In all great wars involving the destinies of nations, it is neither the number of battles, nor the names, nor the loss of life, that remain fixed in the mind of the masses; but simply the one decisive struggle which either in its immediate or remote sequence closes the conflict. Of the hundred battles of the great Napoleon, Waterloo alone lingers in the memory. The Franco-Prussian War, so fraught with changes to Europe, presents but one name that will never fade,--Sedan. Even in our own country, how few battles of the Revolution can we enumerate; but is there a child who does not know that Bunker Hill sounded the death-knell of English rule in the land? And now, but twenty years since the greatest conflict of modern times was closed at Appomattox, how few can we readily recall of the scores of blood-stained battle-fields on which our friends and neighbors fought and fell; but is there one, old or young, cultured or ignorant, of the North or of the South, that cannot speak of Gettysburg? But what is Gettysburg either in its first day's Federal defeat, or its second day's terrible slaughter around Little Round Top, without the _third_ day's immortal charge by Pickett and his brave Virginians. In it we have the culmination of the Rebellion. It took long years after to drain _all_ the life-blood from the foe, but never again did the wave of Rebellion rise so gallantly high as when it beat upon the crest of Cemetery Ridge. The storming of the heights of Inkerman, the charge of the noble Six Hundred, the fearful onslaught of the Guards at Waterloo, the scaling of Lookout Mountain,--have all been sung in story, and perhaps always will be; but they all pale beside the glory that will ever enshroud the heroes who, with perhaps not literally "cannon to right of them" and "cannon to left of them," but with a hundred cannon belching forth death in _front_ of them, hurled themselves into the centre of a great army and had victory almost within their grasp.