Two Girls of Gettysburg Read online

  “What sort of declarations?” I prompted.

  Rosanna blushed. “Of love.”

  My eyes widened. I wondered if Rosanna had loved him back. But all I said was, “It must be hard to write it in a fresh way every time.”

  “Then maybe it’s not love,” she said in a quavering voice. She paused and took a breath. “I stopped writing to him. I would write a letter, but I couldn’t send it.” She sighed. “But now it’s over, and I’m already forgetting him.”

  I looked at her doubtfully. “How did you meet him?”

  “We met at a party, the first time I was allowed to stay up for the dancing. I wore a new blue velvet ball gown, and he danced with me more than anyone else. He was so handsome! All the girls were jealous. He led me to a nook in the hallway and we kissed. I wished I had not laced my corset so tight, for I almost fainted!” Rosanna giggled at the memory.

  “Wait,” I said after a moment, calculating in my head. “You were only fourteen then!”

  “I was almost fifteen. That’s not too young to be kissed,” Rosanna said, lifting her chin. “And he was nineteen.”

  With a chorus of shrill whistles, a flock of cedar waxwings flew up from a thicket. Twigs snapped behind us and we turned to see a deer stepping from the woods. Clara and Jack gave chase, and the deer fled, her white tail raised in alarm.

  “Come back now. It’s time for a nap!” called Rosanna, and the children returned willingly and lay down in the shade. Rosanna resumed her tale.

  “Then he began to call on me at home. But my parents disapproved of him. Mother said that Mr. Wilcox was an ‘upstart merchant’ and that Mrs. Wilcox put on airs. Father said I was too young to have a beau. They forbade me from seeing him, and I said they couldn’t stop me. So they sent me away.”

  “Why, that’s so unreasonable of them!” I exclaimed. I could not imagine my own parents being so heartless, but then I had never done anything to displease them.

  “Yes, but I’m happy living with Margaret,” Rosanna insisted, wiping away tears.

  I reached out and squeezed her hand.

  “Did your parents approve of your sister marrying Joseph Roth?”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “His family was Jewish! Why do you think Margaret moved as far away as Gettysburg? But when Joseph died, our parents made peace with her, because of Jack and Clara.”

  I remembered my mother telling me how she, too, had left Richmond to marry my father. Had the snobbish McGreevey family driven her away as well?

  “Does John Wilcox still write to you?” I asked Rosanna.

  “No. I haven’t had a letter from him in four months. But now I have Henry Phelps to think about.” She pulled a letter from her skirt pocket. “Look, he sent me a photograph taken in his new uniform.”

  Henry’s picture was out of focus. I thought John Wilcox more handsome but didn’t say so.

  “Papa hasn’t written yet. Does Henry write anything about the war?”

  “He says the company is still at Camp Wayne, learning the drills, but soon they will leave for battle. When their three months’ service is up, he’ll come home. And best of all,” she said, glancing up from the letter, “he wants to court me then! I believe I shall let him kiss me.”

  I counted the months. “That will be September, and I’ll be at Mrs. Pierpont’s school with you, so you can tell me all about it.”

  While Rosanna thought about kissing boys, I was excited by the idea of schoolbooks and classes full of girlfriends. I laid my head in Rosanna’s lap, and she began to stroke my hair.

  “Do you think you’ll ever go back to Richmond?” I wondered aloud.

  “I suppose so. I was born there, and it is my home.”

  “But now it’s the capital city of the Confederacy,” I reminded her.

  “No, it is the capital of Virginia, where I was born. But if Virginia is part of the Confederacy, then so am I,” she said.

  I sat up abruptly. “Well, whose side are you on?”

  Rosanna looked at me in surprise.

  “I mean, you cheered at the rally in Gettysburg in support of the Union troops, and yet you say you are a Confederate?”

  Rosanna laughed. “Lizzie, you take everthing so seriously. This war is only a gentlemen’s disagreement. The rallies, bands, and armies—they’re all for show. Each side is trying to get the other to back down from the duel. It’s been three months, and has there been a battle worthy of the name of war anywhere?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “You see? The war will be over by fall, and all the bad feelings settled,” she said. “And it won’t matter that Henry was in the Union army and that I am from Virginia.”

