federates themselves, as to their part in the great drama, and so many controversies and court-martials between the Union officers and men, that I refrain from any full and technical description of battles, which may only revive disputes, and encourage animosities.

Gen. Hancock was promoted on November 30th, 1863, a Major in the regular army, for his meritorious conduct in Yorktown, Virginia, having previously shown conspicuous gallantry in other brisk engagements.

HANCOCK WAS SUPERB THAT DAY.

I remember the battle of Williamsburgh as if it were yesterday. It was an initial fight and an initial victory, preceding the marvelous alternation of defeat and triumph, a sort of unconscious vestibule of the long conflict that lay in the future. It was here that Hancock made that brilliant charge that must forever associate his name with peerless valor.

In the battle of Williamsburgh, the enemy had massed a strong force on his front and had made several chasms in his nearest ranks. Riding to the centre and quietly passing the words "fix bayonets," he paused at the chosen point, waved his hat, and gave the memorable order to his soldiers, "gentlemen, charge." The brilliancy with which that courteous order was obeyed can never be forgotten. The enemy was swept before it

Officers, men,

like chaff before the whirlwind. horses, and artillery, were borne back in confusion and dismay, rendering the rout of the foe one of the most signal ever witnessed on the field in any war. The enemy was flanked on their left and rolled over the earth like a parchment scroll. This striking movement was made on a stormy night in a drenching rain. Morning rose with a bright and bracing air, but the enemy had fled. Count De Paris, one of the sons of King Louis Philippe, who has written a splendid history of our civil war, witnessed that brilliant achievement. The leader on the opposite side was Gen. Longstreet, who had been a lieutenant with Hancock in some of the several fights in Mexico; and another confederate commander was Early, who also had been his fellow-officer in that same war. This brilliant success of Hancock was gained with the loss of not more than 20 killed and wounded, but the falling back of the enemy gave to the Union Army a thousand wounded and three hundred uninjured rebel prisoners; seventy-one large guns were captured, many tents, and a great amount of ammunition.

The relations between President Lincoln and General Hancock were always friendly, and naturally so. Lincoln's chief sentiment was an allpervading desire to bring the Southern States back into the Union; and although Hancock never talked politics, the fact that he was known to be a

Democrat made him particularly acceptable to the great President. Hancock was very young at the time he was placed in his command on the Peninsula, but his manly support of the government in California made him a very interesting person to Mr. Lincoln, and while other more prominent generals were involved in political discussions, this young soldier was content to listen to what his elders had to say. It is well, at this time, to recall these interesting facts, not only for the sake of history, but to show that the policy of conciliation was the guiding star of Abraham Lincoln's whole administration. He never concealed it, and if he were living to-day, he would be precisely in the line with such advanced magnanimous statesmen as insist that the time for extreme measures has long since passed away, and that nothing is necessary to restore the South to full companionship and confidence with the North, but to fall back upon the deathless example of the martyred President. It is strange how his moderate course has won upon the consciences of men; it is interesting how all merely radical measures have fallen into disuse.

Men of Mr. Lincoln's first cabinet, like Seward, Chase and Wells, however at the beginning of the war they may have favored extreme measures, soon came to take more comprehensive and rational grounds, and although most of these men are dead, yet together with their contemporaries,

Sumner, Fenton, Greeley, Trumbull, the three Blairs, the father, Francis P., and his sons, Montgomery and Frank, and Eli Thayer, one after another, they finally agreed that there could be no lasting peace between the South and the North unless we made allowances for the peculiarities of society, the terrible accidents of carpet-bag rule, and the essential unpreparedness of the suddenly manumitted colored race; and precisely as these influences operated upon Republicans, such as I have named, precisely as they swiftly served to modify Northern sentiment, so in time they controlled and changed, alike the thoughts and actions of reflecting men in the South. There is, therefore, as much difference between the two great political parties in the United States to-day as there was between these same two great parties and the organizations from which they sprung twenty years before the beginning of the rebellion. Nobody believes in the savage remedies and revenges and retaliations that were so popular during the civil war, or if there is such a conviction, it is confined to the mere tricksters of party, who still hope to fan the dying embers of hate into a flame for the purpose of plunder, and the greed of power.

If the men who down to the last insisted upon the merciless punishment of the South were among us to-day, they would be startled by the changed conditions of society, by the great influences which make peace, not only the order of the day, but the

surest method to promote and to perpetuate national prosperity. The South so fully yields to the justice, to the inviolability of the abolition of human slavery, to the necessity and the irrepealability of the new amendments to the national constitution, and to the fact that universal suffrage could not be resisted, as a part of the bargain to secure universal amnesty, that there is no man bold enough to undertake to disturb these sacred covenants at this hour. In fact the country to-day stands precisely where Abraham Lincoln desired to place it, and if he could have fashioned the subsequent policy of administration, or if he could have commanded the settlements upon which we are all now resting, in advance of his death, they could not be more in accordance with his example.

Gen. Hancock, as an early disciple of Abraham Lincoln, as one whom he frequently consulted, regarding him rather as a young protege than as one of the politicians and statesmen at the other end of the capital, is therefore the candidate who, more effectually than any other, embodies the policy of peace, justice, generosity and forgiveness, so wonderfully illustrated in the life and death of our martyred Chief Magistrate.

HANCOCK'S APPEARANCE IN BATTLE.

In all these struggles, in 1861 and 1862, General Hancock had necessarily to win his conspicuous position by complete subordination, and by con