DARK DAYS IN 1863--A SUNBURST OF VICTORY--SHERMAN LEAVES VICKSBURG--ORDERS TO HIS TROOPS--THE MARCH TO CHATTANOOGA--THE BATTLE ABOVE THE CLOUDS--SHERMAN'S ATTACK ON MISSIONARY RIDGE-- THE VICTORY COMPLETE--PURSUIT OF THE ENEMY--A FORCED MARCH TO RESCUE BURNSIDE--SHERMAN'S REPORT--VIEWS CONCERNING THE TREATMENT OF THE REBELS. Seldom has history recorded a more sudden and startling change in National affairs than that of the United States in the midsummer of 1863. The closing days of June were dark and ominous. Milroy was almost annihilated at Winchester. Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville were still wet with fruitless blood. Rosecrans was helpless in Tennessee. Banks was idle at Port Hudson. Grant had been checked at Vicksburg. Lee, on the other hand, was carrying fire and sword through Pennsylvania, while the Army of the Potomac, wandering no one knew where, seemed given up to experimenting with new leaders. This, at any rate, was the apparent situation, distressing to the faint-hearted patriot, and consoling the sympathizer with the South. And so the Fourth of July came around, a day that a month before bade fair to be a time of woe rather than of joy. An ex-President of the United States, Franklin Pierce, was the orator of the day at Concord, New Hampshire. "We have had," he said, "overwhelming sorrows, but none like these which come welling up day by day from the great fountain of National disaster; nor have the sorrows brought with them any recompense of National pride or victorious arms." And he bitterly denounced the "fearful, fruitless fatal civil war," and the "harvest of woe," that it was ripening for the Republic. Other orators and statesmen, of even more commanding rank than he, spoke that same day in a similar strain. Yet almost at that very hour, Lee was reeling in disaster back from "a stubborn Meade and a barren field" at Gettysburg, Johnston in Mississippi was in full flight before Sherman's conquering legions, and Grant was raising the Stars and Stripes above the conquered ramparts of Vicksburg, the "Gibraltar of the South." Truly, a grim and mighty transformation scene!