CHAPTER XII. FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX. Ο Na certain July morn ing in the year 1863 three young fellows in their early teens walked into a yet scarcely awakened Connecticut village. They were on a short vacation tramp between New York and Boston, stiffening their muscles and strengthening their legs as a preparation, it might be, for that real marching that all young fellows of those stirring war-times hoped or expected some day to do on Southern battlefields. For two days they had heard but little of the outside world. Twenty-seven years ago tidings from abroad did not penetrate the country sections as speedily as now And these lads were so anxious for news! How could it be otherwise with them? They were wide-awake New York boys steeped in the seething excitements of those restless days when all America seemed to live from day to day upon the anxious seat. Suddenly, as they passed a yet unopened house, one of the boys spied a discarded newspaper of the previous day lying where it had been thrown aside upon the trim green lawn. Instinctively they all stole in and confiscated the vagrant sheet. And as one unfolded it and the others peered over his shoulder all three gave a shout of joy: The Great Union Victory at Gettysburg!" Vicksburg Ours!" Here was news indeed. Exultant and thankful the three lads laid down the borrowed newspaper and went their way with swinging steps and lightened hearts, prouder than ever of the boys at the front, with whom they hoped some day to cast in their lot. It was indeed great news for all the North. The greatest from Sumter to Appomattox. For Gettysburg and Vicksburg marked the turning-point of the war. And yet not the greatest. There was one occurrence, not military indeed but national, that hastened results more than any other achievement. It was a simple dip into the inkstand, a single act of justice. But when Abraham Lincoln laid down the pen that signed the immortal proclamation of emancipation the days of rebellion were numbered. The Edict of Freedom was America's masterstroke. But those who in Northern homes watched and waited in those troublous times, finding criticism so easy, patience so hard, did not then appreciate to the full the importance of this te paper of the century. To those eager boys and Vicksburg meant more than any presidention. And so to all the North the tidings from Gettysburg and Vicksburg were both welcome and wonderful. When the conflict that had raged so furiously through three terrible days gained its first note of victory from the wonderful charge of Stannard's brave brigade and closed with the bloody repulse of Pickett's magnificent charge on Cemetery Ridge the tide of rebel invasion was swept backward from the Pennsylvania hills and the greatest stroke of the Confederacy was brought to naught. At that very moment that Gibbon was holding the ridge at Gettysburg, and, with a loss of half his force, hurled back the last effort of invasion, Grant, outside the ramparts of far-off Vicksburg, was writing to Pemberton the rebel commander: "I have no terms but the unconditional surrender of the city and garrison." The Fourth of July, 1863, was a notable national holiday. For on that anniversary of American Independence the might of American freemen was fully asserted— the last great attempt of rebellion at invasion was thwarted and the Mississippi was made free from the Lakes to the Gulf. In both these pivotal happenings the American Soldier was at once the cause and instrument. For this he had labored through many weary months, for this he had gone through all the hard routine of drill and discipline, for this he had borne the brunt at Shiloh and gone through the terrible experience of the Seven Days' Battle in Virginia swamps, for this had he closed in hand-to-hand fight at Perrysville and turned at bay on Malvern Hill, for this had he stood the test at Murfreesboro' and Antietam. East and West had worked and struggled toward victory. To East and West at almost the same hou had come the glorious consummation. But through how much of heart-ache and despond through how much defeat and disaster had this outlook toward peace been reached. From Shiloh to Gettysburg had been, indeed, a hard road to travel. And yet there had been but little wavering in will, there had been no shrinkage in the determination to win. Through all these days of delay and inaction, of impatience and expectation, of doubtful battle and balked endeavor, of incompetency in leadership and division in council the baffled North again and again had sent its reinforcements to the field. Tramp! tramp! tramp! with firm and measured tread, steadily, solidly, cease lessly, from every Northern State the soldiers of the Union set their faces southward, dispatched for the strengthening of their brethren at the front. Tramp! tramp! tramp! in all the mechanical evolutions of review and drill, of advance and retreat and the charge of desperate battle the blue coats all along that shifting death line that stretched from the Mississippi to the sea marched and countermarched, fought and fell. And still more men were needed. The cause of war was as insatiate as was that horse-leech of whom Scripture tells, who "hath two daughters whose only cry is: Give, give, give!' South as well as North this cry for fresh blood rang out again and again; South as well as North the fighters fell into line. until it seemed to those who watched at home as if none would be left as bread-winners when so many went away. To the first call of President Lincoln on April 15, 1861, for 75,000 men, the enthusiasm inspired by Sumter's fall yielded at once an hundred thousand in reply. The later calls of May and July, 1861, for 500,000 men brought the Government nearly 700,000 in response. And yet, with the next year, came another call for 300,000 volunteers and from every quarter they rallied by thousands while, of those already in service, other thousands re-enlisted "for three years or the war." The verses of that unknown author whose measures found an echo in many a loyal heart recall to us the steady outpour of Northern vigor that came as the answer to the president's call of July, 1862: "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more, We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more! |