Four days after the Battle of Gettysburg, a Union victory that turned the Civil War toward eventual national reunification, a large crowd gathered at the White House to serenade Abraham Lincoln and demand a speech.
There was much to celebrate: It was three days after the Fourth of July, four months before Lincoln would forever link the sacrifice of those who gave the "last full measure of devotion" in his Gettysburg Address. Ulysses S. Grant's army had on July 4 captured Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, and together the Union victories in Pennsylvania and Mississippi marked the beginning of the end of the Confederacy.