As we all celebrate the events of July 4, 1776, it's also worth considering the events of another July 4, 87 years later.
On July 1, 1863, things were looking grim for the Union. Southern armies had invaded the north and were tooling around western Pennsylvania. In the west, Vicksburg, the key to the Mississippi, still held out, and Union armies had made brilliant maneuvers but little actual progess. If the South could win a victory at Gettysburg, it might still hold Vicksburg. And if, at the end of the week it held both, it might be able to claim that it had made a nation.
As it happened, at the end of the week, it held neither. On July 3, the moments just before Pickett's Charge were to be known as the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. I had the pleasure of touring the Gettysburg battlefield on July 4 about 15 years ago. To stare out across that expanse that those troops covered, in the midday heat, is to see that they never had a chance.
One day later, July 4, Vicksburg would surrender to Ulysses S. Grant, who would go on to enjoy some further military and political success back east.
On July 7, 1863, a crowd gathered outside the White House to serenade President Lincoln. Here is is response:
Fellow-citizens: I am very glad indeed to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I that you for this call, but I do most sincerely thank Almight God for the occasion on which you have been called. How long ago is it? - eight odd years - since on the Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the world a nation by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that "all men are created equal." That was the birthday of the United States of America. Since then the Fourth of July has had several peculiar recognitions. The two most distinguished men in the framing and support of the Declaration were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams - the one having penned it and the other sustained it the most forcibly in debate - the only two of the fifty-five who sustained it being elected President of the United States. Precisely fifty years after they put their hands to the paper it pleased Almight God to take both from the stage of action. This was indeed an extraordinary and remarkable event in our history.Another President, five years after, was called from this stage of existence on the same day and month of the year; and now, on this last Fourth of July just passed, when we have a gigantic Rebellion, at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow the principle that all men were created equal, we have the surrender of a most powerful position and army on that very day, and not only so, but in a succession of battles in Pennsylvania, near to us, through three days, so rapidly fought that they might be called one great battle on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of the month of July; and on the 4th the cohorts of those who opposed the declaration that all men are created equal, "turned tail," and run...
This after Lincoln's disappointment in Meade's failure to chase and destroy Lee's army. The war would go on for almost two more years.
It's also worth looking at Lincoln's letter to Grant, dated July 13, 1863. Grant had audaciously run the river below Vicksburg's batteries overlooking the river, crossed the river, marched through the outlying swamps, and laid siege to the town.
My dear General,I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did - march the troops, across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Guld, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.
Yours very truly
Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Harry Reid, take note.
