assault, until the rebels were satisfied they could not move us from our position, and sullenly withdrew. They did not yell once.

These men were in the immediate command of Hancock. He led them in person, placed them in the field under his own eye, and remained to take part in every engagement. His breastworks were well constructed as an offset to sudden assaults from the coverts of the woods, while his skirmishers, in rifle-pits, were well posted to prevent surprises. The men behaved well. Every attempt to enfilade them was promply met and repulsed, and every savage assault to capture our colors was hurled back in defeat. Much credit is due to the management of the Union batteries, on all these occasions.

A part of the way to the battle-field had to be pursued in open boats, where the navigation was tedious, and the line of march everywhere exposed to the wily foe. Arrived on the ground, our men took their positions with a coolness and courage worthy of the highest praise. They knew not the number of their secreted enemy; they could only tell by the rattling rifles and roaring cannon that they were near, and in strong force. Dashing on toward them in and through the forests, our men repeatedly captured their earthworks, and conclusively proved to them

and the world what we could do, with anything like equal numbers and a fair field.

Hooker, Meade, Reynolds, Couch, Howard, Birney, Slocum and Sickles were active in this engagement, and were remarkable for the promptness with which their plans were carried out, even against the fearful odds that opposed them. In the position he occupied, Hancock's part was not neglected. His troops were among the most valiant and successful of any in that bloody battle.

In the height of the closing scenes of this terrible drama of carnage, the division was ordered to strike directly across the front of an advancing column of rebels. This column came sweeping furiously on, with its wonted rebel yell, almost demoniac in its character, in the shape of one of Napoleon's wedges of war. The design was to thrust it, with the utmost violence, in the centre of the Union lines favorably situated for the purpose. At this moment Hancock dashed directly across the field, in the face of the advancing rebels, striking their iron wedge with great force at the designated point, staggering its momentum, laying many rebels dead in their impetuous march, and breaking the effect of the intended blow. In half an hour from the time Hancock struck the yelling column, it was in flight from the field.

The final result of Chancellorsville was a bitter disappointment to the rebels. They were not only foiled, disconcerted, cheated of their longed-for prey, but they found they had met a foe, even in the underbrush and rocky ravines, the briery wilds and lurking darkness of those dim woods, fully equal to their steel. Lee discovered, to his cost, that he might slaughter us from behind his ambuscades; he might entangle us in the forests and through the winding by-paths with which he was familiar; but he could not and did not conquer us in an honorable fight. The passage of our army across the river, in the face of imminent danger, is admitted by the rebel authorities to have been well done; and the re-crossing, with a furious enemy close in the rear, was as masterly a piece of military strategy as was ever performed.

The rebels lost in this battle five thousand prisoners, fifteen stands of colors, seven pieces of artillery, nine thousand wounded, and a large amount of commissary stores and munitions of war.

By the 6th of June our army was safely across the river, at Falmouth. In looking back from this point over the field, we find that the division of General Hancock, in its imminent position on the extreme left, did all that brave men, well led, could have done.

Their losses were among the severest of that scene of terrible carnage. He not only held his own, in the very front of the fight, but drove the enemy, at all points. No men, on any field of battle, could have been handled better than his were. His praise was on every tongue; and the despatches of those in superior command speak of his deeds with the highest satisfaction.

It was immediately after this engagement that President LINCOLN, as Commander-in-chief, assigned General HANCOCK to the command of his favorite Second Corps in the Army of the United States.

The traitors now proceeded afresh in their wicked designs for the destruction of a Union that had never done them wrong; for the overthrow of a constitution that had ever provided ample protection for all their rights. They massed their scattered forces anew, and prepared for a raid further north-the domineering onset and fitting conclusion of which we now proceed to describe.

CHAPTER XXI.

AT GETTYSBURG.

"Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety."

Henry IV.

HE invasion of the States of Maryland and Penn

THE

sylvania, in the year 1863, by the large and picked force under the rebel General Robert Edward Lee, must always occupy a conspicuous place in the history of the great American rebellion. In some respects it may be regarded as the turning point in the war. By a series of fortuitous circumstances the rebels had won several important victories. Flushed with these temporary successes, pressed for immediate supplies by the brilliant conquests won over their western bases by General Grant and Commodore Foote, they turned, like hungry vultures in quest of fresh prey, on the tempting and comparatively unguarded lines of the more Northern border States. The successful invasion of these States would not only redeem what they had already lost, and