“These two buildings share a wall, and they both came down during the battle,” he said. He dragged out a photo history of the Civil War and showed us a copy of an old picture of downtown Fredericksburg.
“See that big pile of rubble, with a couple of walls still standing?” he asked. “That was all that was left of these two buildings after the shelling and the looting and the battle. The Union army stayed around for another day in Fredericksburg, withdrawing men who’d been trapped on the battlefield once they finally were able to negotiate a truce. General Burnside decided he’d had enough, after the debacle at Slaughter Pen Farm, and the awful slaughter at Sunken Road. The Army of the Potomac did more damage to the town before they left, not wanting to leave much behind for the Confederates and the citizens of Fredericksburg, just about all of whom — unless they were slaves — supported the Confederacy. There are probably soldiers still buried in places all around Fredericksburg, in unmarked graves, even untraceable graves. Or Confederate and Union soldiers both buried under the rubble of these fallen buildings. In a lot of instances they just built right back over the old foundations, not even bothering to clear everything away.”
That sounded creepy — bodies left all over — but with so many casualties, it made sense that they wouldn’t always have time to do right by the dead.
So it must have been what Greg said: Sally had died alone and been buried in the basement or cellar of what was now the Dog and Suds building, and never found. Until, sort of, now.
We thanked Uncle Dex. It was almost six o’clock, past time for us all to be home.
Something else occurred to me as we were walking out the door, though, and I turned to ask Uncle Dex one more question.
“I know you’ve studied a lot about the Battle of Fredericksburg and the history of the town and all,” I said. “And I was wondering if you ever came across the name Frank or Frankie Keegan?”
Uncle Dex gave me a funny look, and I thought for a second he was going to ask me why I wanted to know. He just smiled, though, and said, “Well, actually, yes. There was a Dr. Frank Keegan who moved here about ten years after the war. He’d fought in Fredericksburg on the Union side as a member of the Irish Brigade, then he stayed for several weeks working in the hospital across the river at Chatham Manor, helping with the sick and wounded. As I understand it, he became a doctor after the war, somewhere back up north, but I guess always liked Fredericksburg. Or maybe he had some other reason for wanting to move here and open his practice. But that’s what he did. Down on Princess Anne Street. And his son became a doctor here, too. And his grandson. And a great-granddaughter or two. There’s still a Dr. Keegan who works over at the hospital — she’s in the emergency room — who’s his great-great-great-great granddaughter. I went to high school with her. Or maybe she’s his great-great-great granddaughter. Anyway, it was one of those ironic things that happened here. Something good, I guess you could say, coming out of something so terrible.”
We rode silently for a few blocks toward Deedee’s house on Caroline Street down near the city dock — where Sally and the Irish Brigade had crossed the river back in 1862. I wondered if that might have had something to do with why Deedee could see and hear Sally, but probably there was no way to know something like that.
Deedee broke the silence. “Thanks for riding home with me. It’s getting pretty dark. I just wish Sally was here so we could tell her all that stuff we learned about where she ended up. And about how things turned out for her little brother.”
Greg responded. “Sometimes ghosts can still hear us talking, even if they can’t show themselves to us,” he said. “So that might have happened.”
Julie was worried, too. “I’d hate it if she missed out on what your uncle told us, Anderson,” she added. “It’d be terrible if Sally just suddenly ran out of time for us to solve the mystery.”
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” I said, which didn’t sound very helpful. But there was nothing else we could do.
A week passed. We met each afternoon in the basement of the Kitchen Sink for band practice, hoping and praying Sally would show up. Mostly we just sat there, discouraged when she didn’t, practicing less and less until we stopped altogether. We couldn’t believe the mystery could end here, with us finally knowing the answers, but not able to tell Sally. About the only thing that we felt like doing was talking about the Battle of Fredericksburg — especially about the aftermath.
“Robert E. Lee could have ordered the Confederate troops to attack the Union army as it retreated,” Julie said one afternoon, just sort of out of the blue. “But he was afraid they would get slaughtered by the Yankees in that same open field.”
“That makes sense,” Greg said. Then he added, “Did you know that Abraham Lincoln relieved General Burnside of his command of the Army of the Potomac, because the Battle of Fredericksburg was such a disaster?”
I said I’d read that the Confederates believed the northern lights were a sign from God about the righteousness of their cause.
“Yeah,” said Greg, “but the Union soldiers believed it was a sign from God about the righteousness of their cause, and a signal that they were supposed to continue the fight to end slavery.”
“Well, did either of you know that there was a second Battle of Fredericksburg just five months later?” Julie asked.
Greg and I just looked at each other. How could we not know about this?
“Uh, who won?” Greg asked.
“The Union,” Julie said. “It was a smaller battle, but once again they used pontoons to cross the river, and once again they attacked the Confederates at Marye’s Heights. But they were able to outflank them that time, which was how they won.”
“But they still had two more years of war,” Greg lamented.
Julie nodded. “Yes, but the tide of the war was turning. So maybe the northern lights were a sign — a good sign — for the North.”
“For America,” I added.
“Right,” Julie said. “For America.”
