July 3rd

Before the commencement of fireworks and happiness on Independence Day, I always think about July 3rd--the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg which marked the high tide of the Confederacy with Pickett's Charge (actually the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge) against the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. If you've ever been there, it seems impossible that anyone would have survived that assault--it's an endless march up a slope and into the massed fire of Federal artillery and Springfield rifles. Brave men on both sides and that fateful day broke the back of the desperate gamble of Lee's invasion of the North and with it, any real hope for victory in the awful war.

When I was a kid long ago, one of our favorite war games was "Rebels and Yankees." Essentially, all of us were Rebels--nobody would have dreamed of being the other--and, armed with toy guns or sticks, we were forever successful in our numerous attacks against the blue clad hordes of our imaginations. The Civil War was still something that people talked about then and even though we were not well versed on the actual course of the war, we were fairly well aware that we were loyal Southerners and smarted at our loss of the war. Maybe hard to understand for others, especially in light of the rabid allegiance by Southerners to the United States Military and to the Stars and Stripes. Maybe it's endemic that we lend true faith and allegiance a little more readily than elsewhere. Whatever the case, that was the deal.

Later, I came across something when reading Faulkner's, "Intruder in the Dust" that has stuck with me like few other things and resonates as strongly with me now as during my long ago youth:

"For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on the July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet..."

Lest we forget.