and upon its twenty-fifth anniversary, clasp friendly hands of
sympathy to salute a common victory. This is a spectacle without
precedent in history. No field of the cloth of gold, or of the grounded
arms, no splendid scene of the royal adjustment of conquests, the
diplomatic settlement of treaties, or the papal incitement of crusades,
rivals in moral grandeur and significance this simple pageant.

The sun of Gettysburg rose on the 1st of July and saw the army of the
gray already advancing in line of battle; the army of the blue still
hastening eagerly forward and converging to this point. The glory of
midsummer filled this landscape as if nature had arrayed a fitting scene
for a transcendent event. Once more the unquailing lines so long arrayed
against each other stood face to face. Once more the inexpressible
emotion mingled of yearning memory, of fond affection, of dread
foreboding, of high hope, of patriotic enthusiasm and of stern resolve,
swept for a moment over thousands of brave hearts, and the next instant
the overwhelming storm of battle burst. For three long, proud, immortal
days it raged and swayed, the earth trembling, the air quivering, the
sky obscured; with shouting charge, and rattling volley, the thundering
cannonade piling the ground with mangled and bleeding blue and gray, the