"Thus ended the battle of Gettysburg—the bloody turning-point of the rebellion—the bloody baptism of the redeemed republic. Nearly twenty thousand men from the Union ranks had been killed and wounded, and a larger number of the rebels, making the enormous aggregate of at least forty thousand, whose blood was shed to fertilize the Tree of Liberty."
The following peroration to the glowing account of the battle of Pittsburg Landing, we quote as an illustration of the vein of poetry that pervades his writings:
"Thus another field of renown was added to the list, so rapidly increased during these years; where valor won deathless laurels, and principle was reckoned weighter than life.
"Peacefully the Tennessee flows between its banks onward to the ocean, nor tells aught of the bloody struggle on its shore. Quietly the golden grain ripens in the sun, and the red furrow of war is supplanted by the plowshares of peace. To the child born within the shadow of this battle-field, who listens wonderingly to a recital of the deeds of this day, the heroes of Shiloh will, mayhap, appear like the dim phantoms of a dream, shadowy and unreal, but the results they helped to bring about are the tissue of a people's life; the dust he treads is the sacred soil from which sprang the flowers of freedom, and the institutions for which these men died, make his roof safe over his head."
We conclude our extracts from the volume with a part of the chapter on "The Surrender." The story is told without flourish of trumpets, and in a manner to give no offense to the vanquished, while its strict and impartial adherence to truth must recommend it to all readers:
"The last act in the great drama of the war took place without dramatic accessory. There was no startling tableau, with the chief actors grouped in effective attitudes, surrounded by their attendants. No spreading tree lent its romance to the occasion, as some artists have fondly supposed.
"A plain farm-house between the lines was selected by General Lee for the surrender, and the ceremony of that act was short and simple. The noble victor did not complete the humiliation of the brave vanquished by any triumphal display or blare of trumpets. In his magnanimity he even omitted the customary usage of allowing the victorious troops to pass through the enemy's lines and witness their surrender. The two great commanders met with courteous salutation, General Lee being attended by only one of his aides. General Grant sat down at a table in the barely furnished room and wrote in lead-pencil the terms of capitulation, to which Lee dictated an agreement in writing. His secretary, Colonel Marshall, and Colonel Badeau, the secretary of General Grant, made copies of the agreement from the same bottle of ink.
"The final situation of the Confederate army before its surrender was indeed desperate—its environments hopeless. Hemmed in at Appomattox Court House, on a strip of land between the Appomattox and James rivers, the Union army nearly surrounded it on all sides. Sheridan was in front, Meade in the rear, and Ord south of the Court House. Lee had no alternative other than the wholesale slaughter of his reduced army, or its surrender to Federal authority. He wisely chose the latter.
"The decisive battle of Five Forks had put his army to rout, and sent it in rapid retreat towards the junction of the Southside and Danville railroads at Burkesville. The Union troops pressed forward in pursuit, and it became a vital question which would reach the junction first. Between Petersburg, their point of starting, and their destination, at Burkesville, the distance was fifty-three miles. The roads were bad, and the troops tired with two days' fighting; but they pushed on with determination in this race which was destined to decide the fate of two armies.