From their advantage on top of Cemetery Ridge, the Union army had held their line together, repelling the enormous wave of Confederate troops. The fighting had been so fierce, and the day so hot and still, that the smoke from the guns and the dust from fifty thousand human and hoofed feet clung in the air like a vapor from the pits of hell, burning the eyes and choking the lungs . . . and smelling of death.
Eventually the Confederate charge began to break down. The formations fell apart. The tight assault, designed to break the Union line in half, frayed and splintered. And before the afternoon was over, thousands of gray-uniformed southerners began drifting back down the long slope, not in outright retreat but in a slow return to their position of the morning.
The Union army made no attempt to follow them down the hill to try to turn its victory into a slaughter. They had successfully beaten back the supreme effort Lee’s army could muster, and they were satisfied with the victory. Besides, they were exhausted, too, and were content just to see the enemy backing away down the hill.
Lee’s invasion of the North had been stopped, right there on Cemetery Ridge, during those two hours of fighting. Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., were safe from the Confederate army!
Behind the line, Union General Meade rode forward from his headquarters and was told that his soldiers had won a great victory. For a moment it looked as though he were going to give a huge shout of triumph. But then he simply took off his hat and said quietly, “Thank God!”
A mile away to the west, General Lee rode among the men of Pickett’s Corps who had made the charge, trying to encourage them, telling them that he was proud of their efforts, and adding, “It is all my fault.”
Probably one of the most poignant and ironic moments of all came not far from where we’d been. After most of the fighting had stopped, and after all the Confederate soldiers under General Armistead had either retreated, been killed, or taken prisoner, Union medics found the southern general himself, barely alive, lying amid the dead on the battlefield. He had only the strength left to whisper a last message for them to take to his old friend Hancock before he died. Not yet knowing his friend’s fate, General Hancock himself had been carried from the field bleeding from his wound, but he would survive to serve his country again.
Though the Confederate army had been defeated in their attempt, and was certainly crippled, it was far from broken. The Union army had lost nearly as many men, and the Rebels were ready to take the battle of Gettysburg into a fourth day if the Yankees tried to attack. They had failed in their own attack, but they were still confident they could smash any offensive General Meade might try.
It was evening when we arrived back in town at the church—exhausted, dirty, bloody . . . and silent. We had seen things no human being ought to see. We had been part of something God never intended the humans of his creation to do—fighting and killing one another.
It was a day none of us would ever forget . . . could ever forget!
As night fell, ending July 3, it was silent in every direction in the fields surrounding Gettysburg. But none of us knew whether there might not be still more fighting to be resumed the next day.
My thoughts were nearly entirely occupied with trying to make Sister Janette comfortable. My heart had been turned inside-out and upside-down so many times in the last two days that I scarcely was thinking now, just going through the motions of doing what had to be done. Everyone was concerned about Sister Janette, yet there were so many others to look after, too, that most of the nuns kept busy with the soldiers—redressing wounds, feeding, washing, taking water around. I remained mostly at Sister Janette’s side. Whenever she regained consciousness, even if only for a moment, I wanted to be there to hear what she might say or to get anything for her she might want.
Shortly after dark a man suddenly strode into the church. His boots echoed heavily on the wood floor, and every head immediately turned in his direction. His gray uniform immediately identified him as a Confederate officer.
“We’re pulling out, men!” he called out. “All of you that can travel, wagons’ll be coming through town for you in less than an hour.”
“We surrendering, Captain?” asked one of the wounded.
“No, we ain’t surrendering!” he shot back angrily. “We’re just getting you men out of here and back to Virginia.”
A few whoops and hollers sounded at the mention of their home state, but mostly it remained quiet. The captain turned and left as quickly as he had come.
About forty minutes later, the sounds of several wagons approached along the street outside. They had been combing through the fields for wounded, and had already stopped at the tent hospital nearby, so a good many men had been loaded up. Half a dozen men walked in with stretchers and began transporting the wounded out of the church. We helped those who could walk or hobble. In half an hour the place was nearly deserted, and the wagons disappeared down the street and out of town to the west. Only three men remained, all unconscious, whom the medics didn’t expect to live. I didn’t know then what happened to all the dead, though I hardly wondered about it at the time.
All through that night, General Lee pulled his men together from their scattered positions—those around the town who had fought for Culp’s Hill, Longstreet’s Corps down at the peach orchard and Devil’s Den opposite the Little Round Top. Most of the night Confederate wagons began making their way toward the South Mountain gaps before swinging south for the crossing over the Potomac.
