Twin victories on Fourth of July
By James Breig
This year’s Fourth of July marks not only the 237th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but also the 150th anniversary of two seminal battles of the Civil War: Gettysburg and Vicksburg. If you subtract 150 from 237, you get a number associated with Abraham Lincoln.
The twin historic conflicts, which spanned the country from Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River, raged simultaneously and ended with Union victories on July 4, 1863.
Remarking a few days later on the triumph in Vicksburg, The New York Times noted that “the State of Mississippi [seceded] on the 9th day of January 1861. Four days afterward, the Governor…ordered artillery to Vicksburg….From that time until the Fourth of July 1863 – a period of nearly two years and a half – there has been no passing of that point on the great river….For the last four days, the passage has again been free to the American flag.”
The significance of the date of the victories was not lost on President Lincoln. Learning of the fall of Vicksburg, he appeared in a window of the White House to address a joyous crowd that had paraded through the Capital to serenade him.
“How long ago is it?” he asked, according to newspaper reports, and then answered: “Eighty odd years since, on the fourth day of July, for the first time in the history of the world, a nation…declared as self-evident truth that all men are created equal….That was the birth day of the United States of America.”
By the time he spoke at the dedication of the military cemetery in Gettysburg in November 1863, Lincoln had refined his off-the-cuff “80 odd years” to the immortal phrase: “Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
A U.S. consul in England, writing to Lincoln’s Secretary of State, shared how significant the dual victories were overseas. “Our own flag staff…is the most prominent flag staff in Manchester,” he wrote, “yet I do not often raise the flag, not wishing to make a cheap display of it; but on such occasions as Gettysburg [and] Vicksburg I hoist the old flag – and reverently thank God.”
Happy Fourth, a perfect day to wave flags!