Thunderous artillery fire echoed off the hills of the Rappahannock River valley. The early morning blasts delivered by 36 cannons that jarred the just-stirring Union army camps at Fredericksburg, Va., however, signaled not the beginning of a great battle. Instead the booming salute that summer 1862 morning opened Fourth of July celebrations for the U.S troops.
The Great Rebellion pulling at the Union was in its second year, and it was the 86th birthday of what a soldier in Brig. Gen. John Gibbon’s “Black Hat” brigade of Midwestern regiments called “this great and once happy Republic.” William Ray of the 7th Wisconsin also added in his journal: “Oh, awful to think that a portion of its inhabitants have tried to & and Disgraced it to their utmost.”
Another of Gibbon’s men—James Northrup of the 2nd Wisconsin—also mentioned the holiday in a letter home: “I suppose you will have a good time….I hope so at least and hope you will not forget us Volunteers but enjoy a little fun for us.”
Of the current military situation, he wrote: “We are still laying on the north bank of the Rappahannock having an easy time of it. We have been expecting that we would be taken down to reinforced [Maj. Gen. George] McClellan but at present it looks as if we were elected to stay where we are for some time to come. The fact is some-body has got to stay here in case of a reverse to McClellan the rebels could march on to Washington without opposition.”
The two soldiers were part of a brigade that included the 2nd, 6th, 7th Wisconsin, and 19th
