Widow of Gettysburg (Heroines Behind the Lines)

by Jocelyn Green

  A shadow darkened the tombstone, and Libbie looked up.

  “Excuse me, Liberty. Were you praying?” It was Elizabeth Thorn, acting as the cemetery groundskeeper in her soldier husband’s absence.

  “No—why?”

  “I thought I heard you ask for peace.” Her hands rested on the swell of her belly. She’d have her fourth child by fall.

  “I did.”

  “Ja, I thought as much.” For having moved with her parents to America from Germany only nine years ago, her English was very good. “Lots of people talk to their loved ones in the ground. If they would talk to the good Lord nearly half as much, they’d be so much better off.” She paused. “Do you pray, Liberty?”

  Such a personal question. But then, she and Elizabeth had a close relationship—one of the very few that was genuine. It was impossible to stick to small talk and pleasantries when you only met in a graveyard. Elizabeth had comforted her after the deaths of both Aunt Helen and Levi. Her three boys had melted her heart and made her laugh. Elizabeth had earned the right, in the last few years, to ask the questions that dug deep.

  “I pray.” She looked up, thankful the summer breeze had blown the clouds from the brilliant blue sky. “But I must admit, it’s hard to pray to a God I can’t see, who doesn’t talk back to me.”

  Elizabeth eased herself down on the ground next to Libbie, paying no mind to the wet grass that would dampen her skirt. “But you talk to Levi. Does he talk back to you?”

  Words webbed in Libbie’s chest, and she looked away. Levi had been quiet, studious. Still, “If I can remember what he said when he was here,” she tried, “I can imagine what he would say to me now.”

  Elizabeth wrapped her arm around Liberty’s shoulders, as she had done so many times before. “Ja, this is good. That’s exactly right. Prayer works the same way. Share your heart. Remember what Jesus said when He was here—read the Gospels—and try to imagine what He’d say to you now.”

  Liberty sighed. “I’ll try.”

  “I am proud of you.” Elizabeth pinched the sleeve of Libbie’s blue calico dress and gave a little tug. “For moving on. It is the right thing to do.”

  With a crooked smile, Liberty pushed herself up from the ground. “Speaking of moving on, I best be on my way.” She lent a hand to Elizabeth and helped her pregnant friend up. Without bothering to visit Aunt Helen’s grave, they walked back to the brick-arched gatehouse where Elizabeth’s family lived and looked down from Cemetery Hill.

  Everything looked so peaceful from up here. Split-rail fences stitched together rolling fields of green grass and purple clover with golden fields of ripening wheat, as if the landscape were a quilt spread over the earth, with seams of dirt roads and rushing creeks holding it in place. A little less than a mile to the east, Seminary Ridge bristled with oak and hickory trees. Farmhouses sprinkled the countryside. Just north of Cemetery Hill, white steeples gleamed in the sun while red brick houses clustered together. The village of Gettysburg was a hub, with spokes leading out in all directions, each one named for the town to which it led: clockwise from the north, it was Carlisle, Harrisburg, York, Hanover, Baltimore, Taneytown, Emmitsburg, Hagerstown, Chambersburg, Mummasburg.

  “Elizabeth, look.” Liberty pointed to Chambersburg Road. As far as the eye could see, it teemed with galloping cavalry. Dozens of them—hundreds—streamed into Gettysburg and collected in The Diamond like trout rushing down Willoughby Run.

  “Do you recognize any of them?”

  Libbie squinted. “No.” Some of the townspeople appeared in their doorways, but no one rushed out with pie and coffee to greet them.

  “Wait.” Elizabeth disappeared inside the gatehouse for a moment before returning with her father and his field glasses. Muffled shouts carried on the breeze while Mr. Thorn took the first look. He cursed in a thick German accent and handed the glasses to the women, Elizabeth first, then Liberty.

  Her hand trembled, blurring the view. The soldiers were not wearing blue. Some wore grey, but not the same shade—iron grey, sheep grey, old wood grey, and butternut, the telltale color of a faded Confederacy uniform. But many wore simply rags. It was surreal watching them like this, from a distance, and yet able to see the sweat running down their weather-hardened faces, the greasy strands of hair falling loose about their shoulders. Collarbones protruding against their skin. One man’s spurs were strapped onto his bare feet.

