EAR GENERAL,--I do not remember that you and I ever met personally.
I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost
inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word
further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg I thought you
should do what you finally did,--march the troops across the neck, run
the batteries with the transports, and then go below; and I never had
any faith, except a general hope, that you knew better than I that the
Yazoo-Pass expedition and the like could succeed. When you got below,
and took Fort Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go
down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned northward, east
of the Big Black, I thought it was a mistake. I now wish to make the
personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.

And recall now the never-to-be-forgotten scenes at Gettysburg. The Union
army had been defeated at Chancellorsville, and Gen. Lee, having assumed
the offensive, had been making the greatest preparations for striking
a decisive blow. Already had he passed through Maryland; he was now in
Pennsylvania. But valiant men were there to meet and oppose. The fate
of the day, the fate of the Confederacy, was staked upon the issue. I
cannot picture the battle; but we all know the result, and how great was
the rejoicing in the North when, on that 4th day of July, the tidings of
the fall of Vicksburg and the victory at Gettysburg reached the country.

A portion of the battle-field of Gettysburg was set apart as a
resting-place for the heroes who fell on that bloody ground. In November
of that year the ceremony of consecration took place. Edward Everett,
the orator and the scholar, delivered the oration; it was a polished
specimen of his consummate skill. After him rose President
Lincoln,--"simple, rude, his care-worn face now lighted and glowing with
intense feeling." He simply read the touching speech which is already
placed among the classics of our language:--

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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 are met to dedicate a portion of
it as the final resting-place of those who h