left of them, not routed, not flying, but sullenly, slowly, back across the blood-soaked plain, among the heaps of dead. Gettysburg was over. The third act of the drama was finished. The Union was saved.
Yes, saved. Gettysburg, with Vicksburg, completed the climax. The fourth act dragged on through the vicis- situdes of Chickamauga and Chattanooga in the West. The repulses of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor gave the Confederacy momentary hope. But the slow, strang- ling grip of Sherman's host in Georgia at last prepared the way for the fifth and final act, which terminated in the long agony of Petersburg and Appomattox.
Yes, the Union was saved. And to-day the North has no more reason to rejoice at it than the South has. Think what secession and separation would have meant : two nations forever facing each other in arms across the Potomac! A standing army of half a million men on each side would have been needed, in instant readiness for war likely to come at any moment over disputes about territory, disputes about emigration, disputes about commerce ; especially disputes about slavery, if, as is probable, the Confederacy had continued to be a great slave empire.
Think what it means for the development of this great continent ! Instead of two, or perhaps half a dozen, rival nations straining every effort to outdo one another in military equipment, jealous of one another's glory and prosperity, we are one great nation of brothers, all
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