"Besides, what right have you to ask anything of me?" "Only the right of one who sinks all thought of himself in what he believes to be the greater good." "You who, with victory in my grasp before Richmond, snatched it away! You, who nailed me to the cross on the bloody field of Antietam with your accursed Proclamation of Emancipation and removed me from my command before I could win my campaign!" The big hand rose in kindly protest: "Can't you believe me, General, when I tell you, with God as my witness, that I have never allowed a personal motive or feeling to enter into a single appointment or removal I have made? What I've done has always been exactly what I believed was for the best interests of the country. Can't you believe this?" "No." "In spite of the fact that I risked the dissolution of my Cabinet and the united opposition of my party when I restored you to command?" "No--you had to do it." "Grant then," the persuasive voice went on, "that I have treated you unfairly, that I had personal feelings. Surely you should in this hour of my reckoning, this hour of my Golgotha, when I climb the hill alone and ask the man I have wronged to take my place--surely you should be content with my humiliation? I shall not hesitate to proclaim it from the housetop when I ask for your election. If I have wronged you, my anguish could not be more pitifully complete! Will you do as I ask, and assure the safety of our country?" "I'll do my best to save my country," was the slow, firm answer, "but in my own way." The General rose, bowed stiffly and left the President standing in sorrowful silence, his deep eyes staring into space and seeing nothing. On the morning of July 1st the two armies were rapidly approaching each other, marching in parallel lines stretched over a vast distance--the extreme wings more than forty miles apart. Buford, commanding the advance guard of the Union army, struck Hill's division of the Confederates before the town of Gettysburg and the first gun of the great battle echoed over the green hills and valleys of Pennsylvania. The President caught the flash of the shock from the telegraph wires with a sense of sickening dread. The rear guard of his army was yet forty miles away. What might happen before they were in line God alone could tell. He could not know, of course, that but twenty-two thousand Confederates had reached the field and stood confronting twenty-four thousand under John F. Reynolds, one of the ablest and bravest generals of the Union army. Through every hour of this awful day he sat in the telegraph office of the War Department and read with bated breath the news. The brief reports were not reassuring. The battle was raging with unparalleled fury. At ten o'clock General Reynolds fell dead from his horse in front of his men, and when the news was flashed to Meade he sent Hancock forward riding at full speed to take command.