July 4, 2013

150 Years Ago: Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Slavery's Undoing

By J. Robert Smith
This week marks the 150th anniversaries of the Union triumphs at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Both victories were pivotal, signaling the beginning of the end of the Civil War. Thereafter, the Confederacy would fight a defensive war closing with Lee's surrender at Appomattox less than two years later. Abraham Lincoln and many northerners believed that the Union's twin wins were providential, coming as they did around Independence Day (the Vicksburg surrender, in fact, came on July 4). In the America of 2013, the fight against insults to and assaults on liberty continue. As the Founders keenly appreciated, liberty is always pressed and challenged in every generation, to one degree or another. Freedom is a natural but fragile right; it survives and flourishes only when defended -- fiercely at times. The north's Pennsylvania and Mississippi battlefield successes gave teeth to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (issued in the autumn of 1862 in the wake of the Battle of Antietam). The...(Read Full Article)