ment was increased activity on Lee's part and a magnificent victory by the Southern leader over the North at Fredericksburg. This ended Burnside's brief career as general-in-chief and General Hooker took command of the forces. So far Lincoln was experimenting with his army leaders. It was not yet the fitting time for giving Grant the supreme command.

This struggle was one of the most expensive ones in the history of war, but the Secretary of the Treasury, Chase, made an admirable financier under the difficult circumstances, and Lincoln made no effort to retrench. It was not an occasion for economy.

About this time Lincoln was to receive another test. It was the hope of the European monarchs that the great Republic in America would prove a failure. They believed that the North and the South must separate, and as the costly and bloody struggle went on several of them thought of advising with regard to the situation. Louis Napoleon expressed himself as ready to mediate between the North and the South, advising that the South be quietly permitted to withdraw from the Union. Needless to say Lincoln politely but firmly refused to have anything to do with the French monarch's offers.

The war was a costly one in treasure, but vastly more so in human lives. The calls for volunteers had been nobly met by the North, but this was not sufficient, it was necessary to issue an Act enrolling all citizens between the ages of twenty and forty-five. This Act roused the greatest indignation against Lincoln in certain parts of the Union, and in New York City an anti-draft mob created for a brief period a reign of terror. But the riot was put down and the draft went on. Mr. Vallandigham of Ohio

publicly attacked Lincoln in a violent speech at Mount Vernon, crying down with "King Lincoln and urging the people to hurl the tyrant from power.

The struggle went on; the Confederates on the whole sustaining the greatest reverses, largely through lack of numbers. Their greatest loss early in 1863 was the death of that splendid commander, General Jackson. Still the North had not satisfactory generals; Hooker gave place to Meade, and shortly after this appointment the turning point of the war was passed. In July the enemies met in savage conflict at Gettysburg and out of that bloody struggle the Union came forth victor. Before the

end of the month, too, Grant had occupied Vicksburg and shortly after Lincoln was able to write, "The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."

In November of this year a burial ground was to be dedicated to the Union soldiers who fell on the historical battle-field of Gettysburg. It was on this occasion, on November 19, that Lincoln made his famous oration, which, though scarcely more than a paragraph in length, lives as one of the oratorical gems, to use Goldwin Smith's words, of the English language. What a tremendous step there is from the stump speeches that elected him to the Legislature of Illinois and these few brief sentences worthy to be studied along with the work of Demosthenes and Cicero. How this man has grown in the few short years that power has been his!

"Four-score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any

nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

In this same month Grant's star was once more in the ascendant. He reached Chattanooga, and the victory of Missionary Ridge was won. The end of the war was now for the first time in sight, and Lincoln saw that in Grant was the one man with the daring and dogged determination needful for bringing the conflict to a successful termination, and so, early in 1864, he appointed him general-in-chief. When he gave him the supreme command, he said: "You are vigilant and self-reliant, and pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraint or restraints upon

you." This was the first time that Lincoln had been able to so completely place matters in the hands of any of his generals. The war was now to take on a new phase. It was to become if anything more bloody than at the commencement, but both victories won and reverses sustained by the North were to bring the end nearer.

CHAPTER IX.

PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN (Concluded).

GRANT had now the supreme command of the army and a free hand. From the beginning of the struggle he had doubtless seen that the North would be successful by mere mass, and determined to engage Lee in front, and by overwhelming numbers bring the war to a speedy conclusion. He would meet the great Southern general and "pound his army to pieces."

mer.

The first great engagements of the campaign of 1864 took place in "the Wilderness" and in the "bloody angle" at Spottsylvania. Lee was in a strong position but Grant with dogged determination and a Napoleonic disregard for the lives of his men hurled his troops against him. He had made up his mind to "fight it out on this line" if it took all sumBut Lee was as determined as was the Northern general and watched his every movement with an experienced eye. Battle followed battle in May and the fields of Virginia were red with the blood of thousands of noble and brave men. Towards the end of the month Grant tried a flank movement towards Richmond. He reached Cold Harbor near Chickahominy and made another effort to crush Lee, but Lee was strong in his entrenched position and resisted the attack inflicting terrible slaughter on the