Would the Confederacy have celebrated the Fourth of July?

In a 2009 paper in the Journal of Southern History, historian Paul Quigley wrote that while some Southerners were conflicted with celebrating the holiday, acknowledgement of the day continued on. In Charleston, S.C., he points out, a specially appointed five-member committee decided that “public procession, solemn oration, and political banquet ought to be omitted on the present occasion,” but offices would would be closed for the Fourth.

Before the war, the meaning of the holiday was already taking on different flavors. In the North, abolitionists used its language of freedom to call for the end of slavery. In the South, secessionists used its language of willful rebellion to call for a new state, inciting that the North had not lived up to the Declaration of Independence’s promise. Quigley goes on to explain how the Fourth of July ambivalence was “part of their attempt to resolve tensions between southernness and Americanness.”

But most importantly, the Fourth of July represented a shared celebration and an identity the North and South could rejoin after the war.