The next day dawned quiet. It was July 4. But it was a somber and dreadful national anniversary. No one was thinking happy thoughts.
I went out early for a walk. I wouldn’t have dared to do so the day before, but something about this day was different. There was a stillness you could not only hear, but could feel. The troops who had been around for a day or two as part of Ewell’s Corps were all gone. A lot of the southern wounded had been taken, and their wagons were now far away. Smoke from a few fires still rose quietly into the warm morning air. Outside of town, a tent village for the wounded showed signs of activity.
I walked south, along the very road we had taken yesterday. The only soldiers I saw now were dressed in the dark blue of the Union army, but they didn’t pay much attention to me.
As awful as the previous day had been, there was something even worse about what I saw that morning. The farther from town I went, the greater were the indescribable horrors—dead horses and dead men lying everywhere, some of them barefoot, their boots pulled off by survivors in desperate need of new footwear. Now I knew what had been done with all the dead—nothing! Bodies clad in both blue and gray were strewn everywhere.
There would probably be huge mass graves dug, and townspeople and medics and church people and the soldiers themselves would all eventually come to remove the evidence of battle—corpses and broken wagons and shattered weapons and discarded supplies. But for now, on this morning so soon after the smoke had settled, all the horrible scars of destruction and violence and death lay everywhere for all eyes to see.
As I was gazing out over a field into the distance, my careless steps stumbled, and I nearly fell. I pulled my eyes back in front of me and looked down. I had nearly toppled right onto a corpse.
Aghast, I stepped back, but not before I saw the dreadful look of the dead boy’s eyes staring straight up at me. A look of anguished fear remained on his face, caught there and preserved at the very moment of death! I would never get it out of my mind as long as I lived. I felt as though he were looking at me, from the other side of the curtain of death, still asking—asking me!—what all the nonsense of killing was supposed to be about, asking why he had had to die.
Suddenly my stomach churned. Choking, and my eyes stinging with tears, I backed away from the body, then turned and began to run. Faster and faster I flew, and ran the entire distance back to the church, crying all the way.
Chapter 23
The Train Again
The fighting did not resume.
&nbs
p; Most of that time the two great armies watched each other warily, each wondering if the other was going to attack. Neither did. The Confederates half expected Meade to come after them, but when he didn’t, Lee finally made the decision to call off his hoped-for invasion and to retreat back into northern Virginia. He gave the order, his army began the long retreat the way they had come, and General Meade followed at a distance. Lee was still dangerous, and Meade wanted to make sure the general did indeed go back to Virginia.
The great battle of Gettysburg was over. Lee had tried to invade the North and had failed. But he had also made good his escape, even if in defeat.
Those of us from the Convent of John Seventeen remained another two days in Gettysburg. By then Sister Janette had recovered sufficiently to travel, although she remained very weak.
Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the whole war. Over 50,000 men were killed—23,000 from the North, 28,000 from the South! The dead lay everywhere surrounding the town. And once the armies departed, the 2,400 inhabitants were left with ten times that number of wounded to do their best to care for. The wounded were brought into homes, even as graves were being dug for the dead, and the town’s churches did even more than they had been able to do during the fighting to help care for them. Carpets and walls and floorboards and blankets and pillows and books used for pillows—all were saturated with blood! The U.S. Sanitary Commission, for whom I’d helped raise money at the start of the war, sent in doctors and nurses and supplies to help with the effort, too. They erected many more tents outside town, which eventually relieved the burden on the townspeople.
Several of the sisters, including the two who were nurses, remained behind in Gettysburg. But now that General Lee’s invasion had been stopped, I felt I ought to continue on to Washington. And I did not want to leave Sister Janette’s side. We again spent the night in East Prospect, and then arrived back at the convent late the following day.
Whatever my future held as far as marriage or being single, becoming a nun or joining a convent, writing or not writing, of one thing I was certain. I needed to continue on to see President Lincoln before anything. It was for that reason I had come, and I had to follow through. He had asked for my help with the war effort, and now more than ever I wanted to do whatever I could.
Now I had been part of what the Sanitary Commission did and saw how valuable and necessary their work was in caring for the wounded. I had seen firsthand where the money raised for the Sanitary Fund went. And if I could help with that again, perhaps I could do more good in that way than I’d been able to do with actual bandages and medicine in my hands.
Four days later, therefore, I found myself back on the train and again heading northeastward toward Harrisburg, where I could connect with another train to take me south to the nation’s capital.
What an unbelievable three weeks it had been since I’d met Sister Janette on the train and decided to get off with her and visit the convent!
