Vicksburg inspired flag salutes
By James Breig
Americans are familiar with the Battle of Gettysburg, the Union victory 150 years ago that turned back a Confederate attempt to invade the North. Less well known is the simultaneous Union triumph in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
As a result, the upcoming July 1-4 sesquicentennial of those dual turning points in the Civil War is likely to focus more on Gettysburg that Vicksburg, even though President Lincoln declared that the latter city was the key to ultimate victory. When it was achieved, he said that “the Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.” Until then, the Confederacy had controlled the “mighty Mississippi” and cut off Union shipping.
The win on the river inspired prose and poetry about flags. For example, a reporter for a Cincinnati newspaper described how Northern troops climbed to the top of the Vicksburg courthouse on the Fourth of July and “flung out our banner of beauty and glory to the breeze.” One soldier led the others in singing “Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys.”
Several journals reprinted a letter written by a witness to that courthouse celebration. The author exulted that “once more on the natal day of American liberty…the dear old flag…floats where the traitor signal floated but yesterday.”
Growing more poetic, that writer continued: “Hearts leap, but the flag floats. Hearts break, but the flag floats. Joy goes up from the nation, for the flag floats….Treason trembles and patriotism triumphs, for the flag floats.”
In another reaction to the victory and the appearance of Old Glory, someone turned classically poetic and wrote “Vicksburg Is Ours,” which appeared in the Salem (Massachusetts) Observer:
O’er sea-waves beating on the shore,
’Bove thunders ere the storms are o’er,
O’er cataracts in headlong roar,
High, high it towers.
O’er all the breastworks and the moats
The Starry Flag in triumph floats,
And heroes thunder from their throats,
‘Vicksburg is ours!’