Two Girls of Gettysburg (47 page)

The man’s wife nudged him into silence, but I suspect his concern is widely shared. Despite the losses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Lee’s valiant army rallied again. Now it seems certain that the two armies
will spend another winter in a stalemate, riding out the season’s cold fury in camp and guarding their capitals from each other.

Then Mr. Lincoln took the speaker’s stand. He was hatless, revealing a high forehead over his craggy, dark eyebrows. Deep lines creased his face. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a pair of spectacles that he set on his nose. Returning his hand to his pocket, he pulled out a sheet of paper. Then he began to speak, not in deep, resonant tones like Mr. Everett, but in a high tenor voice. Yet his phrases were chosen with exquisite care. The entire speech lasted but a few minutes and, as it was frequently interrupted by applause, I was able to write down much of it.

He began, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Applause broke out. Baby Lincoln woke up and smiled like a dusky cherub at the sight of his mother’s face.

Unlike Mr. Everett, Mr. Lincoln did not speak of the past, only of the present, pausing to take in the rocky sweep of land surrounding him. Was he trying to imagine the battle raging there, the soldiers dying? He said that we could not dedicate or consecrate this ground, for the brave men who struggled here had already done so, and we must never forget them. Mr. Lincoln’s next words touched me most deeply, reminding me of John:

“It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on…. to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion. …” Applause stopped the president from speaking, and I wrote down his words while people around me wept openly.

“We shall be here another two hours at this rate,” said the man who had criticized Lincoln earlier. His wife and several others glared at him.

Drawn by the excitement, those on the fringes of the crowd moved closer to hear the president as he issued this ringing resolution: “That the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The president stepped back from the podium. I thought he had misplaced the remainder of his speech. But he only raised his hand and nodded to the cheering crowd. He was finished. The band played “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and children began to run around and shout again.

“Well, that was short,” said Margaret, sounding disappointed.

“The world might forget what he said here, but I will remember this day forever,” said Lizzie solemnly

“Mr. Lincoln blessed all of us, the living right along with the dead,” said Amos.

I too was affected by Mr. Lincoln’s humanity. I had expected denunciations of the Southern rebels, but he uttered not one word against my countrymen. Rather he expressed grief at our division and hope that the nation will not perish. He also prayed for a new birth of freedom, by which he surely meant the day when no Negro is enslaved, and all men’s hearts will be reborn. Who cannot love that ideal of liberty, even if it means the defeat of the Southern cause?

I was moved to demonstrate to Margaret that she and I now stood on common ground. I said that I believed every Negro should possess the freedom that Tom Banks, Amos, Grace, and Lincoln enjoy.

“Why, Rosanna, you truly have changed!” she replied, her eyes glistening.

“Moreover,” I continued, “if the nation was founded on a belief in equality, as Mr. Lincoln reminded us, the Negro ought to benefit from equality as well as freedom.”

“Ah, you are still a dreamer, sister. Equality is a distant ideal, for every man wants to have a greater mind and fortune than his neighbor, and most believe themselves superior to the Negro.”

“But before God and the law, Negroes ought to be the white man’s equal, don’t you agree?” I persisted.

“I suppose they are, in God’s eyes,” she admitted.

“Then, if Negroes ought to be so elevated, why not women?”

Margaret’s eyes narrowed. “A woman, equal to a man? With that notion, Rosanna, you will never get another husband.”

“Perhaps I do not intend to marry again. Though I am sure you will,” I hastened to add. Samuel Pierpont, now that he is recovered, may be a good prospect for her. He is only a year or two younger than Margaret and much less intimidating than his mother.

Leaving Margaret staring at me in surprise, I turned to see Lizzie standing on the rock, her hands resting on Martin Weigel’s shoulders. He held her waist and smiled up at her with the unmistakable look of a man badly smitten. She tipped her head down and the brim of her hat hid both their faces from view. Oh, it gladdens me to see her so happy!