  A shudder passed through her as she passed the glasses back to Elizabeth. She did not need them to hear the hint of a crazed Rebel yell: “Aaaaaiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee!” Sunlight glinted off gun barrels raised in the sky. Shots that must have terrified the people below sounded like sporadically popping corn.

  Breath hitched in her chest as her gaze followed the current of men still streaming down Chambersburg Pike, through the town and into The Diamond, until it overflowed with Rebels and spilled over, flooding the surrounding neighborhoods. More than a thousand, more than two thousand, swarmed. Not long after someone raised the Confederate flag in the town square, a regimental band set up very near to where a band had been playing with the 26th earlier that morning.

  They did not play “Yankee Doodle.”

  “Nicht gut, nicht gut,” Mr. Thorn was saying, his face carved with wrinkles.

  Elizabeth grabbed Libbie’s arm, and she jumped. “Get you home, girl. Take not the main roads. Make haste!” Her eyes flashed, held Libbie’s stunned face in their reflection. “They’re here.”

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Friday, June 26, 1863

  The train to Frederick was already hissing in its impatience to depart by the time Harrison Caldwell arrived on the platform at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad station. White puffs of steam and black clouds of coal-flavored smoke belched from the engine as he bounded up the steps to board.

  Threading his way down the narrow aisle, he pressed a handkerchief to his perspiring forehead and willed his heart to return to a normal pace. Missing this train could have cost him his job as war correspondent with the Philadelphia Inquirer. Not only did he have to get to the front, he had to get there before any major story unfolded without him. Being witness to a battlefield was never pleasant and always dangerous. But it was the price Harrison paid for a chance at earning distinction that could propel his career for the rest of his life.

  “Caldwell?” A vaguely familiar voice called. “Harrison Caldwell! I’d recognize that carrottop anywhere! Join us!”

  Harrison instinctively put a hand to his orange-red hair as he turned and smiled at the sight of the best battlefield correspondents in the country sharing a compartment: Whitelaw Reid for the Cincinnati Gazette, Samuel Wilkeson of the New York Times, and Charles Carleton Coffin from the Boston Morning Journal. He had covered battles with them before. He should have known they would be following this lead, too. Better to join them than to trail them.

  “White, shouldn’t you be in Ohio covering that copperhead political meeting?” Harrison jibed as he pumped the hands of his fellow journalists. Like him, and unlike most gentlemen travelers, they carried cotton haversacks and canteens rather than suitcases and umbrellas. Though not in military uniform, slouch hats, not bowlers, topped their heads.

  “Not when Lee’s whole army is moving through Pennsylvania!” His lips quirked up beneath his bushy brown mustache in the grin of a newsman on the hunt. Whitelaw’s smooth fair skin and full head of curly brown hair testified that he was the youngest of the group at age twenty-six. He had already earned the reputation of a distinguished reporter during the war. When he had first taken his job at the Gazette in June 1861, he had prepared himself by reading the standard manuals of war and studying the campaigns of Napoleon and Frederick the Great. When reporting from the front, he refused to gloss over Union mistakes or paint a cowardly picture of the Confederacy for spite, and Harrison respected him for it.

  It took courage to be an objective war correspondent—and to be that correspondent’s employer. When the Philadelphia Inquirer had run a story procl
aiming the Confederate victory at the first Battle of Bull Run, an angry mob, fevered with Union patriotism, tried to burn down the paper’s building. The next month, reporter Ambrose Kimball was stripped, tarred, and feathered in Haverhill, Massachusetts, for his perceived Southern-leanings in his editorials. They paraded him on a rail through town before releasing him. Harrison shuddered in sympathy at the recollection.

  The train screeched and chugged into motion, and Harrison dropped onto the seat next to Whitelaw, facing the two older correspondents. With twelve years of experience as a news correspondent under his belt, forty-six-year-old Sam was the veteran of the group. Deep lines divided his mouth from his smooth-shaven cheeks, and an upside-down smile gave him a look of perpetual displeasure. Charles, or Carleton, as he preferred to be known, was forty, but would have appeared younger if not for the shadows beneath his sparkling blue eyes and the slight tremor in his hands, due to an overreliance on coffee to keep him going. Sitting across from Harrison now, his eyes looked tired already, and Harrison could relate. Being a war correspondent meant assuming the soldier’s lifestyle to get the eyewitness accounts. Even Harrison’s thirty-year-old body ached in anticipation of what lay ahead. “Well, gentlemen, are you ready for this?”

