two o'clock on the Fourth of July,
1776
The Southern Confederacy having delayed to sue for peace , my boy , until the safety of Washington requires that national strategy should continue metaphysical hostilities , it may be as well for you and me as a nation to prepare for a speedy commencement of War in earnest . The North , my boy , has not begun to fight yet ; and as the stolid centuries roll on , and the hoary years move one by one into the sunless solitude of Eternity , it becomes daily more evident that the North 's actual putting forth of all its strength is merely a question of time . The giant is only just rousing from his slumbers , and nothing but his legs and feet appear to be thoroughly awake yet . Now , is the time , my boy , for the idiotic Confederacy to save himself , by returning penitently to that beneficent Government which would have realized the millenium at half-past two o'clock on the Fourth of July , 1776 , but for the unseemly villainy of the accursed Black Republicans , many of whom are shortly to be hung . That is to say , such is the opinion of the Venerable Gammon , whose benignant presence is believed to have proved the salvation of our distracted country in the Revolutionary War , though I can find nothing , except his protecting patriarchal deportment toward all the present universe , to justify the idea that he ever benefited anything . It soothes the human soul , my boy , to hear this Venerable man discoursing on the most trite subjects in tones , and with an air calculated to bless all created things as with a paternal benediction . Surrounded by a number of his idolatrous national children , and standing in front of Willard 's the other evening , he pointed fatly to a bright star overhead , and says he : `` That star is like our country .