[W]e have a soldier's celebration, a
barbacue and a grand dinner furnished by the officers of the regiment; we are
also favored on the occasion with a good, whole souled speech from General
Oglesby, and all this on the ground where but a short time before Van Dorn's
and Sterling Price's battle flags stood. But they stand a little farther south
now, and in their stead stands another flag, and around it stand soldiers who
wear a uniform different from the uniform worn by those who stood around the
other flag; the former battles for slavery, the latter for freedom; the former for
the annihilation of the first independence, the latter for its maintainance. On
this annual anniversary, beneath the heat of a Mississippi sun, these boys
renew their allegiance, and swear by the memory of the loved and lost to bear
their bristling steel for the first independence that spoke into existence are
public, which in its infancy seemed a paragon let down from heaven to inspire
the pilgrims of freedom.
SOURCE: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 82
