CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE TURNING POINT.

The Eve of Battle-The Surrender of Vicksburg-The Mississippi River set Free-The Three Days' Fight at Gettysburg-Lee's Retreat-The Situation Changed - The Draft Riots-The New York Mob-The President's Reply to the Unpatriotic Elements.

THE month of June was fast slipping away, and it began to look as if the gates of the North were at last open to the Confederacy. By the 24th the main body of Lee's army was north of the Potomac. On the 27th two of his army corps were at Chambersburg, well up the Cumberland Valley, west of the mountains, while a third occupied Carlisle, within striking distance of Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. General Hooker had held his old position opposite Washington, with his main body, as late as the 23d; but all doubt as to the safety of that city, for the time being, was now removed, and on the 25th he began to cross the Potomac at Edward's Ferry. From thence he advanced to Frederick, Maryland, and halted, only thirty miles, as the crow flies, from the battle-field of Gettysburg. Here, on the 28th, the change of commanders took place, and General Meade only carried out a previously expressed purpose of his predecessor in at once moving his forces towards the Susquehanna. Omitting all details of military movements as out of place here, it is enough to say that on the evening of June 30 the entire Rebel army was concentrating towards Gettysburg; the Union army lay within little more than a good day's march, and both commanders were fully aware that a great and decisive battle could not be long delayed.

What was only of a little less importance, the entire country was almost equally aware and in waiting. A Rebel force penetrated within sight of Harrisburg. The citizens of Philadelphia found themselves digging trenches and throwing up earthworks for the possible defence of that city. The Governor of Pennsylvania called for 60,000 more men. A sudden and fierce excitement spread like wildfire throughout the North, and a spasm of warlike feeling stirred the hearts of men in every community and neighborhood. The effect was not at all what the Richmond statesmen had counted upon, but it was very much what they should have expected. The presence of Lee in Pennsylvania did all that was necessary to render the Draft endurable and only failed of making it popular. Certain it is that there remained hardly a tithe of the trouble in enforcing it that there might have been but for a vague idea which almost every man unconsciously entertained that he could hear the sound of distant cannonading and possibly of drums.

The President urged forward with all his might the army movement under Meade. He did not neglect the forces in front of Washington nor the insufficient counter-movement towards Richmond. At the same time he stimulated to his uttermost, as his letters and dispatches to the commanding generals testify, the operations he was watching in the West. He pushed forward with increased vigor the now almost completely organized machinery for the enforcement of the Draft. The decisive hour had come, and he proved himself fully equal to all its demands upon him. So did the Army of the Potomac. So did the men in the West, under Grant.

The first week of July, 1863, was crowned with hard-won triumph. The garrison of Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant on the 4th, and so, a few days later, did that of Port Hudson, further down the river. With these was also surrendered the Mississippi River to its mouth. The Confederacy was cleft in twain, never more to be the compact and stubbornly resisting mass which it so long had been. In the East, on the

first day of the month, at Gettysburg, the advanced corps of the armies under Meade and Lee began a struggle as of life and death. At the end of the first day's fighting the advantage was with the Confederates; but all they had won had cost them dearly. All through the hot hours of July 2, and on into the night, the strife continued with a success so varying that the result still trembled in the balance. At night a council of war was held by Meade and his generals, and the corps commanders unanimously voted to stay and fight it out. It is recorded of General W. S. Hancock, in particular, that when his opinion was called for he added to it, in strong language, "The Army of the Potomac has retreated too often." It is a sufficient comment upon the aspect of affairs that the usual and prudent precautions for covering the retreat of the army in case of further disaster were made with special care. The fighting on the third day began with the dawn of light; but before noon its bloody tides were manifestly turning in favor of the Union. It became necessary for Lee to strike a desperate, decisive blow, and he prepared for one which, if it could have succeeded against the preparations made to receive it, would have changed the remaining history of the war. It was begun a little after 3 o'clock P.M., the best troops of the Rebel army, hitherto untouched and fresh, being hurled against the Union centre. They have been estimated at about 18,000 men, under General Pickett, sometimes termed the "Ney of the Confederate armies." It was a grand charge, well planned but for a mistaken idea as to what it was to meet, and it was made magnificently; but it failed in slaughter, rout, and ruin, and its failure terminated the Invasion of the North. The Rebel forces still held the positions to which they had fallen back, but at half past 6 o'clock P.M. they ceased firing. They still held their ground, unassailed, during all the next day; and General Meade's caution in not instantly pressing another general engagement has found able defenders as well as severe critics among military men.

Except on the first day, the actual combatants had not been very unequally matched as to numbers, and then only by the Confederate troops being the more rapidly carried into action. General Meade had under him, first and last, about 82,000 men, not all engaged, while General Lee had about 73,500 actually present for service. The cavalry on either side was about equal in numerical strength, but the Army of the Potomac was largely superior in field-artillery. The severity of the fighting is grimly illustrated by the losses, in killed, wounded, and missing. These are trustworthily reported or estimated at 23,186 for the Army of the Potomac and 22,728 for the Army of Northern Virginia, a difference of 458 men in apparent favor of the Confederacy.

Lee's errand in the North was over, at the end of such a fight, even if it were to be considered, what some of the Confederate leaders actually claimed, "a drawn battle." It was, indeed, nothing of the kind, but a distinctly marked and definite defeat of Lee's army, which only escaped destruction because it was not instantly smitten again.

Fresh troops were pouring forward to re-enforce Meade, and Mr. Lincoln urged him to assume the offensive again at once; but he failed to do so. General Lee was once more permitted, though with better reason than after the Antietam battle, peaceably and all but unmolested to withdraw a shattered though still stubborn and dangerous army and to retreat into Virginia.

This second invasion of the North terminated much more disastrously for the Confederacy than did the mad march which ended at the Antietam. When the results of it were summed up and the great events on the banks of the Mississippi were added to them, it was discovered that the entire military situation had undergone a change. Both in the East and in the West this change was of a nature that was necessarily permanent, and the possible future area of the war was narrower than before. Its tide had unmistakably turned and was ebbing

Southward, however any of its waves might thenceforth advance or recede.

During all the time of the change, nevertheless, and even after its bloody crisis was passed, serious political matters already referred to had demanded the thoughtful attention of the President. The governor, for the time being, of the great State of New York had taken upon himself to be a sort of official mouthpiece for the elements opposed to the enforcement of the Draft of men for the army. He indeed represented them, for by their votes he was in office. It is now impossible to more than guess what might have been the course of such a man, so upheld, if the battle of Gettysburg had ended in a rout of Meade's army, or if Grant, at the same time, had been repulsed before Vicksburg. As it was, and while yet the clouds of uncertainty and dread hung over the battle-fields and hid the coming victories, the many emissaries of the Richmond government, and low demagogues without any other commission than such as their own malice gave them, worked busily and effectively among the more debased and ignorant populations of New York and other great cities. The Draft Act contained an unhappy clause whereby a man could secure exemption through a money payment, and it was easy to represent this as a "rich man's exemption." This provision added materially to the necessarily offensive nature of the law, great as was its real mercy. The promoters of sedition were able so to use it as to touch as with caustic all the sore places of poverty and of class prejudice.

Military events had now accomplished much in the way of checking the growth and preventing the pernicious effect of all this excitement; but the path for mischief to come had been prepared in ways unperceived by Mr. Lincoln. Well as he knew his countrymen generally, he was but little acquainted with the population of New York City. He knew as little of it, in fact, as do nine tenths of its better classes at this day. He was not at all aware how strong, active, and well-armed a