At The Gilder Lehrman Insitute of American History is a letter written from William Clegg of the 2nd Louisiana on July 4, 1861. The letter is posted below:
From the diary of WILLIAM CLEGG of Louisiana, a Confederate soldier in the 2nd Louisiana
Infantry, July 4, 1861 (Gilder Lehrman Collection, GLC03133)
4th July, 1861 –
Camp in a fever of excitement, on account of rumors from below, a battle expected in a day or so This is the first 4th dawning upon our glorious confederacy, but what a change has come upon the country, “the home of the free the land of the brave.” We are a disrupted Union, & feel sensibly that after all, no written constitution & laws framed by the wisest of our ancestors, no comon country made sacred by the blood of our forefathers, no brotherly share in past victories is proof against a separation that wreaks its passion in slaughter, & furnishes with the victims of the battle field so many proofs of the fact, that our ones the best of human governments is a failure, & was but an experiment.
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