  But the question had no real answer. No matter how many battles they had covered, they would never get used to the sights and sounds. Or the smells.

  “Could be like finding a needle in a haystack, but I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of my oldest son.” Sam’s piercing black eyes bore into Harrison’s with that peculiar intensity he and his family were known for. His wife, Catherine, was the sister of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, outspoken abolitionist and women’s rights leader. Elizabeth’s Declaration of Sentiments, presented at Seneca Falls fifteen years ago, was still causing a stir. But now, at least for Sam, the focus had shifted to another family member. “Bayard is in the Army of the Potomac. Battery G, Fourth U.S. Artillery. If there’s to be a fight—and we’ve no doubt about that—he’s sure to be in it.”

  “I pray he’ll be safe,” said Carleton.

  “Better to pray the boys do their duty, come what may.” Sam’s reply was quick and sharp. “You can trust that Bayard will.”

  “I’ve no doubt of that, my good fellow, no doubt whatever,” Carleton offered before lapsing into silence. Outside the rain-splattered window, the brown and grey blur of Washington gave way to fertile green fields under a wool grey sky.

  “Well,” White broke in. “And what does Philadelphia have to say about all of this?” He motioned to the copy of the Inquirer on the seat beside him. “Come, Harrison, let’s compare notes. Let’s see if our stories match up.” His eyes twinkled with good humor. “That is today’s news, is it not?”

  A wry smile spread across Harrison’s face as he nodded and gamely unfolded the paper. It was only too true that the news, reported from so many different angles, and in such haste, was often contradictory. At worst, it was wildly inaccurate, reporting generals dead who were still alive, or giving victory to one side when the other had won the day.

  “Our letter from Harrisburg,” he began, then read directly from the paper. “At the present writing a comparatively large force of the army of the so-called Confederate States is in close proximity to the capital of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Jenkins holds Carlisle.” He paused to glance up, and saw three nodding heads. So far, agreement. “The enemy is now within eighteen miles of Harrisburg …” Harrison skimmed down further. “Many are the speculations as to the numbers and true character of the forces advancing toward us, but no definite and reliable conclusion has yet been arrived at. Refugees represent the force to be in the neighborhood of eight thousand, with reinforcements coming after, which is, in all probability, an exaggeration—”

  Grimacing, Harrison stopped reading. In another column in the same paper, a different correspondent quoted a nameless source as estimating Lee’s army to be one hundred thousand strong. Not eight. Humiliating.

  Harrison cleared his throat. “For the past few days the scene at the bridge which spans the Susquehanna, at this point, has been pitiful in the extreme,” he continued. “The main road leading out of the Cumberland Valley has been literally jammed with carriages, wagons, and vehicles of all descriptions, bearing whole families of refugees, men, women and children, who have been driven from their once peaceful and happy homes, with the little of all their world’s goods they have been able to save from the hand of the ruthless invader. Two or three thousand of these refugees have already passed through here. Many are still on the road, some of whom have not yet arrived, and others of whom are journeying on.”

  “‘Ruthless invader.’” Carleton’s voice was low, thoughtful, as he absentmindedly stroked the neatly trimmed beard on his square jaw. “Ironic, isn’t it? Has the North not invaded at Vicksburg, even as we speak? Have we not laid siege to a town of innocent civilians, shelling their homes and cutting them off from any source of food or news for the past thirty-nine days? And do we call ourselves ruthless?”

  “Careful, Carleton, you’ll be accused of treason, soon.” Harrison winked at the serious gentleman across from him, but there was little mirth in it. He didn’t have to be the Vicksburg, Mississippi, correspondent to imagine the havoc wreaked in that town. It was enough that he had seen the destruction in Virginia and Tennessee.

  Sam glowered at Harrison.

