It has become a habit of mine to spend a few minutes each year on this day of celebration reading back over this passage from Mr. Twain’s Roughing It:

It was not without regret that I took a last look at the tiny flag (it was thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide) fluttering like a lady’s handkerchief from the topmost peak of Mount Davidson, two thousand feet above Virginia’s roofs, and felt that doubtless I was bidding a permanent farewell to a city which had afforded me the most vigorous enjoyment of life I had ever experienced. And this reminds me of an incident which the dullest memory Virginia could boast at the time it happened must vividly recall, at times, till its possessor dies. Late one summer afternoon we had a rain shower. That was astonishing enough, in itself, to set the whole town buzzing, for it only rains (during a week or two weeks) in the winter in Nevada, and even then not enough at a time to make it worth while for any merchant to keep umbrellas for sale. But the rain was not the chief wonder. It only lasted five or ten minutes; while the people were still talking about it all the heavens gathered to themselves a dense blackness as of midnight. All the vast eastern front of Mount Davidson, overlooking the city, put on such a funereal gloom that only the nearness and solidity of the mountain made its outlines even faintly distinguishable from the dead blackness of the heavens they rested against. This unaccustomed sight turned all eyes toward the mountain; and as they looked, a little tongue of rich golden flame was seen waving and quivering in the heart of the midnight, away up on the extreme summit ! In a few minutes the streets were packed with people, gazing with hardly an uttered word, at the one brilliant mote in the brooding world of darkness. It flickered like a candle-flame, and looked no larger; but with such a background it was wonderfully bright, small as it was. It was the flag!—though no one suspected it at first, it seemed so like a supernatural visitor of some kind—a mysterious messenger of good tidings, some were fain to believe. It was the nation’s emblem transfigured by the departing rays of a sun that was entirely palled from view; and on no other object did the glory fall, in all the broad panorama of mountain ranges and deserts. Not even upon the staff of the flag for that, a needle in the distance at any time, was now untouched by the light and undistinguishable in the gloom. For a whole hour the weird visitor winked and burned in its lofty solitude, and still the thousands of uplifted eyes watched it with fascinated interest. How the people were wrought up! The superstition grew apace that this was a mystic courier come with great news from the war—the poetry of the idea excusing and commending it—and on it spread, from heart to heart, from lip to lip, and from street to street, till there was a general impulse to have out the military and welcome the bright waif with a salvo of artillery!

And all that time one sorely tried man, the tele-graph-operator, sworn to official secrecy, had to lock his lips and chain his tongue with a silence that was like to rend them; for he, and he only, of all the speculating multitude, knew the great things this sinking sun had seen that day in the East—Vicksburg fallen, and the Union arms victorious at Gettysburg! – Pages 412-413

As it is, a wonderful passage of the news of the day. But it just isn’t complete (and completely Twain-ian) without the final paragraph of that chapter:

But for the journalistic monopoly that forbade the slightest revealment of Eastern news till a day after its publication in the California papers, the glorified flag on Mount Davidson would have been saluted and re-saluted, that memorable evening, as long as there was a charge of powder to thunder with; the city would have been illuminated, and every man that had any respect for himself would have got drunk—as was the custom of the country on all occasions of public moment. Even at this distant day 1 cannot think of this needlessly marred supreme opportunity without regret. What a time we might have had!

Now that the stage is set with that, here is something else worth reading today:

Grant, the Indispensable Man

These first few days of July are of importance to every real American. Not simply because the Declaration of Independence was unanimously adopted by the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, the document in which the new United States of America proclaimed its irrevocable break with Great Britain. We rightly celebrate that momentous event in world history tomorrow, the Fourth of July, with fireworks and hot dogs and perhaps even a renewed sense of patriotism in these troubled times when the foundations of our country are under relentless attack from the cultural sappers of the universities all the way to the top of our political system, headed by a senile old man who can only remember the grudges he bears toward the country he now ostensibly leads, and for which he has no love.

Of equal importance in our history, however, are the two epic battles fought during the same period in 1863, during the Civil War. Today is the third day of Gettysburg, the day when Pickett’s Charge spelled the end of southern dash in the face of the north’s overwhelming pluck and endurance, a mad suicidal race across a open field raked by Springfield rifles and twelve-pounder “Napoleons” cannon fire. It was the southern commander Robert E. Lee’s greatest blunder of the war, ending his brief invasion of the north and helping to seal the South’s ultimate defeat.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Ulysses S. Grant was about to cement his place in military history by concluding his nearly two-month long siege of the formidable Confederate fortress of Vicksburg. …

Well worth your time to read in full…but, as you do, don’t miss this most critical item:

That Grant was the greatest American of all time is indisputable.

Let the debate begin! “Greatest” is truly a high bar…but I will stand firmly with anyone willing to put Grant among the top three of all time. I have said it before in these on-line ramblings that the history of the history of Grant is just as important as the man and the events he shaped. The strongest arguments against the “greatest American” claim (or even my top three hedge) are likely swayed by bad history. For those interested, see here, here, and here for starters. But I digress.

Returning now to the finale of the Michael Walsh column of interest:

Grant was there for his country in its hour of need. Now that a new, even deadlier threat has emerged thanks to the neo-Marxist Left that considers our entire country illegitimate, who will take his place? Only one thing is certain: he has to crush them as mercilessly as Grant crushed the South, except this time there can be no magnanimity, only unconditional surrender.

“Crush them”…”unconditional surrender”…all spot on…except for the “there can be no magnanimity” part. Understandable sentiments to be sure by those who truly see the game around us…and those in the trenches. Unfortunately, the only victory worth having requires the fortification of American liberty on the other side of this current abyss…and a soft landing of that sort for 350 million people currently living in two (or more) completely different realities intermixed across a large common land mass requires “ruthless…men who are often of little use [in normal times]” as well as gifted leaders the likes of which are very rare, even on these shores.

As is common in American history, events very often present the right man and the right time…the question facing We the People as 2024 looms larger and larger: Total corruption and those who foisted “a senile old man who can only remember the grudges he bears toward the country he now ostensibly leads, and for which he has no love” on us for four years…or “Mean tweets”? (Of course, there is also “Other” which is quickly becoming known as “worse than mean tweets” and the habitual rationalizers among us will pussyfoot around that for as long as they can. As the system plays its way out, the same question will need to be answered by all.)

Have a wonderful Independence Day 2023.