Cry, Our Beloved Country

stricken down in cruel and unnatural war

unHappy Fourth of July!

Yesterday the Republican-leaning New-York Times reflected on General McClellan’s retreat from near Richmond and got more fired up for the North to do whatever it took to put down the rebellion. In this editorial a Democrat-leaning paper from upstate New York looks at the general state of affairs in the country four score and six years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence and hopes everything could just be put back to the status quo ante.

From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in 1862:

Our National Anniversary.

The recurrence of the birthday of our National Independence has heretofore been the occasion for universal congratulation and rejoicing. How different the scene in 1862! Instead of Peace, Union, and Prosperity, we have Civil War, Disunion and all their concomitant evils. Instead of National rejoicing, the land is filled with mourning. Upon every breeze is borne the the sad, silent messenger of death. Hearts are bleeding all over the land at the loss of loved ones, stricken down in this most cruel and unnatural, war. What a day for rejoicing! And for what can we rejoice? Our common interests are gone, sacrificed for the sake of our jealousies and passions. Fanaticism and madness rule the hour, and our beloved country seems to be fast drifting toward anarchy and ruin.

Counsels Union over sectionalism

Our people must be humiliated, and made to feel their sins and transgressions or all is lost. We are a guilty nation, proud, wicked, and vain-glorious. If we have not sought war, we are at least guilty of hastening it upon our fellow-countrymen. To avoid all of its horrors we should acknowledge our wrongs and retrace our steps. Our common history must be read and studied anew, and we must again dwell on the glorious deeds of a common ancestry, while a thick and oblivious veil must be drawn over the awful and tragic events of our recent history. The blessings and glories of the past must be rehearsed. We must dwell upon the counsels of Washington and diligently fan the flame of fraternal love between the children of the Father of his Country. We must anticipate, with the uplifted eye of faith and hope, the glories of our united nationality in the future ages; and we must gaze on the splendid vision with united purposes and aspirations for our country’s glory and welfare. One hope – one heart – one future – one magnificent destiny! Inspired by these feelings and actuated by these sentiments only, can Peace be restored and our People again made happy and prosperous. Until then all national rejoicing is mere mockery.

But unfortunately it doesn’t seem like the issue of slavery was ever going to go away peacefully.

hold the fireworks?

The Richmond Daily Dispatch (July 4, 1862) appears to have moved beyond “our common history”:

The Fourth of July.

South thwarts his “magnificent” plans for the Fourth

The Yankee Congress, a week or two ago, objected to adjourning, because McClellan would probably be in Richmond by the Fourth of July, and they wished to be in readiness to enact any legislation which that event might require. They are a grand people for dramatic effects. On the last Fourth of July there was to have been, according to the orders of that magnificent ass, Abraham Lincoln, and a flaming programme in the New York Herald, a general, combined, simultaneous march of the universal Yankee columns, East and West, upon the strongholds of the Southern Rebellion, which were to be chewed up and exterminated without farther delay. But the North was not able to celebrate its Fourth of July in this manner, and the South put off its celebration till the Twenty-first! It will hardly be able to celebrate its next Fourth in Richmond. What it wants to celebrate it for at all, having sacrificed all the principles which it was designed to commemorate, is beyond our comprehension.

As the Harper’s Weekly (hosted at Son of the South) from June 28, 1862 shows, the North was making some progress in capturing rebel territory:

Southern perspective – that choking feeling?

July 4, 1776

Remembering a brother killed at Savage’s Station