  I wanted to believe her, yet it seemed to me that there must be more to the war than bad feelings between gentlemen. So many states had separated from the Union that the country was like a broken pot. I worried that it was too damaged to be easily mended. And there was the problem of slavery, which had caused the states to leave the Union in the first place. How could it be solved by fighting?

  “Lizzie, dear, don’t look so worried,” Rosanna said, taking my hand. “Tell me, does the war make any difference between us?”

  I looked into my cousin’s earnest blue eyes and felt a surge of affection for her.

  “Of course not! We will always be the best of friends,” I promised.

  Reassured of each other’s love, Rosanna and I gathered up the berries and the picnic leftovers and woke up Jack and Clara. The four of us walked in weary silence back to town, while the late-afternoon sun cast its lengthening shadows along the slopes of Culp’s Hill.

  Lizzie

  Chapter 5

  Not long after my picnic with Rosanna, there occurred a battle worthy of the name of war near a little river in Virginia called Bull Run Creek. The news of a Confederate victory reached Gettysburg a few days later. We read that hundreds of people had taken picnic lunches and ridden out from Washington to watch the battle from nearby fields and hills. When the Union army retreated, the picnickers found themselves amid the chaos.

  “What did they expect to see?” Mama said, shaking the newspaper in disbelief. “Gentlemen dueling? A log-rolling contest at a county fair?”

  I tried to imagine eating a cold beef sandwich while watching men kill each other, or being trapped on a road jammed with artillery, crazed horses, and fleeing soldiers covered in blood and dirt.

  “That couldn’t happen here, could it?” I asked Mama.

  “Of course not. We have more sense than most city folk,” she said.

  Our Pennsylvania volunteers had not been in the battle. But the newspaper reported that over eight hundred men had been killed. And yet the battle had settled nothing. The war was not over; it was just beginning.

  I thought of Rosanna. What would she say about the war now that there had been a real battle?

  That very week we received our first letter from Luke and Papa. Mama cried softly as she read it, then without a word handed it to me.

  24 July, camp on Carrol Hill nr. Baltimore

  Dear Mama,

  I had to go to war, I hope someday you will understand. Papa was angry and said think of your poor mother. I do every day but still I am staying here. Im sorry.

  I am not the only boy in the company. There is Henry Phelps too, a good fellow. Wilson Nailor is 16 but they let him enlist. He put a paper with the number “18” in his shoe and when they asked “Are you over 18” he could say yes without lying. He gets to carry a rifle.

  I’m learning the bugle. We drill daily. I’m learning reveille (wake up) and drill call, tattoo and taps, and retreat (which we will never need!). Capt. McPherson says buglers are needed in the cavalry because the drum cant be heard over the horses feet. But I dont want to leave this company. So Henry is teaching me to drum. He will march at one end and me at the other.

  We were not at Bull Run but if we had been our side would have won it.

  Your loyal son Luke

  P.S. to Lizzie, I am sorry
for leaving you the work but I know you can do it better than me.

  Luke’s apology made me regret our quarrel and wish I’d been able to tell him good-bye. Papa had written too, but his letter was shorter, not counting the instructions for the shop and the reminder for me to help Mama after school.

  Dearest Mary,

  I have little to say except how much I miss you. The daily drills are pulling this diverse company of volunteers into a real fighting unit. We have been mustered into the regular army for 3 years or the war’s length. Thus far, however, war is more tedious than dangerous. The rebels were simply lucky at Bull Run, and I truly doubt that it will last more than a year, so have no fears for me.

  Your loving husband, Albert

  The loss at Bull Run and what it meant for the Union was the topic of conversation all over town. Would Lincoln choose a new commanding general? Would the Confederates strike at our capital, Washington? On Wednesday I went with Mama, Rosanna, and Margaret to Christ Lutheran Church to hear a woman from New York who came to help the town organize a Ladies Aid Society. She stirred up the church full of ladies like a preacher calling us to a great cause. While she spoke, my eyes roamed the church interior, following the tall pillars and the graceful arches that met overhead in a point. In the stained-glass windows and the plaques on the walls I read the names of people who had died years before. It was strange, I thought, to be in a church preparing for war, not worshipping God.

