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of audacity and cool judgment, prevented a grave disaster to the Union arms. It was of this action that McClellan telegraphed his famous comment: "Hancock was superb." Promoted to the command of a division, he was present on the field of Antietam. He fought like a hero of chivalry at Fredericksburg, where Burnside's blunder hurled a whole army against the flaming slopes of Marye's Hill with death blazing out from every inch of parapet. Finally, at the head of the Second Corpsthat gallant host which in losing fifteen thousand men in battle had never lost a colour or a gun 21 he rode into the first day's clash at Gettysburg, having been set for the moment by Meade over the head of seniors such as Howard and Sickles. The selection was an ideal one; and it showed Meade's skilful estimate of his generals. Hancock found the troops shattered and demoralised by the first impetuous onset of the Southern army. regiments, panic-stricken, were streaming to the rear amid an inextricable tangle of horses, wagons, ambulances, and artillery-trains. The Confederates already held Seminary Ridge and the town of Gettysburg itself; while great masses of their infantry could be descried, sweeping ominously forward in what appeared to be an illimitable host. To meet them there were in line only the broken remnants of the brave First Corps, and a division of Buford's cavalry.

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It was at this critical moment that Hancock, hurrying to the front, arrived and took command. Never was the magic of martial genius more instantly perceptible. On the instant a change, lightning-like, was wrought in that grim scene of panic and despair. The rout was checked, the broken regiments were reformed, the drifting guns were swept up and massed in batteries, and so skilful a dis

21 Walker, op. cit., p. 94.

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position was made of the now heartened troops as to stay for the time the Confederate advance.22 Amid this scene Hancock bestrode his horse, "cool, calm, self-possessed, the master of himself and of his place." The captain of a Maine battery 23 afterwards wrote: "I shall never forget the inspiration of his commanding, controlling presence, or the fresh courage he imparted, his whole atmosphere strong and invigorating." It was Hancock who, upon his own responsibility, altered the plan of battle that had been arranged by Meade. He selected the now historic Cemetery Ridge as the key to the Union position, planted cannon on its crest, and strengthened the force already stationed there.

It was upon the summit of this hill that Hancock reached the climax of his fame. On the third and final day of the great battle, the Confederate artillery began the appalling cannonade which was the prelude to Pickett's heroic charge. One hundred and fifteen guns hurled in an appalling and infernal crash a cyclone of projectiles against the Union lines which were soon to meet the breaking of a human storm. It was a scene to terrify the stoutest heart; and some of the regiments which lay upon the ground amid the exploding shells, had never been under fire before. Then in the midst of this roaring hell, Hancock, sitting his great black charger, with the corps flag borne beside him, and followed by his staff, rode slowly up and down the lines, as calm and even joyous as though upon a holiday parade. The sight was indescribably thrilling; and the men who saw him not

22"Though not a man besides Hancock and his staff had come upon the field, Lee hesitated to attack positions, naturally strong, which appeared to have been suddenly, occupied by fresh troops. That delay saved the field of Gettysburg to the Union arms."-Walker, op. cit., p. 113. 23 Captain E. N. Whittier.

only held their ground, but forgot the storm of bursting shells in their admiration for their leader. Later, when Longstreet's fourteen brigades were hurled against the Ridge, Hancock met them at the head of the defenders. And then, at the very moment when the charging columns wavered and recoiled, Hancock was stricken down. Yet still he would not leave his place; and when a Vermont regiment swung to the front, Hancock, with his blood spurting in great jets from a ghastly wound, cried out to the commander joyously: "Go in, Colonel, and give it to them on the flank!" When they bore him from the field, it was amid a burst of tremendous cheering which told that the crucial struggle of the war had been won by the soldiers of the Union. In the following year, though his wound was far from healed, he served with the same intrepidity and efficiency under Grant, whose praise he won in the Wilderness and amid the carnage at the Salient.

Hancock's patriotism was as unalloyed as was his courage. When McClellan was summarily removed from the command of the army after Antietam, many of his brother officers were so indignant as to make remarks which verged on open mutiny; but though Hancock loved McClellan, he made but one reply: "We are serving our country and not any man." When after the war, he was made Military Governor of a part of Louisiana and Texas he showed himself to be no satrap, but one who felt profound respect for civil law. He did all within his power to discourage trial by military commission instead of before the courts. He believed that the re-union of all sections of the country would be most speedily effected by treating the intelligent and patriotic men of the South in a spirit of confidence and of generosity rather than of harshness and distrust.

Hancock was the only trained soldier of equal eminence and achievement who, during the Civil War, never rose above the rank of corps-commander. It was not his fortune to direct the operations of an army in the field. The chance which gave this opportunity to Burnside, Pope, and Hooker, passed Hancock by. It may be that, like them, he would have failed; yet what he actually did accomplish makes the contrary seem probable. He is perhaps the only officer of conspicuous rank of whom it could be said, as Grant declared of him, that his name was never mentioned in despatches as having committed a single military error.24 Whatever was given him to do, he did with the precision and perfection of an accomplished soldier. He was, perhaps, too purely martial a spirit to be rightly appreciated in a peace-loving Republic such as ours; since, with all its latent capacity for defense, our nation, like the English nation, sets the victories of peace above the victories of war. Yet it is to the honour of the Republic that in its hour of need it could summon forth to battle this soldier of heroic mould,—a type belonging to the high ideals of chivalry.

24 Grant, Memoirs, ii. p. 539 (New York, 1886).

CHAPTER IV

THE REPUBLICAN RALLY

THE year 1886 was marked by serious disturbances arising from strikes and other labour movements, which recalled the events of 1877, when the industries of the country were paralysed, and when, at the great centres of traffic in twelve States, conditions existed that seemed to threaten civil war. In 1886, there was less violence, yet the social unrest was so widespread as to be at once significant and ominous. From the shipyards in Maine to the railways in Texas and the Far West, there was continual disorder in nearly every branch of industry. In New York City, the employés of the street-car lines began a strike on February 3d, which was ended on the 18th by a victory for the strikers. The disturbances, however, broke out again on March 2d and continued intermittently until September 1st, when the managers of the roads once more gave way. On one day, every line in New York and Brooklyn was "tied up " completely. In June, the elevated railways had a similar, though much more brief, experience. The mania for striking seemed to be in the very air; and on April 20th, in Boston, even the children in two of the public schools struck for a continuous session, and adopted all the approved methods of the conventional strike, stationing pickets, attacking such children as refused to join them, and causing a small riot which had to be put down by the police.1

1 A nearly complete list of the strikes of this year will be found in Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia for 1887.

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