  “Listen, Wilkeson, I’m not unsympathetic to the plight of the Cumberland Valley refugees.” Harrison pulled a package of Necco-brand licorice-flavored wafers from his haversack and offered it to the others before popping a piece into his own mouth. “But you do realize that far more than three thousand refugees have been created in the South. And you can bet they are all rejoicing right now that it’s the North’s turn, once more, to be the host of war.” The last time the South invaded the North was at Sharpsburg, Maryland—Antietam Creek—last September.

  The candy soured in his mouth as unwelcome images, washed in red, flickered in Harrison’s mind, as they always did at the faintest memory of the event.

  “They are the ones who seceded from the Union, Caldwell.” Sam’s eyes darkened. “It’s only right we should fight on their land.”

  “I don’t want war in Pennsylvania any more than anyone else. This is my home state, for pity’s sake! But if we’re going to call the Confederates ‘ruthless invaders,’ we must be willing to admit we’ve done the same thing to them, but more often.”

  “Just which flag are you flying, sir—”

  Harrison held up his hands in mock surrender. “Right or wrong, the facts are plain. We invaded them. Now they are invading us.”

  “Spitting mad, too,” White jumped in. “Lincoln didn’t just free their slaves. He armed them too. What’s the absolute worst nightmare of a slaveholding family? That their slaves will rise up against them. And then—the way they see it—a foreign government tells the slaves they are not only free, but they’re morally obligated to take up arms against their homeland, including the people who once clothed and fed them.”

  “And enslaved them, abused them, kept them illiterate, treated them worse than dogs! If I didn’t know better, Mr. Reid, I would say you are defending them.”

  White cocked an eyebrow. “Not defending anyone. I’m saying that under the circumstances, I predict that Lee’s army is going to pour out its vengeance upon this land and its people the likes of which we have not seen before. Not at Sharpsburg. Not anywhere.”

  The chugging of the train through Maryland’s fields filled the compartment as White’s words hung in the air between them.

  “The question, then, is where will this great battle be?” Harrison ventured as he tucked the rest of his candy away. “Harrisburg? Carlisle? Philadelphia?”

  “No.” Carleton’s voice was steady, confident. “Not likely. I pick Gettysburg for the fight, or near it.”

  “Gettysburg, you say?” Sam wrinkled his brow. “Never heard of it.”

  “From what I’ve been able
to learn, it’s a small village, about twenty-four hundred residents. The main trade is carriage and wagon-making, but they also have several fine educational institutions as well, Pennsylvania College and the Lutheran Theological Seminary being the foremost among them. On the map, it appears to be surrounded by farmland and topography ripe for a battle: ridges, hills, fields and valleys. Creeks and runs provide water sources throughout the area.”

  “If you’re right about this, we’ll see for ourselves, won’t we?” said White. “What else do you see in your crystal ball?”

  “Buy a paper and find out, whippersnapper.” A rare chuckle escaped Carleton as he rapped White on the knee with a rolled-up copy of the Boston Morning Journal.

  Harrison snatched it up and unrolled it to the front page story, written by Carleton himself. He read aloud:

  IF LEE ADVANCES WITH NEARLY ALL HIS FORCES INTO PENNSYLVANIA, THERE MUST BE A COLLISION OF THE TWO ARMIES NOT MANY MILES WEST OF GETTYSBURG, PROBABLY AMONG THE ROLLING HILLS NEAR THE STATE LINE, ON THE HEAD WATERS OF THE MONOCACY … I BELIEVE THAT WASHINGTON AND BALTIMORE WILL NOT BE HARMED. I EXPECT TO SEE ADAMS, FRANKLIN, CUMBERLAND, AND YORK COUNTIES RUN OVER SOMEWHAT BY THE REBELS, AND I ALSO EXPECT TO SEE LEE UTTERLY DEFEATED IN HIS PLANS. HIS ARMY MAY NOT BE ANNIHILATED. HOOKER MAY NOT ACHIEVE A GREAT, DECISIVE VICTORY. BUT I FULLY BELIEVE THAT LEE WILL GAIN NOTHING BY THIS MOVE.

  Harrison paused and rubbed his chin. “I hope you’re right, Carleton—although your fortune-telling could be improved upon with a Union victory decisive enough to end to this war soon afterward.”

  Just not before I launch my career from it first.

  The Holloway Farm

  Saturday, June 27, 1863

  A scream sliced through the air, jolting Liberty straight up in bed. The nightmares were back.