120th New York Infantry.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XX. GETTYSBURG AND ITS MONUMENTS THE GREAT BATTLE-FIELD GROWING IN THE NATIONS REGARD THE NATIONAL CEMETERY THE UNION SOLDIERS BURIED THERE--THEIR GRAVES HONORED AND CHERISHED MONUMENT TO THE SOLDIERS OF THE I 20TH WHO FELL AT GETTYSBURG SURVIVING COMRADES REVISIT THE FIELD--DEDICATION OF THE MONUMENT--GENERAL SHARPES ORATION WILL CARLETON's POEM. The field of Gettysburg can never lose the interest which attracts to it, by an overpowering magnetism, every patriotic heart throughout the country. The battle fought there was the greatest in our history, in the numbers engaged, in the length and desperate character of the conflict, and in the losses, whose effect reached out to nearly every household in the land. Great as these last were, the issues decided on that historic field were greater and more momentous still. The invasion of the North, involving in its complete success the direst disasters to the nation, was decisively checked and rolled back. The hopes of the Southern Confederacy to secure a separate government with the nations to recognize it, as the result of a great victory won there, were irretrievably blasted. The continuance of a nation, one and indivisible, growing in strength and prosperity through its unity, as opposed to two nations subjected to constant discords and collisions, with decay and ruin in the end for both, was here virtually decided. On this ground the cause of the Free Institutions was signally vindicated, the knell of slavery throughout the land was rung, and the Union of all the States under one Government, as essential to the life and welfare of the whole, were all proclaimed, and made sure for the coming generations. Such gains as these secured by the gigantic struggle running through the first, ..

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