Laying of the Corner - Stone of the Monument.

IS Excellency, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, having been prevented from being present, by reason of severe illness, sent the Marshal of the District of Columbia, Judge Gooding, as his special messenger, who presented the following communication from His Excellency:

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., July 3rd, 1865.

MR. DAVID WILLS, Chairman, etc., Gettysburg, Pa.

DEAR SIR,—I had promised myself the pleasure of participating in person in the proceedings at Gettysburg to-morrow. That pleasure, owing to my indisposition, I am reluctantly compelled to forego. I should have been pleased, standing on that twice consecrated spot, to share with you your joy at the return of peace, to greet with you the surviving heroes of the war who come back with light hearts, though heavy laden with honors, and with you to drop grateful tears to the memory of those who will never return.

Unable to do so in person, I can only send you my greetings, and assure you of my full sympathy with the purpose and spirit of your exercises to-morrow. Of all the anniversaries of the Declaration of Independence, none has been more important and significant than that upon which you

assemble.

Four years of struggle for our nation's life have been crowned with success; armed treason is swept from the land; our ports are re-opened; our relations with other nations are of the most satisfactory character; our internal commerce is free; our soldiers and sailors resume the peaceful pursuits of civil life; our flag floats in every breeze; and the only barrier to our national progress— human slavery-is for ever at an end. Let us trust that each recurring Fourth of July shall find our nation stronger in numbers, stronger in wealth, stronger in the harmony of its citizens, stronger in its devotion to nationality and freedom.

As I have often said, I believe that God sent this people on a mission among the nations of the earth, and that when He founded our nation He founded it in perpetuity. That faith sustained me through the struggle that is past. It sustains me now that new duties are devolved upon me and new dangers threaten us. I feel that whatever the means He uses, the Almighty is determined to preserve us as a people.

And since I know the love our fellow-citizens bear their country, and the sacrifices they have made for it, my abiding faith has become stronger than ever that a "government of the people" is the strongest as well as the best of governments.

In your joy to-morrow, I trust you will not forget the thousands of whites, as well as blacks, whom the war has emancipated, who will hail this Fourth of July with a delight which no previous Declaration of Independence ever gave them. Controlled so long by ambitious, selfish leaders, who used them for their own unworthy ends, they are now free to serve and cherish the government against whose life they, in their blindness, struck. I am greatly mistaken if in the States lately in rebellion we do not henceforward have an exhibition of such loyalty and patriotism as were never seen nor felt there before.

Having consecrated a National Cemetery, you are now to lay the corner-stone of a National Monument, which, in all human probability, will rise to the full height and proportion you design. Noble as this monument of stone may be, it will be but a faint symbol of the grand monument which, if we do our duty, we shall raise among the nations of the earth upon the foundation laid nine and eighty years ago in Philadelphia. Time shall wear away and crumble this monument, but that, based as it is, upon the consent, virtue, patriotism and intelligence of the people, each year shall make firmer and more imposing.

Your friend and fellow-citizen,

ANDREW JOHNSON.

Remarks and Prayer were made by the Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D. D.

Ceiver

ORATION OF MAJOR-GENERAL O. O. HOWARD.

As I stand here to-day before a peaceful audience, composed as it is of beautiful ladies, joyous children and happy citizens, and think of my last visit to this place two years ago, and of the terrible scenes in which it was my lot to bear a part, I cannot help exclaiming, "How changed! how changed!" It is the same rich landscape, broad and beautiful, covered with every variety of natural objects to please the eye; the same wooded ridges and cultivated fields; the same neat little town clinging to the hill-side; the same broad avenues of approach; the same ravines and creeksbut, thank God! the awful magnificence of hosts arrayed against each other in deadly strife is wanting. Yonder heights are no longer crowned with hostile cannon; the valleys do not reverberate with their fearful roar; the groves and the houses do not give back the indescribable peal of the musketry fire. And oh, how like a dream, to-day seems that sad spectacle of broken tombstones, prostrate fences, and the ground strewn with our wounded and dead companions! Then follows, after battle, the mingling of friends and enemies, with suffering depicted in all possible modes of portraiture. The surgeons, with resolute hearts and bloody hands; the pale faces of relatives searching for dear ones; the busy sanitary and Christian workers-all pass before my mind in group after group.

My friends, my companions, my countrymen, suffer me to congratulate you anew to-day, this Fourth day of July, 1865, that this sad work is completely done, and that sweet peace has really dawned upon us.

On the nineteenth of November, 1863, this National Cemetery, a pious tribute to manliness and virtue, was consecrated. The Hon. Edward Everett delivered an address in his own rich, clear, elegant style, which, having been published, has long ago become historical, and affords us a complete and graphic account of the campaign and battle of Gettysburg. I am deeply grateful to this noble patriot for his indefatigable industry in securing facts, and for the clear narrative he has left us of this