"They are always asking of me impossible things. Now that I shall remove Grant from command. I know that his battles have been bloody. Yet how else can we win? The gallant, desperate South has only a handful of men, ragged and half starved, yet they are standing against a million and I have exhaustless millions behind these. With Lee they seem invincible and every move of his ragged men sends a shiver of horror and of admiration through the North. Yet, if Grant fights on he must win. He will wear Lee out--and that is the only way he can beat him. "Besides, his plan is bigger than the single campaign against Richmond. There's a grim figure at the head of a hundred thousand men fighting his way inch by inch toward Atlanta. If Sherman should win and take Atlanta, Lee's army will starve and the end is sure. I can't listen to this clamor. I will not remove Grant--though I've reasons for believing at this moment that he may vote for McClellan for President. "Don't think, my son, that all this blood and suffering is not mine. It is. Every shell that screams from those big guns crashes through my heart. The groans of the wounded, the sighs of the dying, the tears of widows and orphans, of sisters and mothers--all--blue and grey--they are mine. I see and hear it all, feel all, suffer all. "No man who lives to-day is responsible for this war. I could not have prevented it, nor could Jefferson Davis. We are in the grip of mighty forces sweeping on from the centuries. We are fighting the battle of the ages. "But our country's worth it if we can only save it. Out of this agony and tears will be born a united people. We have always been cursed with the impossible contradiction of negro slavery. "There has never been a real Democracy in the world because there has never been one without the shadow of slavery. We must build here a real government of the people, by the people, for the people. It's not a question merely of the fate of four millions of black slaves. It's a question of the destiny of millions of freemen. I hear the tread of coming generations of their children on this continent. Their destiny is in your hand and mine--a free Nation without a slave--the hope, refuge and inspiration of the world. "This Union that we must save will be a beacon light on the shores of time for mankind. It will be worth all the blood and all the tears we shall give for it. The grandeur of our sacrifice will be the birthright of our children's children. It will be the end of sectionalism. We can never again curse and revile one another, as we have in the past. We've written our character in blood for all time. We've met in battle. The Northern man knows the Southerner is not a braggart. The Southerner knows the Yankee is not a coward.