  “An excellent project for the young ladies is the housewife,” the New York woman intoned as she unrolled a rectangular strip of flannel with many small pockets. “For scissors, needles, thread, buttons, and such like. It can be fastened thus with ties. Every soldier needs one.”

  Then Mrs. Pierpont stood up to ask for volunteers. She was tall, with completely gray hair and a smooth, unlined face. She seemed stern, and I hoped she would not be too hard on me as a new pupil. Marveling at her broad bosom and narrow waist, I remarked to Rosanna, “Look how her corsets have squeezed all her flesh upward.” We both giggled until Mama glared at us.

  Mrs. Baumann, Annie’s mother, agreed to collect knitted scarves and socks, and Margaret volunteered to oversee the making of three hundred shirts.

  “I’ll probably have to sew a hundred of those shirts myself,” said Rosanna with a groan.

  When the meeting was over, everyone stayed to share letters from husbands and sons. Conversations about the war swirled around me. By now we all knew that our men would not be coming home in September, and the ladies debated how long the war would last. Mrs. Pierpont’s voice rose above the rest.

  “Now, Sarah,” she was saying to Mrs. Brodhead, whose lips were compressed with worry against her large, uneven teeth, “we have already blockaded the southern ports and rivers, and it is only a matter of time before the Confederacy is choked off. Those rebels are not about to reach Washington.”

  Rather than talk of the war, I drew Rosanna toward the refreshments. But Mrs. Pierpont caught sight of us.

  “Why Miss McGreevey, this must be your cousin, Elizabeth Allbauer. Young lady, your father spoke to me last spring. I am delighted you will be attending my seminary.”

  I merely nodded, too intimidated to reply.

  “Frieda Baumann!” Mrs. Pierpont exclaimed, turning from me. “You can count on my schoolgirls for a dozen socks each.”

  “But I don’t know how to knit!” said Rosanna to me in dismay. “Can’t we do something else, a flag perhaps?”

  “Mrs. Pierpont must think I’m an imbecile,” I murmured.

  I watched as Mrs. Wade approached Margaret with her daughters, Ginnie and Georgia. Ginnie’s brown hair was fixed in braids wrapped around her head like a crown. She saw me and gave a little wave. I smiled back.

  “You’re in luck. I think the Wades are volunteering to help Margaret sew shirts,” I whispered to Rosanna.

  “Who are the Wades?” asked Rosanna, eyeing their faded dresses.

  “Ginnie is a very sweet girl. She’s eighteen, I think.” I lowered my voice. “A long time ago her father committed a crime and was sent to the asylum. People say he will never come home. Ginnie and her mother and sister take in sewing and laundry. They may be poor, but they won’t accept charity.”

  Rosanna’s brow furrowed. “Does she have any friends?”

  “They keep mostly to themselves. I’ve seen people treat them unkindly.”

  “Why, they can’t help their misfortunes! Lizzie, we must make Ginnie our friend. You say she’s a seamstress? Why, she can help with my project. Forget the socks—we’ll make a flag, a big one.”

  I gazed in confusion at Rosanna. “Why?”

  “To send to the soldiers of Company K. To keep up their spirits. Think of how proud it will make your father and Luke.”

  “While you think of impressing Henry Phelps!” I teased.

  Rosanna wrinkled her nose at me. “I’ll find Annie and see if she wants to help too.”

  “But you hate to sew. Why not send Henry one of your drawings instead?”

  There was no reply from Rosanna, for she had already jumped up in search of Annie, and I was left shaking my head in wonder at my impetuous friend.