After the lovers said their reluctant good-byes, Lizzie and I walked home together. She was like a twittering bird, while I was a sage owl, my mind stirred with serious thoughts.

“You’re not listening to me!” said Lizzie, stopping so suddenly that a woman walking behind us almost collided with her. She put her hands on her hips.

“I was listening, dear cousin,” I protested. “Then my own thoughts distracted me. I am sorry. But do you remember how Mr. Lincoln
spoke of the great task remaining before us, the work that is not yet finished?”

“Of course. Who could forget such a speech?” Lizzie sat down on a stone wall beside the road and immediately became serious.

“Well, Camp Letterman is closed now, but the work of healing is still not finished. The war and the suffering go on. I’m not ready to give up my work. I want to learn more about treating infections of the blood and different types of gangrene. Lizzie, what do you think about my going to Washington to study nursing?”

She frowned and said, “I thought you would stay in Gettysburg.”

I explained that as much as I loved her and Margaret, I did not belong in Gettysburg. Ever since I began following John’s regiment as a nurse, I’ve known that I want to help others in this way. But it was Mr. Lincoln’s speech today that moved me to act. I said that I would begin making inquiries. Perhaps I can study with the Sisters of Charity, live at the convent, and work for wages in one of the new general hospitals. I promised I would come back often to visit, then glanced at Lizzie, awaiting her protests and persuasion.

But when she looked up, she was smiling.

“One day, Rosanna, you will be a famous physician.”

Her words took me aback. A woman doctor is such a rarity I had not even considered myself in that role. Now that the idea is planted, I feel it taking root.

“And what do you wish for?” I asked, thinking my lovestruck cousin would reply that she wished to be Martin Weigel’s wife.

“I know that I don’t want to be a teacher any longer. Yes, after all the fuss I made about going to Mrs. Pierpont’s school …” She stood up and began to walk again. I hurried after her.

“Papa will be so disappointed,” she whispered.

“Lizzie, the problem is that you’re too smart for her poetry and
music classes. You should go to college—Pennsylvania College, right here in Gettysburg.”

“But that is a school for men. I would have to disguise myself, cut my hair, and wear pants. I could hardly get away with that,” she said, glancing down at her figure.

I thought sadly of Kate O’Neill and her determination. Then I renewed my efforts to persuade Lizzie.

“Why shouldn’t you be allowed the same education as a man? Didn’t Mr. Lincoln just speak of the great task before us, the unfinished work of freedom and equality?”

Lizzie grasped the thread of my thoughts, but pulled it in a new direction. “Why, it’s Amos who deserves to go to college. He has learned to read and figure as well as any man.”

We were silent for a moment at the greatness of the idea that women and Negroes might someday attend colleges.

“Rosanna, the truth is, I’ve gotten used to being in charge of the butcher shop.”

I regarded her with dismay. “You want to be a butcher?”

Lizzie laughed. “No, of course not! Papa will manage the shop again, and Martin will continue working there—if Papa approves him—until Luke comes home. No, I want to have my own store. A bookshop.”

My cousin, a businesswoman! Now I was the one startled into silence.

“Even if I can’t go to Pennsylvania College, I can study textbooks on economic principles, and I do have experience running a shop. I will ask Papa to supply the capital.”

“And I will invest in your shop as well,” I said, my enthusiasm growing.

Thus encouraged, Lizzie continued building her castle, stone by stone.

“I could use the profits from the shop to publish new books. You must let me print your history of the war. We could call it
The Memoirs of a Confederate Field Nurse.
It will sell hundreds of copies. Then I will help Grace write the story of her years in slavery. It will be so heartbreaking that Jefferson Davis will read it and issue his own Emancipation Proclamation.”

I had never seen Lizzie so animated. My down-to-earth cousin was on fire with bold ideals.

“So I will learn to cure gangrene, and you will change the hearts of men through books,” I said with a wistful laugh.

Lizzie took me by the shoulders. In the middle of the road we faced each other. Her bonnet had fallen from her shoulders, and her wheat gold hair escaped from its pins. I saw her girlish self like a faint shadow behind her present womanly features. She seemed lit from within, like a lamp.

