This Week in The Civil War: Sunday, July 10

Views on Independence

As the Union calls up more troops, the 11-state Confederacy is also marshaling its soldiers for war. From farms and cities throughout the South, more units are organizing for the fight, the names of the officers and numbers of rank-and-file troops listed in newspaper accounts of the era. Some of the men are so young, teenagers still, that they must ask their fathers' permission to fight. The Southern Recorder of Milledgeville, Ga., editorialized on July 9, 1861, about what the recently concluded Independence Day meant for many in the South: "Hitherto, when strangers visited Philadelphia their first inclination, and, as they esteemed it, their first duty was to see Independence Hall ... The Day, however, which has been thus consecrated in the annuals of Liberty, does not attach as the exclusive property of the North, like Independence Hall in which the Congress of 1776 framed and signed the immortal Declaration. The people of the Southern Confederacy freely give up the Hall, and wish that the North may carefully preserve it as a hallowed memento of a common struggle and a common triumph; but the principles of the Declaration the South will forever cherish, as they are taught by it that Governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed."