He proved too slow, however, and Lee and his
beaten Confederate soldiers escaped. President Lincoln was
inexpressibly grieved at this, and in the first bitterness of his
disappointment sat down and wrote General Meade a letter. Lee
"was within your easy grasp," he told him, "and to have closed
upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have
ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely.
. . . Your golden opportunity is gone and I am distressed
immeasurably because of it." But Meade never received this
letter. Deeply as the President felt Meade's fault, his spirit of
forgiveness was so quick, and his thankfulness for the measure of
success that had been gained, so great, that he put it in his
desk, and it was never signed or sent.
The battle of Gettysburg was indeed a notable victory, and
coupled with the fall of Vicksburg, which surrendered to General
Grant on that same third of July, proved the real turning-point
of the war. It seems singularly appropriate, then, that
Gettysburg should have been the place where President Lincoln
made his most beautiful and famous address. After the battle the
dead and wounded of both the Union and Confederate armies had
received tender attention there. Later it was decided to set
aside a portion of the battlefield for a great national military
cemetery in which the dead found orderly burial.
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