“I am not joking, Rosanna. These are not dreams for a far-off future. These are plans,” she said emphatically. “It is like deciding to picnic at Culp’s Hill. We will not do it
someday,
but
tomorrow.”

“Whether the sun shines or the rain falls,” I said, echoing her conviction.

Lizzie smiled, her green eyes bright with hope. I began to feel that everything we had spoken of was possible. The waning sun shot its beams through the bare-branched trees along Cemetery Ridge as this memorable day slipped into dusk, while Lizzie and I resumed our way along the deeply rutted pike that led at once toward Gettysburg and away from it.

author’s note

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual, historical persons and events is … completely intentional!

If you’re like me, when you read a novel about a historical event, you ask, “How much of this really happened?” My answer here is, “More than you might realize.” It all
could have happened
exactly as written, for all the fictional characters and events occur within a framework of actual events that I did not alter, not even to make a better story.

For example, Lizzie Allbauer is drawn after the fifteen-year-old Matilda “Tillie” Pierce, the daughter of a butcher with a brother in the Pennsylvania Reserves. She spent the second day of the battle at the farmhouse of Jacob and Sarah Weikert on Taneytown Road just behind Little Round Top. In 1889, Tillie Pierce Alleman wrote a memoir of the battle (At
Gettysburg: Or What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle)
that first gave me the idea for this book. But I changed Tillie enough that I gave her a new name. The rest of the Allbauers are made up. Ginnie Wade was a real person (called “Jennie” by her family), as was Sarah Brodhead and Mr. Kendlehart. Other citizens of Gettysburg and soldiers in Company K are invented but based on real people. Rosanna McGreevey and her family are entirely made up, as are Amos and Grace. There was a ladies’ seminary in Gettysburg run by a Mrs.
Eyster, but I have rendered her as Mrs. Pierpont. The Weikerts have become the Weigels. My rule of thumb was that any historical person who appears under his or her own name has not been fictionalized. This includes the military personnel such as generals George Meade, Robert E. Lee, and Gouverneur Warren, and, of course, President Abraham Lincoln.

There is so much written about the Civil War and especially the battle of Gettysburg, and the truth is so compelling, that there is really no reason to make anything up. For the military campaigns and battles I relied on Richard Wheeler’s
Gettysburg, 1863: Campaign of Endless Echoes
and Bruce Catton’s
The Civil War.
The movements of John Wilcox’s regiment follow closely the account in
John Dooley, Confederate Soldier: His War Journal,
and the actions of the Pennsylvania Reserves follow Henry Minnigh’s
History of Company K
and Samuel P. Bates’s
History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers.
For the Gettysburg battle itself, nothing matches the compelling volume by David J. Eicher,
Gettysburg Battlefield: The Definitive Illustrated History.
Thanks to the three-dimensional drawings, it is possible to envision the flow of battle hour by hour. The many photographs that exist of Gettysburg and the battlefield also served as a great inspiration and research aid. William Frassanito’s
Early Photography at Gettysburg
and
Gettysburg Then & Now
make it possible to stand almost anywhere and imagine the scene 150 years ago. E. F. Conklin’s
Women at Gettysburg, 1863
has a wealth of true stories of ordinary yet heroic women. Robert E. Denney’s
Civil War Medicine: Care and Comfort of the Wounded
consists of excerpts from contemporary sources detailing the drama of saving lives under horrific conditions. And I used Garry Wills,
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America
for my account of the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. I did some research at the Adams County Historical Society (located in the Lutheran Seminary
building that served as a hospital during the battle), where knowledgeable Civil War buffs and historians such as Tim Smith hang out, chatting about the battle in phenomenal detail. But if you really want to experience the past, visit Gettysburg during Remembrance Day weekend in November or Civil War Heritage Days in early July, when there are parades, reenactments, and thousands of visitors in period costumes. I promise you that history will come incredibly alive.