of June, dawned, enveloped in an auspicious fog of great denseness. The orders were given in silence. The Second Corps (under Hancock) was formed in two lines. Barlow with the 1st Division in two lines, occupied the centre, and Birney, with the 3d Division, was on his right; the 2d and 4th, under Gibbons and Mott, formed the second line. The point of attack was a salient angle of earthworks, held by Johnson's division, Ewell's corps. Silently and unseen, the corps moved upon the unsuspecting enemy. They passed over the rugged and quite exposed space, the enthusiasm growing at every step, until, with a terrible charge, and a storm of cheers, they reached the enemy's works, scaled them in front and flank, surprising the celebrated "Stonewall" Brigade of Johnson at their breakfast, surrounding them, and capturing almost the entire division, with its commander, Gen. Edward Johnson; two brigades of other troops, with their commander, Brigadier General George H. Stewart; and thirty guns. The number of prisoners taken was between three and four thousand. It was the most decided success yet achieved during the campaign. When Hancock heard that these Generals were taken, he directed that they should be brought to him. Offering his hand to Johnson, that officer was so affected as to shed tears, declaring that he would have preferred death to captivity. He then extended his hand to Stewart, whom he had known before, saying: "How are you,

Stewart?” But the Confederate, with great haughtiness, replied, "I am General Stewart, of the Confederate Army; and, under present circumstances, I decline to take your hand." Hancock's cool and dignified reply was: "And under any other cir cumstances, General, I should not have offered it." It was after this magnificent feat of arms that Gen. Meade issued the order of the thirteenth of May, elsewhere printed.

If I did not know of the historic heroism of our troops in that great conflict, I should regard this thrilling sketch of the service of General Hancock as the wild invention of a novel writer. But there were many other deeds of daring wrought by other men, and nothing but the fact that I am now describing one character in an unparalleled drama, must be my excuse for confining the volume to Hancock's achievements. These, themselves, were, however, so peculiar as to call forth praise from all sides; and if I had the room I could fill pages with the commendations of his unpausing valor from friend and foe.

On Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1864, however, General Hancock was detached from the Army of the Potomac and again ordered to Washington.

There were so many veterans in the country unemployed, whose term of service had expired, that Government determined to call them into the field again. These tried soldiers, having been once

honorably discharged, hesitated to re-enter the service in regiments recruited since their own enlistments, and hence President Lincoln sought the chief of the illustrious Generals of the army as the best to win them back. That chief was General Hancock. There was soon a tremendous response, and General Hancock was placed in his new command, his headquarters were first established at Washington and afterwards at Winchester, Va. The division embracing the department of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Washington, and his entire forces including the army of the Shenandoah, amounting to nearly one hundred thousand men of all arms.

With this vast force General Hancock was under orders to be ready to move at short notice, either on Lynchburg, to operate with the Army of the Potomac, or to take transport to the southern coast to co-operate with General Sherman. But the sudden breaking of Lee's lines at Petersburg and the surrender at Appomattox happily closed this part of the campaign. The crowning event of that period was yet to amaze this country and the whole world. That event was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln,

CHAPTER VII.

CAN A GREAT SOLDIER BE A GOOD RULER?

Y reading of history does not lead me to sanc

Ꮇ.

tion the recent declaration of Mr. Carl Schurz,

in his admirable speech, in Indiana, that the professional soldier is unfit for civil administration. Julius Cæsar was no less renowned for the reformation which he effected in the civil administration and laws of Rome than for his military achievements. The civil code of Napoleon is as enduring a monument to his fame as the field of Austerlitz. I have just been reading the angry prophecies of Henry Clay, 1816-1818, after General Jackson's brilliant military services in the second war against Great Britain, and contrasting them with his splendid record in favor of the Union fortyeight years ago. Washington himself was a professional soldier, having held the commission of Colonel in the Virginia forces as early as 1755, and almost continuously engaged in the profession of arms from that period until the close of the revolutionary war in 1783. Grant, measured by the results of his eight years in the Presidential chair,

was eminently successful in civil administration. The rigid economy, and the severe methods of administration, and the exact system incident to the profession of arms, render it an admirable training-school for the executive head of the civil department of the government.

As

Hancock as president will not be called upon to frame a code of laws, but to execute the statutes; and the argument that he is unfitted to perform the executive duties of his civil administration because he has heretofore been engaged in executing a purely military code, which is itself composed chiefly of Acts of Congress, certainly can have no force with a reflecting mind. president, he will be the chief magistrate of the republic, in which the citizen possesses all the liberty consistent with the safety of the government; and the government is vested with all the power consistent with the liberty of the citizen. Hancock will recognize and maintain both unfalteringly.

History attests that the wounds of civil war are best healed by the great and triumphant soldiers who have acted in them. General Garfield, in his letter of acceptance, intimates that the South is in a quasi state of rebellion. Indeed, he implies that Democracy is rebellion, full-fledged, waiting for a fine day to fly. If this be true, then the days of the Union are numbered, for the Democratic Party, in 1876, as shown by statistics universally admitted