superior, while Grant was equally maguanimous in saying nothing of Sherman's objections, or amends. Two assaults were made, both unsuccessfully, and then reënforcements were asked for and obtained. Siege was laid, and in six weeks Vicksburg fell, with all its garrison and munitions. The surrender took place upon the 4th of July.

Port

The surrender of Port Hudson followed, (July 8.) Hudson. This was a stronghold lower down the river, which an army under General Banks, now of the Louisiana department, had been assailing for some time. It could not hold out when Vicksburg yielded. The Mississippi, from source to mouth, was recovered by the Union, and the Confederacy was cut in two. In the early autumn, an expedition from Vicksburg took Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas, (September 10.)

Chancel- The army of the Potomac, discouraged by relorsville. verses, changes of generals, and political controversies, was placed under the command of General Hooker, (January 26.) He undertook to reorganize it, and three months later to lead it to victory. He had hardly crossed the Rappahannock, and taken the offensive against Lee, than he suddenly changed to the defensive, waiting for the enemy, as he said, to give him battle on his own ground, at Chancellorsville. But his right was suddenly attacked on the flank by Stonewall Jackson, (May 2,) and with such effect as to determine the defeat of the whole army, though the battle was kept up for two days more, (May 3, 4.) On the next day, Hooker returned to the north side of the Rappahannock, leaving behind him thousands of killed, wounded, and pris

oners.

The confederates also suffered very heavily, and in Jackson, who was fired on in the dark from his own lines, they lost a general to whom they owed this and many a preceding victory. "He was as good," they said, The army of the Potomac was

66 as ten thousand men."

soon yet more reduced by the discharge of troops whose period of enlistment expired. On the other hand, Lee's army of Northern Virginia was ready, as one of its best officers, General Longstreet, said, to undertake anything. Gettys- Its temper was put to trial. Notwithstanding the burg. yet fresh experience of the previous autumn, the confederate authorities resolved upon another expedition into the loyal states, and within a month from Chancellorsville, Lee began to move northward, (June.) As soon as this was known, Hooker followed, keeping between the enemy and Washington, and crossed the Potomac the day after Lee. Great was the alarm, not only at the capital, or in the parts of Maryland and Peunsylvania immediately threatened, but at Philadelphia, and even New York, both within striking distance, if Lee were again victorious. The disaffection of certain classes in the larger cities, and their threatened resistance to the draft which the government was about to make, added to the fears of a confederate attack; and many a flight, many a case of valuable effects, was directed to some faroff place of security. Means of defence did not abound. As soon as the president became aware of Lee's purpose, he called for one hundred thousand militia from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Ohio; but scarcely half that number responded, and most of those who did were ill prepared to meet the army of Northern Virginia. It did not encourage public confidence to learn that just at this crisis, when the confederates were entering Pennsylvania, the army of the Potomac was changing commanders; but General Hooker resigned, and General Meade, a tried and efficient officer, was appointed. He pressed forward without delay, and Lee, finding his communications threatened, turned from the road towards Harrisburg, and moved south-eastward to Gettysburg. Here was the watershed between the Susquehanna Valley

on the north, and the Potomac on the south, and here a battle between northern and southern armies might seem intended to be decisive. General Reynolds, commanding the Union advance, was ordered to march on Gettysburg from the south, at the same moment that the foe approached from the west; and there he engaged in the forenoon of July 1, and while winning the first advantage, fell mortally wounded. At this time the main body of Meade's army was very far off, but being hurried forward, and well posted on a double ridge south of the town, it was ready for the fiercer conflict of the second day. It proved very

difficult to resist the attack which the rashness of General Sickles invited on the Union left, and which, for some hours, threatened the whole army with defeat, while the Union right was also turned, and danger in that quarter became imminent. But Meade and his brave men stood fast, and when, on the third day, the confederates charged the left centre under General Hancock, and threw all their passionate vigor into one convulsive effort, they were met, broken, and compelled to give up the hard-fought field. Seventeen thousand Union soldiers, and more than twenty thousand confederates, were killed or wounded in this great battle. It was won on the same afternoon of July 3 when Pemberton was arranging the terms of his surrender to Grant at Vicksburg. On the evening of the day of that surrender, Lee began his retreat, and ten days later, amid great disorder and suffering, his army, reduced by almost one half, recrossed the Potomac. It was a great disappointment to loyal men that he should have been allowed to get back into Virginia; but the army of the Potomac was in no condition to pursue with any zeal or effect. The president called upon the people to observe a day for national thanksgiving, praise, and prayer, invoking Almighty God" to lead the whole nation, through paths of

repentance and submission to the Divine will, back to the perfect enjoyment of union and fraternal peace." The day was kept on the 6th of August. Three months later, (November 19,) a part of the Gettysburg battle-field was dedicated as the burial-place of those who had there fallen in defence of the Union. The president was there, and when the ceremonies were performed, and the funeral oration was delivered by Edward Everett, he stood up and uttered a few words, consecrating the living to the great task which the dead had left, and saying, "Here let us resolve that they shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Attempt

As in 1862, so in 1863, when Lee advanced in on Indi- the east, a simultaneous attempt was made to penana and etrate the loyal states of the west. Thirty-five Ohio. hundred cavalry, under General Morgan, who expected to be joined by a force then in East Tennessee, passed through Kentucky at the beginning of July, crossed into Indiana, and on being resisted there, turned into Ohio, but were pursued, and finally (July 26) captured, with the exception of a few hundred. It was more than twice as large a party as that under Grierson, which had made its way across two of the Southern States in April and May; but while Grierson swept all before him, Morgan himself was swept before his pursuers. The governors of Indiana and Ohio both called for volunteers, Cincinnati was placed under martial law, as in the year before, and all the country round rose to repel the foe.

Conscription had been the chief means of filling Draft. the confederate armies from the beginning of the second year of war. It was a year later (May 8) when the president of the United States announced a draft to be

made in July, according to an act of Congress in March. To this measure there was great opposition, open and secret. An association, called Knights of the Golden Circle, was believed to intend revolution in the Middle and Western States. Riots broke out in New York, and for three days and nights (July 13-15) all was anarchy. Governor Seymour stood on the steps of the City Hall, calling the rioters his friends, and telling them he had sent his adjutant general to Washington "to have the draft stopped." The riot, of course, continued, until the police and rapidly gathering militia put it down, after more than four hundred, chiefly colored persons, had been killed or wounded. Disturbances broke out elsewhere, and an epidemic of disorder seemed impending. But the army of the Potomac, in saving the nation from the evil of defeat, saved it from the greater evil of sedition. The president had received formal authority from Congress to suspend the privilege of habeas corpus, (March 3,) and he now (August 19) suspended it.

Fort

The occupation of many points along the southern Sumter. coast proved highly serviceable to the blockade. It also led to various attempts upon other points not yet occupied, sometimes successful, but generally the reverse. Fort Sumter, where the war began, was like a thorn in the side of more than one commander. It was first assailed by sea alone, when (April 7, 1863) Admiral Dupont brought up his fleet of seven monitors and two iron-clads; but heavy as was their fire, it proved unavailing against that of Sumter and its encircling fortresses and batteries, so that in forty minutes the fleet withdrew, considerably injured. In the summer, Admiral Dahlgren took command, while General Gillmore was appointed to the military department in which Sumter lay. He thought it could be reached by operations on shore, the fleet assisting, and began with a few thousand men, all he had for