JULY 4,
1865:
The first postbellum
Fourth of July:
The
time-honored observance of July 4th in 1865 served to help reunite a
nation torn apart by bereavement and exhausted by violence and four years’ talk
of revolution.
Ironically,
although the holiday served to unite, it also highlighted the stark contrasts existing
between North and South and underscored just how far the United States had to
go to be “One Nation” (“under God” or not).
For
America’s history had divided in 1861 into two different and mutually
antagonistic streams, and it had taken a dam of flesh and blood to redirect the
two streams back into a single course.
The
North (and Southern Unionists) saw the day as a vindication of all it had done
to save the Union and perpetuate it:
Iowan
William Loughridge wrote of this Fourth of July, “Eighty nine years ago to-day, our fathers severed the bonds that bound
them to the throne of England, and declared to the world those great principles
of liberty and equality.”
The
Daily North Carolina Advertiser
remarked in Unionist terms that “at this
point in time the Fourth of July ha[s] a peculiar value, not only in our eyes,
but in the eyes of the entire people of the South who for the last four years
have, in part, given up their heritage in the glorious legacy.”
The
Macon Daily Telegraph wrote, “The memory of the illustrious men and deeds
of those times, over which nearly a century has rolled its waves, receives a
new revival in our hearts.”
The
Reverend James Lynch of Augusta, Georgia,
described this July 4th as “Beginning a new epoch in the world’s history.”
What
drew the United States together on July 4, 1865 was the nascent idea of
American Exceptionalism, an idea which had been ironically strengthened, not
weakened, by the Civil War. For, had not a polyglot army of men speaking
English, German, Spanish, French, Polish, Hungarian, and a score of other
tongues come together not only to preserve the idea of “Government of the
People” but to liberate an enslaved race foreign (in 19th Century
terms) to most of them? Had not this
army defeated a self-proclaimed aristocracy and oligarchy that would have
preferred to promote itself as the national leadership? And had it not, despite the ocean of blood
spilt between them, extended the idea of egalitarianism even to the average men
of the South who had bled and died?
To
be sure, Southerners believed in this idea as much as did Northerners: “Under a free government, after even deadly
feud originating in antagonistic theories, a frank dignified, and graceful
yielding of the contest should be satisfactory,” said the former
Confederate Georgia Supreme Court Justice Charles Jenkins.
Despite
the high-sounding words, the United States on July 4, 1865 was already falling
into a morass of confusion. For though many Southerners (and Northerners) believed
in the idea of American
Exceptionalism, the practice of
American Exceptionalism galled them, and would continue to gall them for a full
century at least. The common language expressed in the ringing phrases of the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution meant different things to those
who heard them, North and South, black and white, yellow and red, male and
female, immigrant and native-born.
On
July 4, 1865, the nation already had Jim Crow laws in place. The virtual
extinction of the Native American peoples and cultures was going on apace. The
Chinese faced discriminatory legislation in California. Women had virtually no
rights at all. The mythologies of the Founding Fathers were shared north and
south, but diverged, with the South adulating Robert E. Lee and the North
honoring Abraham Lincoln. While there was no groundswell to stop immigration as
of yet, the first rumblings against “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” predated the
Civil War. America, in short, was a nation where all men might be created equal
but where they were treated with gross inequity.
The
tensions of this July 4th were perhaps too profound, for the great
national festival (which was the only permanent “national holiday” at the time,
and had been a national holiday in the Confederacy as well) was not celebrated
with such intensity again for many years. Excepting the Centennial eleven years
away, the Fourth of July became a day of individual, not civic, celebration
well into the 1880s. It was not until the great wave of immigration in the late
19th and early 20th Centuries, and largely because of the
efforts of “new” Americans, that the Fourth of July resumed its place as the
keystone of the American year.
July
4, 1865 was a day which all Americans celebrated, but on which many mourned.
After four years of war there were far too many empty chairs in too many homes.
To give meaning (or recognizing the meaning) of all this loss, most Americans
cast the Civil War as a “Second American Revolution” on this day, a day when
the victors could rejoice at the sight of the new world they had created, but
upon which the defeated could honorably reflect on the old world they had tried
so hard to preserve.
So
it was in Richmond, Virginia that The
Republic urged: “Let the inspiration
of this day teach the men of the North and of the South to be Americans.”
