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On July 7, 1863, Abraham Lincoln was anxiously awaiting news from the battlefield at Vicksburg. Consumed with concern for the troops during war, he did not participate in any 4th of July festivities. When news finally came of the Union victory at Vicksburg, hundreds marched to the White House for an impromptu celebration, complete with military band. Observers say that Lincoln’s delight could not be hidden as the weight and burden that had marked his countenance for years was partially lifted. Reluctant too speak, he finally responded to the wishes of the people and offered the following unscripted words.
I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called. How long ago is it? Eighty odd years since, upon the fourth day of July, for the first time in the world, a union body of representatives was assembled to declare as a self-evident truth that all men were created equal.
That was the birthday of the United States of America. Since then the fourth day of July has had several very peculiar recognitions. The two most distinguished men who framed and supported that paper, including the particular declaration I have mentioned, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the one having framed it, and the other sustained it most ably in debate, the only two of the fifty-five or fifty-six who signed it, I believe, who were ever President of the United States, precisely fifty years after they put their hands to that paper it pleased the Almighty God to take away from this stage of action on the Fourth of July. This extraordinary coincidence we can understand to be a dispensation of the Almighty Ruler of Events.
Another of our Presidents, five years afterwards, was called from this stage of existence on the same day of the month, and now on this Fourth of July just past, when a gigantic rebellion has risen in the land, precisely at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow that principle “that all men are created equal,” we have a surrender of one of their most powerful positions and powerful armies forced upon them on that very day.
— Abraham Lincoln, impromptu speech given upon learning of the surrender at Vicksburg on July 4, 1863
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