By this time, more than two years after the fall of Fort Sumter, the first easy boasting of a short campaign and an overwhelming triumph, indulged by both sides, had long died; and the solemn sense of the great tragedy being enacted before its eyes possessed the nation. This sentiment could not have been more nobly expressed than in the words used by the President, when, speaking at the dedication of a portion of the Gettysburg battlefield as a national cemetery,[351] he said: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom: and that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth". Meade's victory, and the news following fast upon it of Grant's capture of Vicksburg, with the consequent reopening of the Mississippi, reassured the wavering faith of many patriots. But the situation was still full of peril. In this same month--July, 1863--there were serious riots in New York,[352] instigated by the "Copperheads," as the Northern sympathisers with the Confederacy were dubbed, in opposition to the first draft for the army under the general conscription law of March. In these, more than a thousand persons were killed or wounded. The riots were the more difficult to quell because all available troops and volunteers had been sent to the front; and these of course included a great proportion of the stabler citizens. At the same time the disaffected elements remained in their full strength. The political character of the disturbance was plain enough; for the rioters set upon any negroes they met, slinging them to the lamp-posts, and would have burned down the hospital, full of wounded Union soldiers, had they not been prevented. It is some satisfaction to know that we cannot couple the name of Fernando Wood with these outrages. There was something genuine in his patriotism. He was now in Congress, and had recently been vainly attempting, in his usual futile fashion, to negotiate a peace. * * * * * Both the draft and the riots caused the Whitman family no little anxiety. George, who had entered the army as a private and was promoted stage by stage till he became a lieutenant-colonel, was of course already at the front;[353] and Jeff, who had married four years earlier, was keeping the home together for the old mother and helpless youngest son, as well as for his own wife and their young children. Anything that happened to him would involve the happiness of the whole family. They feared especially that he might be drawn for service; and Walt wrote from Washington that in that event, he would do all in his power to raise the necessary money to provide a substitute.[354]