s incompetency, and on bad terms with Halleck, the general-in-chief,
asked to be relieved, and his request was at once granted.

General George C. Meade was appointed his successor on June 28. Striking
due north with all speed, ably supported by a remarkable group of
corps-commanders and the veteran Army of the Potomac handsomely
reinforced and keenly eager to fight, Meade brought Lee to bay near the
village of Gettysburg, and after three days of terrific fighting, in
which the losses of the two armies aggregated over forty-five thousand
men, on the 3d of July he defeated Lee's army and turned it rapidly
southward. This was the most decisive battle of the war, and the most
bloody, finally lost by Lee through his making the same mistake that
Burnside did at Fredericksburg, in attacking equal forces intrenched on
a hill. Nothing was left to Lee but retreat across the Potomac, and
Meade--an able but not a great captain--made the mistake that McClellan
had made at Antietam in not following up his advantage, but allowing Lee
to escape into Virginia.

To cap the climax of Union success, on the 4th of July General Ulysses
S. Grant, who had been operating against Vicksburg on the Mississippi
during four months, captured that city, with thirty-two thousand
prisoners, and a few days later Port Hudson with its garrison fell into
his hands. The signal combination of victories filled the North with
enthusiasm and the President with profoundest gratitude. It is true,
Meade's failure to follow and capture Lee was a bitter disappointment to
Lincoln. The Confederate commander might have been compelled to
surrender to a flushed and conquering army a third larger than his own,
had Meade pursued and attacked him, and the war might perhaps virtually
have ended. Yet Lee's army was by no means routed, and was in dangerous
mood, while Meade's losses had been really larger than his; so that the
Federal general's caution does not lack military defenders.
Nevertheless, he evidently was not the man that had been sought for.

More than two years had now elapsed since the Army of the Potomac had
been organized by McClellan, and yet it was no nearer the end which the
President, the war minister, the cabinet, and the generals had in
view,--the capture of Richmond. Thus far, more than one hundred thousand
men had been lost in the contest which the politicians had supposed was
to be so brief. Not a single general had arisen at the East equal to the
oc