Five Important American Events That Happened on July 4th

July 4th is the day we celebrate our independence, despite the fact that the actual act declaring independence passed the Continental Congress two days earlier.

Today, it's a day of fireworks, barbecues, and celebration.  In the past, however, it also was remembered for humiliating defeat, sad passings, and decisive victories.  Each involved one of America's most respected figures.

Fort Necessity at Great Meadows.  Here in a clearing in western Pennsylvania began a world war that transformed the British Empire and gave an American icon his first taste of military responsibility.

Europe had divided into two camps: Britain and her small club of allies against France and the most formidable empires on the Continent.  Any spark could set off a war covering the globe.  France and the British colony of Virginia both claimed the Forks of the Ohio, now Pittsburgh.  Virginia's colonial government sent 19 year old Major George Washington to set their claim on more solid ground.

Washington found Fort Duquesne already built at the forks, watched his Indian allies butcher a French patrol, then went to Great Meadow and built one of the worst fortifications ever constructed.  It sat near a source of water, but was surrounded by high ground on all sides, had large gaps in the wall, and had treelines within shooting distance.  The French could fire into it all day while hiding behind the massive virgin timber.

The Virginians fled the fort on July 4th.  French troops caught up, forced Washington to sign humiliating terms of capitulation, then sent him home to Virginia who immediately put him to work . . . building forts. 

July 4, 1754.  Proof that failure teaches better than success. 

One of the greatest friendships/rivalries in the history of this, or any other country.  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

They knew each other for nearly 50 years, although no one would say they spent that long as friends.  Adams' careful editing of the Declaration of Independence chased Jefferson from the Continental Congress into a multi-year pout.

Jefferson's self-imposed exile eventually ended.  Both men spent the post war period struggling to represent the United States (one nation or 13, many asked before passage of the Constitution.)  Both Adams and Jefferson earned more respect as individuals than they could sell for their country.  Their intellects differed, Adams more pragmatic, Jefferson more idealistic, but they complemented each other at this point even as they mainly interacted through correspondence.

Later, Jefferson and Adams clashed.  Not so much when Jefferson served as a restive secretary of state and Adams an ignored vice president, but  certainly when both ran for president.  One of the few major flaws in the founding document gave second place in the Electoral College the vice presidency.  The Federalist Adams had to constantly fend off attacks from his own vice president in the highly partisan press of the time.

Both men ran again in 1800.  Reason turned some of the more vicious partisan statements into campaign ads. Their mutual hatred lasted for well over a decade after.

Eventually hard feelings softened.  The two preeminent American intellects of the early 19th century sat on the political trash heap, rarely consulted.  Adams' son John Quincy and Jefferson's political son James Madison assumed the stage.  Between the two men emerged a remarkable series of letters about a wide spectrum of subjects.  Much of the correspondence involved questions, answers, and responses to answers.  

Intellectual sharing grew into a fully reborn and close friendship that lasted until July 4th, 1826.  As Adams lay on his deathbed, his final words were, Jefferson still lives.

But Adams was wrong.  His former bitter rival and close friend had died the same day.

One thing often forgotten about the Civil War, the Union did not see its victory as inevitable until the very end.  Northern superiority in so many fields could not easily defeat a fully mobilized Confederacy fighting on its own soil.  

The Union in 1862 had come close to capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond, but had to retreat despite being in sight of its goal.  Antietam was technically a victory for the Union in the fall of the year, but left Lincoln frustrated because General McClellan seemed uninterested in finishing off Lee's army.

Meanwhile, social cohesion in the South deteriorated.  Most of the Confederate States saw their ability to enforce authority break down in the back country.  Lee knew that European help would not come and that the South would lose a war of attrition.  He gambled on a master stroke: striking north.

Meanwhile, Ulysses S. Grant hammered his own war of attrition against Mississippi Valley strongholds.  Like Lincoln, he understood the Confederacy would only lose when its armies were destroyed.  He ground away at strong points that the South felt compelled to defend, like Vicksburg.

Lee's three day assault on fortified Union lines near Gettysburg cost his army.  The best of his beloved Virginians died on the third day and his Army of Northern Virginia staggered home on July 4th.

Grant surrounded Vicksburg, last Confederate held position on the Mississippi.  Over several weeks, his tightening grip strangled Confederate resistance.  When Vicksburg ran out of victuals, its commander proposed surrender.  Grant refused to accept until the 4th of July.

Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Other Thoughts

A century and a half ago, the bloodiest battle on American soil erupted.  Over the course of three days, more American soldiers died than in ten years of fighting the Vietnam War.  Lessons and meanings from this battle both shaped the next century of warfare and were also ignored.  Following are a few in no certain order of importance:

Gettysburg set the tone for many 20th Century battles  Every officer educated in warfare in the first half of the 1800s learned Napoleonic ideas of the war of movement.  Robert E. Lee generally followed those precepts.  Military thinkers going back to classical Europe and ancient China warned against attacking a superior enemy on his own ground.  Lee, understanding the accelerating degeneration of the Confederate home front, sought to attack a stronger enemy well entrenched on the high ground.  Had Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson had lived and been there, he certainly would have counseled Lee to wait until a portion of George Meade's Union force became isolated, then throw the whole weight of his army on it, annihilate it, then move on quickly.

Instead, Lee on the final day attacked the center of the Union line across open ground.  Confederate troops marched in formation against artillery and infantry positioned behind a stone wall.  Lee lost the core of his army that day.

World War I is full of "Gettysburg" type battles.  Troops bashing themselves against unmovable obstacles of enemy formations for four years.  Amazingly, few in Europe learned about modern warfare from this.  The dash of the Prussian Army against France's unprepared forces in 1871 seduced Europe. 

Gettysburg may have prevented a Northern revolution We remember the sanguinary days early in July 1863 in Pennsylvania, but forget the horrific events in New York City at about the same time.  New York had suffered economically from the elimination of Southern trade.  Almost as much as Baltimore, New York City sympathized with the Rebellion.  Economic problems combined with the grind of a seemingly (at that point) unwinnable war, the draft, and a substantial black population created a catalyst for social explosion. 

These were some of New York City's darkest days.  Rioters attacked draft offices, then turned their attention to the black population.  Victims hung from street lamps.  Not even an orphanage for black children was spared.  Republican editors handed out guns to defend their lives and newspaper property.  Overwhelmed, the New York City police had to be reinforced by regiments from nearby Gettysburg.  If those units had been much farther away, the riot could have bloomed into something much worse.

Don't forget the other battle that officially ended the same day July 4th marked the last day of Gettysburg.  George Meade won the field; Lee stumbled away dazed.  In Mississippi, Ulysses S. Grant won a victory no less significant.  The Siege of Vicksburg had actually ended a few days prior, but Grant insisted that the Confederates officially surrender on July 4th.  From then, Union forces dominated the length of the Mississippi River.

Grant's victories meant that Lincoln could follow his instinct and move the fighting general into command, despite the many naysayers.  Meade's inability to crush Lee's army after Gettysburg also made this decision an easy one.

Intelligence  For the first time in American history, an official and permanent military intelligence bureau played a key role in a battle.  Stonewall Jackson had been a pioneer in his insistence upon accurate maps, but these came from local help.  Meade had the services of the Bureau of Military Intelligence.  They employed spies, mapmakers, and analysts to track and predict the movement of Lee.  Lee relied on traditional intelligence gathering, the cavalry.  Unfortunately, Lee's cavalry was gallivanting across the rich countryside. 

No one would ever give Meade credit for being a superior general to Lee.  But his information gave his teh advantage over Lee's relative blindness.

Military thought  Lee, McClellan, and other generals on both sides thought in Napoleonic ways.  Points on a map represented strategic objectives.  Capture an important city and win the war.  Why anyone thought the capture of Richmond in 1862 (when Union forces approached within ten miles of it) would halt the war remains unclear.  Frederick the Great never quit when Russians seized Berlin.  George Washington gave up New York and Philadelphia.  So long as his army remained intact, he fought. 

Lincoln came to understand that the strategic objectives of the Union Army had to be the military might and resources of the Confederacy itself.  William Tecumseh Sherman attacked the farmland and infrastructure of Georgia.  Phil Sheridan systematically annihilated the Shenandoah Valley's farmland.  Grant only pushed against Richmond because Lee's Army of Northern Virginia insisted on defending it.

World War II saw a similar dynamic in three dimensions.  Strategic bombing aimed to eliminate industrial resources and infrastructure.  Hitler's armies and Japan's navy needed to disappear before the Allies could move against their respective homelands. 

In the 1940s the Allies attacked the enemy population themselves.  Royal Air Force bombers launched attacks against German neighborhoods.  The Red Army pillaged, massacred, and raped German civilians in Prussia (to be fair, Germans acted the same while in Russia.)  Just like when Sherman fired civilian homes in Georgia, this did little to eliminate the will to fight.  It merely inflamed the hatred. 

Just a few thoughts as we pause to remember Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and their meanings in war.