"At twelve o’clock the 43rd Regiment stacked arms and General Reynolds gave
us a short lecture and sent us back to our respective places above Vicksburg
to await the enemy’s disposition of us. We were sorry we had to bow to our
oppressors but thankful that we were alive. We are proud to know that we
had held a terrible foe 48 days on twelve days rations." (Issac Stamper, Fife Master, Co. F)
Saturday morning...July 4, 1863.
The Fourth of July.
This is the Fourth of July. In former days it was saluted with the firing of guns, and was honored by
grand parades, orations, dinners, and toasts. The Declaration of Independence was generally read. The
exertions oratorical were considered too great for one man — so there was a reader and an orator. The
reader recited on solemn and emphatic tones the Declaration. He began with energy, and rose as he
continued, until he thundered in the conclusion wherein our forefathers declared that held the British as
they held "the rest of nkind --Enemies in War, in peace, friends." Here the roof was perceptibly stated
by the powerful and indignant tones the youthful patriot just from college, to the task was usually
assigned, and who, again the part of the signers, boldly defiantly flag down the gauntlet to the annous
King of Britain.
"Enemies in war, in peace, friends!"-- let us just remark upon this magnanimous pronunciamento of our
Revolutionary thers that while it was rather dramatic they were assuming new relations towards a
really great people, a people who, all their arrogance and overbearing dis, they could still have some
respect for that a contract, say the worst we can of do they present to the Yankees! Could Confederacy
— could a State of the Confederacy-- to-day towards the Yankees, did our ancestors towards the
British, that we hold them as we hold the rest of man--enemies in war, in peace, friends?" ave not their
brutalities — their war of ra --their burning of towns and churches-- burning of agricultural
implements--their ming the servile population against our people — their efforts, in every conceivable
form robbery, destruction, and by all kinds of inbolical agencies, to break the spirit of our and starve
them into subjection — formed so impassable between the North and the South that the sentiment of
friendship is that can never exist between them as nalous? Hatred of the North will be a legacy future
generations of the South that will as long as the Governments themselves, and probably survive them.
We can never told the Yankees "as we hold the rest of mankind!"
But to return to the subject of the Fourth the oration was generally allotted to promising young men of
the localities as a first effort, and was therefore as studied and ornate is possible for a youthful and
ambitious mind all of expectation and hope to make it. It was always an animated paper. If it did not
here to the rules applicable to such efforts mattered it? The day was one of enthusiasm, bursting
patriotism, and jollification. The eagle was in the ascendant, and that bird ing the presiding genius of the
day, even thos itself was, for the time, consecrated. After the oration the parades, the dinners, the asts,
and the parting salutes. Everybody was gay — everybody was fired with patriotism, and many with
wine or whiskey. The South was therefore a jolly day — it was a day the like of which is necessary for
every nation; for no nation that is civilized and humanized can got along without its holidays-- days of
festivity and general joy.
Thus we had our Fourth of July. The day is now changed. We have no holiday. The ruthless enemy who
has trampled upon every principle and right commemorated by the day itself, gives no intermission for
festive enjoyments, were we so inclined. It is, however, still dear to Southern people; and they prove
their devotion to it by maintaining with their blood and their lives the rights and principles asserted by
our fathers in 76. The Yankees will probably to-day renew their professions of respect and devotion for
them, notwithstanding that they have crushed them into the dust. They are hypocrites and Pharisees
enough for that.
The Declaration of Independence, fringed and gilt with certain transcendentalisms, imbibed from the
French philosophy of the day, with which Mr. Jefferson and his contemporaries had become somewhat
inoculated, set forth the popular rights for which we are this day battling. The main principles it
asserted the Yankees never could approve. It is that Governments, "derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed."
The Yankees think they have a right to govern the Southern people against their consent. They have
desecrated both the day and the principles which it commemorates, and the very best way in which we
can celebrate it is by whipping them. A good victory over them would be the best tribute we could offer
to the memory of the signers of the Declaration. Let us pray for one. (The Richmond Daily Dispatch)
| July 4, 1863 [Saturday] |
| A Day in the Life of the Confederacy |