Gettysburg.
Vicksburg. Names that would go down in American history, remembered
for the frightful cost in lives they exacted on the two sections of
the divided United States.
Gettysburg
is often referred to as the turning point of the war, but at the time
it had yet to gain that distinction. Battered, hungry, and tired, on
July 4, 1863, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Mead's Army of the
Potomac eyeballed each other. Sporadic musketry would break out on
occasion but it was of little consequence. Lee would slip away late
in the day under cover of darkness and rain.
Vicksburg,
Mississippi had been been the target of Ulysses Grant's Army of the
Tennessee for several, unfruitful months. After finally getting below
the city and over to the east bank of the Mississippi River, Grant
was able to chase Confederate John Pemberton's Army of Mississippi
back into the defenses of the town after fighting at places like
Champion Hill and Big Black River. After two bloody assaults on the
citys works May 19 and 22, the siege of the city began. Vicksburg
fell this July Fourth.
Needless
to say, the events at these two places dominate many of the diaries
and letters for this July 4 and the days following, but not all of
them.
William
Bircher had difficulty even entering the army in the summer of 1861
due to his age and small stature. In October, with the aid of the
captain of company K, Second Minnesota Volunteer Infantry and the
permission of his father who also joined, the lad entered the service
as a drummer.
The
Second was a part of William Rosecrans' Army of the Cumberland and
was engaged in the Tullahoma Campaign. July 1-3 had been passed
marching and fighting Braxton Bragg’s rear guard. His diary entry
of July 4, 1863, gives little indication that he knew anything about
the happenings at Vicksburg or Gettysburg:
“
My
seventeenth birthday. A salute of one hundred guns was fired—not on
account of my birthday, but the birth of the republic. Marched four
miles out on the Hillsboro road.”
Bircher
would not mention Gettysburg at all in the next few days, but wrote
that rumors abounded in camp that Lee had been captured with 2500
men. He does not acknowledge the fall of Vicksburg until his entry of
July 8. In fact he gave more notice to John Hunt Morgan and his
excursion through Indiana and Ohio during the same month than to
either of the major Union victories.[1]
Ebenezer
Wescott of the Seventeenth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry had a front
row seat at Vicksburg and in a letter to his mother dated July 7 he
writes:
“...the
Rebels marched outside their breastworks, stacked their arms and laid
their colors across them then marched back again. We had guards in
the line. They marched up and took possession of their arms, and we
formed our line and marched into the city to the music of more than
three hundred cannon, beside fife, and drum, and brass bands.
It
was the finest Fourth of July celebration I ever attended and will
probably never attend another equal to it.” [2]
The
two above accounts show that patriotism was alive and well in Federal
ranks, but Wescott of Wisconsin most likely could attribute much of
the fanfare to the victorious end of a long, hard campaign, but the
significance of the day was not lost on the troops.
Mrs.
Henrietta Fitzhugh Barr, the Confederate lady from Ravenswood, West
Virginia, is still
keeping
her diary. Her angst toward the Federal soldiers is unabated from
1862.
“Saturday,
July 4. A new Co. from Parkersburg (Captain Devin's) are here to
drill the militia (a sort of a trap to get the poor men to enlist to
fight for the Union.)
Not
a word about July 4 until, almost as an afterthought, she sets down
the following:
“Sunday,
July 5. Yesterday passed off so quietly I hardly knew it was the
“Glorious Fourth”. People have to much to occupy their attention
in these diggings to think of celebrating the anniversary, etc. The
Yanks have all left today and we are once more in possession of our
homes, which was not the case while they were with us. A rumor
reaches us of a great battle at Gettysburg. Of course Gen'l Lee is
victorious although the Yankee papers are not willing to give him
full credit for it. We also hear that a division of the Southern Army
is at Beverly where they had an engagement with the enemy and crushed
them. A report that Vicksburg has fallen I do not credit. I must have
better proof than mere hearsay.” [3]
Even
in 1863 the Confederacy was still clinging to the hope of their own
eventual independence. Why would any “true Southerner” doubt that
their armies had been victorious? For that matter why would they
believe “rumors” of disaster befalling their armies? It is an
interesting aspect to the times that people would still cling to
their cause and beliefs despite mounting evidence otherwise. In the
days following Mrs. Barr still had trouble believing that Gettysburg
was less than a Confederate victory and that Vicksburg had indeed
fallen. She dismisses the notions as false due to the fact that the
sources of such talk were “Yankee”.
Captain
Stephen Minot Weld, leaves us a most poignant reflection on this
Independence Day, 1863. His diary entry for the day laments:
“This
year I expected to spend the Fourth in a battle, and find myself
instead in Philadelphia. Were it not for the errand that brought me
here I should have enjoyed the day very much.
We
started for Mr. Landis's house, 1829 Spruce Street at 6A.M. From here
the body was taken to the Lancaster depot, and placed in a private
car. Only the generals brother and sister and staff were present. We
reached Lancaster at about 12 M., and there found an immense crowd of
women, men, and children waiting at the depot. We got into some old
wagons and drove to the cemetery. Here a chapter of the Bible was
read, and prayer delivered, and then poor General Reynolds
disappeared from us for some time to come.” [4]
Weld
was an aid to Major General John F. Reynolds at Gettysburg. Reynolds
had dispatched him with a message to Major General George G. Meade to
hurry the Army of the Potomac along. The Confederates were advancing,
in strong force, and beginning to drive Brigadier General John
Buford’s cavalry pickets in along Chambersburg Pike to the north
and west of town. Reynolds was ahead of his troops (First Corps) but
would bring them up as quickly as possible. He declared he would
fight the Rebels, through the streets of Gettysburg if necessary, but
Meade must hurry. Weld covered the 14 miles to Taneytown in one hour
and twenty minutes on a blown horse and delivered the message to
Meade. On the return trip he met the ambulance bearing Reynolds'
body. The general had been killed shortly after Weld had left him.
“A
braver man or a better soldier than General R. never lived.” Weld
would declare in a letter to his father dated July 3.
Perhaps
at this point in the war the observance of Independence Day was
getting a little shopworn. Although two of the soldiers record
“national salutes” that day in their diaries, there is not much
beyond that. As we see, the lady rebel forgets the day, and the next
day states the people are just to busy to observe it. It must be
remembered that she was in the minority in the town of Ravenswood,
but she makes no mention of the Unionists marking the day with celebration
either. It had “passed quietly”. It appears that two years of
bloodshed had taken the luster from it. 1864 would be little
different, and in ways, much worse.
The
Picket
Sources
1- Bircher, W. (1889) A
Drummer Boys Diary, St. Paul, Minn. St. Paul book and stationary
co. Page 67
2- Wescott, M. Ebenezer (1909),
Civil War Letters, 1861-1865, [Mora? Minn.] Letter No. XIII
3- Barr, H. Fitzhugh, The
Civil War Diary of Mrs. Henrietta Fitzhugh Barr (Barre), 1862-1863,
Ravenswood, Virginia (West Virginia): Marietta, Ohio :Marietta
College, 1961 Page 26
4- Weld, Stephen W., (1912) War
Diaries of Stephen Minot Weld, 1861-1865, Privately printed, The
Riverside Press, Cambridge Mass.