  Lizzie

  Chapter 6

  After the meeting, Mama was in a somber mood, perhaps due to the letter from Papa and Luke and all the conversations about the war. She went to bed early, saying she felt poorly. I stayed up and wrote to Luke, telling how I’d put up twenty jars of beans yesterday, and how Amos and Ben had fixed the shed. Then I peered in Mama’s room and found her still awake, sitting up in bed. Her brown hair was streaked with silver, but spread out over her shoulders, it made her look young and pretty.

  “Come in, Lizzie,” she said. I went in and sat next to her.

  “The war won’t last three years, I’m sure,” I said.

  “How can it go on for even one year, when the right and wrong of it are so clear?” Mama said, a note of distress in her voice.

  “Do you mean slavery?” I asked. I knew Mama and Papa believed that one person couldn’t own another person, no matter his skin color, and I tended to agree with them. But there were folks in Gettysburg, even in our own church, who thought it wasn’t any of our business to meddle. And in the Bible, people owned slaves. It was complicated, I could see that.

  Mama didn’t reply but went on speaking her own thoughts. “I’m less worried about your father than I am about Luke. He is so young, I’m afraid he will do something rash in battle.”

  “But he’s a musician, not a soldier,” I reminded her.

  “A drum won’t satisfy him for long,” Mama predicted.

  I knew what she meant. The thought of Luke with his hands on a gun was scary. He would have a lark, shooting at anything that moved, just to see if he could hit it.

  “You know, Mama,” I said to change the subject, “I’m excited about attending the Ladies’ Seminary this fall. I admit I’m a little afraid of Mrs. Pierpont, even though Rosanna says she is not as stern as she looks. I will help out at the shop before and after school and work on the accounts at night.”

  Mama was regarding her hands in her lap.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I believe you can read and cipher well enough,” she said.

  Her words alarmed me. “If I’m going to be a teacher, I have much more to learn.”

  “The tuition is costly, you know.”

  “That is because the best families of Gettysburg send their daughters there,” I said. “We are as good as anybody in town.”

  “That sounds like something a McGreevy would say,” Mama said sourly.

  “Don’t you want me to succeed? To get an education?”

  “Of course I do. But I want your father’s business to succeed too.”

  Her words were like cold water splashed in my face. I drew in my breath sharply.

  “It’s not … not that bad, is it?”

  “You know our income is falling—”

  “But it’s only temporary
, until the war ends!”

  “Some merchants are thriving because of the war, Lizzie. I’ve heard that large meatpackers out west are getting rich on government contracts. For small businesses like ours, however, there is real hardship ahead if the war goes on.”

  “Amos knows what he is doing,” I said. I tried to sound confident, even though I thought that no one could be as capable as Papa.

  “Yes, I trust him. But he cannot do the work of two men and one girl. I need you at the shop.”

  “But it’s Papa who wants me to go to school. He even mentioned it in his letter!” I cried, growing desperate.

  “Your father is not here now. I make the decisions. Ben will go to school because he must master the basic subjects. You, however, will not go to the Ladies’ Seminary this fall.”

  I jumped from the bed and confronted my mother, my fists clenched so hard they hurt. “What? But you and Papa promised! It’s so unfair!” Tears spilled from my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Lizzie, I truly am. All of us must make sacrifices … for a time.”

  Mama’s voice broke. Usually I was afraid to see her cry, but this time I didn’t care if I hurt her. I turned away and slammed the door behind me. There went all my hopes for the coming fall: new notebooks, lessons in poetry and literature, and walking to school every day, arm in arm with Rosanna.

  For days I sulked over this disappointment, my face stiff and heavy with resentment. Rosanna urged me to keep begging, but I knew it would be vain. Mama’s mind was made up. After a few days, Amos asked what was bothering me, and the kindness in his dark eyes made me reveal everything to him.

  “Oh, Amos, Mama says I have to give up school because we can’t afford it. It’s unfair, and I’m so angry.” I felt tears rising up and bit my lip hard to stop them. “I know I shouldn’t blame her, but I can’t help it.”

  “Looks like you goin’ to have to get an education in hidin’,” he said. “Like my folk always done.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say anything to your ma, if you was to bring in a book an’ read in it from time to time,” he replied, winking.