We’d promised Julie that we would give busking another try, out on the sidewalk in front of Uncle Dex’s store, and a week later we decided to do it. We couldn’t stay holed up in the basement forever.
So on the next kind of warm afternoon, we plugged in our extension cords and ran them out of the Kitchen Sink to our amps and keyboards. Julie got us all tuned up, Uncle Dex asked us to please play more than just one or two songs over and over, and then we got started.
We quickly ran through our usual songs, plus a couple of other songs we’d learned from our previous ghosts. Then, without even saying anything, we launched into “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The first time through we did it really fast and loud, sounding like this punk band Julie liked called The Clash. We went so fast, in fact, that it left us all out of breath.
We were sitting there panting — and not getting any tips from anybody passing by — when Deedee came walking up. We hadn’t seen her all week, and before anybody could ask, she offered an explanation. “I was grounded,” she said. “My mom usually doesn’t care, but then sometimes she notices and gets upset. So that’s what happened.”
We all muttered our condolences, but she wasn’t listening. “Do you think you could play that again, and I could sing?” she asked.
Boy, she really was pushy for a fifth grader. But we said yes anyway — it wasn’t as if we were making much money doing things our way — only this time we played it slower. At first Deedee’s voice was too faint; I could barely hear her. But then she picked up the volume. She actually knew all the words, the same as Sally, and she actually had a nice voice. What was even better, people walking by started throwing money in Greg’s guitar case.
We kept playing and Deedee kept singing, and pretty soon a crowd formed — an actual crowd! Mrs. Strentz came out of the Dog and Suds to listen, and Uncle Dex came out of the Kitchen Sink, too.
And then, wonder of wonders, somebody else showed up as well, hovering at the back of the crowd,
mostly invisible, though we could see her clearly enough even if nobody else could.
Sally smiled and waved. She mouthed the words “Thank you.” She even blew us a kiss, which was the only girly thing she’d ever done the whole time we knew her.
And then, as the song faded out, Sally faded out, too. We hadn’t gotten to talk to her, to tell her what we’d learned, but her showing up like that was enough, because in that moment we knew that she’d managed to hear everything — or enough, anyway — to find her peace at least.
The Battle of Fredericksburg was truly and finally over, and the Ghosts of War had made a whopping $23.60.
We might have even found a new lead singer, too.
The Civil War is a tragic and unfortunate part of America’s history. It was a war fought largely due to a difference of opinion among the states about whether slavery should be legal or not. When Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in 1860 and declared his intention to end slavery, many of the southern states were outraged. During late 1860 and into 1861, the states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina each seceded from the nation, forming the Confederate States of America. President Lincoln and the Northern states did not recognize this newly formed government, but that didn’t stop the South from electing their own president, Jefferson Davis.
The event that is considered to be the official start of the Civil War happened at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. The Confederate army demanded the surrender of Fort Sumter, and when the garrison commander, Major Robert Anderson, refused, the Confederate army opened fire. After thirty-four hours of exchanging fire, the fort finally surrendered. From this moment forward, the United States of America was officially at war. And it was a long and bloody war. By the end of the war, roughly 625,000 men (and a few women) lost their lives in the line of duty.
The First Battle of Fredericksburg, which took place from December 11–13, 1862, was one of the bloodiest of the war. It was also one of the most lopsided defeats for the Union army, wasting what should have been a significant strategic advantage that could have led to an early end to the war. Instead, the Battle of Fredericksburg is viewed by many as one of the greatest blunders in American military history. Union troops, with overwhelming numerical superiority, attacked entrenched Confederate positions just south of the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and were tragically slaughtered in wave after wave of young soldiers. One book about the battle, written by historians Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White, is even titled Simply Murder.
It took almost three additional years before the North was finally able to overcome the South. During that time, President Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in the Southern states to be free. Unfortunately, the Southern states refused to abide by this law. Finally, the tide of war started to turn in the Union army’s favor in the spring of 1865, and on August 20, 1865, the war was formally declared over. The Confederate States of America was no more. And now that the South was part of the Union again, all slaves were truly free.
As with the previous Ghosts of War books, much of this story is fiction, including the present-day characters, the mystery, and the ghost and her brother. However, the historical figures and major events in this book are all based on fact. There are many excellent books about the Civil War and the Battle of Fredericksburg for those interested in reading further. Mackowski and White’s Simply Murder, Donald C. Pfanz’s War So Terrible: A Popular History of the Battle of Fredericksburg, and DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook’s They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War were especially helpful in the research and writing of Fallen in Fredericksburg.
Steve Watkins is the acclaimed author of Down Sand Mountain, winner of the Golden Kite Award; What Comes After; and Juvie; as well as the Ghosts of War books, including The Secret of Midway, Lost at Khe Sanh, and AWOL in North Africa. Steve also writes as a freelance journalist and teaches yoga. His website is www.stevewatkinsbooks.com.
Other Ghosts of War books
The Secret of Midway
Lost at Khe Sanh
AWOL in North Africa
Fallen in Fredericksburg
Copyright © 2016 by Steve Watkins
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The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First printing 2016
Cover art by Alejandro Colucci
Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll
e-ISBN 978-1-338-03515-5
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