July 4, 1863. Few anniversaries of America’s Independence Day have had such significance for the republic. In the midst of a fratricidal war that was being fought over differing interpretations of the American Constitution, this date stands as one of the most important turning points for Northern victory. That victory settled the question of whether America was one nation or a confederation of independent nations. To use a modern analogy, the victory that the armies of the Union achieved ultimately achieved determined that the United States was held together with Super Glue instead of spit and mud.
In the hot, dry summer of 1863, both sides had reason to hope for victory. In the Eastern Theater, Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was fighting on Northern soil for only the second time thus far in the war. Out west on the Mississippi, a Confederate flag still flew over Vicksburg, although the little town had been besieged, shelled and starving for weeks.
But by the end of July 4, Southern hopes had crashed like a giant magnolia tree in a hurricane. Lee was headed back to Virginia with a hospital train reported to be 27 miles long. Nearly 30,000 of his men were dead, wounded or missing.
That same day, John Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg and 20,000 Southern soliders to Ulysses S. Grant. Elsewhere along the Mississippi, Union army and inland navy troops repulsed a Confederate attempt to seize Helena, Arkansas.
Ultimate Union victory was not assured. That would come with Abraham Lincoln’s reelection in 1864 and the grinding down of Southern armies until they finally surrendered in April 1865. But there are few, if any, examples in history of one side achieving three major victories in such scattered locations on a single day. The North rejoiced, at least until the casualty totals rolled in.
As for Southerners, their dream of a new nation drifted away on a blood-stained tide. The city of Vicksburg would not officially celebrate the 4th of July for a century.
In 2009, we are still in many ways a divided nation, split by the intense partisan politics of the last couple decades and ideological schisms. We are still fighting over different interpretations of the Constitution. Hopefully, the angry rhetoric of our times, which often approaches that of the years leading up to America’s Civil War, won’t result in another schism. Nothing in any society can ever be said to permanent. Ask General Motors and F. W. Woolworth. But for this Independence Day, 2009, Americans of all regions of the country proudly salute the unmarred descendant of the tattered Stars and Stripes that flew over the fields of Gettysburg and the hills of Vicksburg and Helena on that remarkable July 4 one hundred forty-six years ago.
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