Andrew Johnson’s first Fourth of July: A rebirth of freedom

Andrew Johnson, who survived the assassination plot that killed Abraham Lincoln and gravely wounded Secretary of State William Seward, had been president for less than three months when he marked the first Fourth of July celebration following the end of the Civil War. Citing an “indisposition,” the new president was unable to travel as planned to Gettysburg July 4 to help mark a new national monument at a military cemetery on the battlefield. He sent his regrets in a July 3 letter to event organizers in which he discussed the first Independence Day celebration after the war. On July 5, Johnson would sign the executive order for the execution of four of the plotters in the assassination. The following is an excerpt from Johnson’s July 3 letter to David Wills, chairman of the Gettysburg memorial committee:

“Four years of struggle for our nation’s life have been crowned with success; armed treason is swept from the land; our ports are re-opened; our relations with other nations are of the most satisfactory character; our internal commerce is free; our soldiers and sailors resume the peaceful pursuits of civil life; our flag floats in every breeze; and the only barrier to our national progress — human slavery — is for ever at an end. Let us trust that each recurring Fourth of July shall find out nation stronger in numbers, stronger in wealth, stronger in the harmony of its citizens, stronger in its devotion to nationality and freedom. …

“In your joy to-morrow, I trust you will not forget the thousands of whites, as well as blacks, whom the war has emancipated, who will hail this Fourth of July with a delight which no previous Declaration of Independence ever gave them. Controlled so long by ambitious, selfish leaders, who used them for their own unworthy ends, they are now free to serve and cherish the government against whose life they, in their blindness, struck. I am greatly mistaken if in the States lately in rebellion we do not henceforward have an exhibition of such loyalty and patriotism as were never seen nor felt there before.”