It would be a long time before I’d know which had effected my life the most—my talks with her, being with the Sisters of Unity, or witnessing the battle of Gettysburg. How could I ever be the same again? All three experiences had enlarged the world of my mind. Never had I encountered so many new things to think about in such a short time.
I sat in the train all that first day, staring blankly out the window, unable to focus my thoughts. All the enthusiasm and jubilation of the earlier part of my journey was gone. I felt very isolated and alone. A huge dark cloud settled over my spirit, and I couldn’t get out from under its oppression. I had felt so cared for, so safe, so at home with the sisters at the convent. Why I hadn’t felt lonely before meeting Sister Janette I didn’t know. Nothing had changed. This had been my plan all along. Yet now that I had met her, met them all—everything was different. I had left a part of myself behind, a piece of my heart. And now I didn’t feel altogether whole because a part of me had remained with them.
Even the thought of seeing President Lincoln was no longer exciting in the same way. What is meeting the President of the United States alongside a friendship that stirs deep bonds of attachment and love inside your heart? I felt as if I’d left home all over again. In fact, I felt more sadness in my spirit now than I had felt leaving Miracle Springs.
I pulled from my pocket a small silver cross the sister had given me the night before. It was a simple little token of friendship, yet merely holding it in my palm and gazing on it with my eyes sent stabs of painful longing deep into my heart.
I turned it over. There on the reverse, in letters so tiny I could just barely make them out, were the words: Sisters of Unity, New Providence, Pennsylvania. I read them over and over, three more times. Would this, I wondered almost wistfully, one day be my home too? Why did I feel such a longing to remain there at the convent? Was it their life of dedication to Jesus that had penetrated so deeply into my soul, or merely the friendship of other young women whose spirits hungered for the same kind of life I did?
Perhaps it had to do with what had taken place at Gettysburg. Perhaps what I felt was a melancholy lingering from Jennie Wade’s death and watching Sister Janette fall to the ground with a bullet in her shoulder—seeing the face of death so close all around me.
Whatever the reason, part of me didn’t want to be on this train anymore. I wanted to turn around and go back . . . back to the convent . . . even all the way back to Miracle Springs.
But I knew I couldn’t turn around. I had to finish what I’d started out to do.
Sister Janette’s final words of parting came back to me. “You will always have a home here with us, Corrie,” she had said. “And you will always occupy a special place in my own heart. You are a dear friend. I thank God for allowing our paths to cross, and I shall pray for the day when I see you once more.”
I looked out the window at the passing countryside. Everything seemed gray and dreary. I tried to take in a deep breath, but it was no use. I choked on the very air, and my eyes filled with tears of sadness.
Chapter 24
Washington, D.C.
I arrived at the Capital early in the afternoon. The station was in the center of town. I left my bags there and walked straight to the White House.
There were soldiers and guards all around, I suppose on account of the war and the danger there could be to the President. Something was going on, but I couldn’t make out what. There seemed to be an unusual amount of scurrying around, and then all of a sudden I saw three policemen come out of a gate holding on to a handcuffed man. They shoved him into a waiting enclosed carriage, got in after him, and the driver called to the two horses, and they lurched off down the street.
Once all the hubbub had settled, I remembered what I was doing there. I asked one of the guards in front near one of the fences surrounding the grounds where the gate was where I could get in. He gave me a funny look, but then directed me around to the side.
I walked around toward where he had pointed and came to a gate where there were even more guards. People were coming and going into the grounds. It was the same gate the three policemen had just come out of. There was a little guardhouse where two men with guns were in charge of opening and shutting the gate and letting people go through, and there still was quite a bit of activity and bustle after the incident I had just witnessed.
I walked up to the men standing in front of the guardhouse. “I would like to see Mr. Lincoln,” I said.
One of the men eyed me carefully, then answered roughly, “Beat it, little girl. No one sees the President, especially not today.”
“But I’ve—”
“Scram, you hear me!”
He made a menacing move toward me and I immediately backed away. There was enough of a crowd around that I quickly found myself surrounded by people and moving away from the gate. But after a minute or two I stopped and glanced back at the man who had spoken so harshly to me.
He was still watching me—and not with a friendly look, either. I was sick inside. What was I going
to do?
I turned again and stumbled along, following the leisurely crowd of people wandering around the White House. My mind was swimming. I didn’t know what to do. Maybe there was another entrance, somebody else I could talk to. I kept moving along the walkway, eventually walking around the entire perimeter of the White House grounds, until I found myself back at the guardhouse. There was that same mean-looking man standing there, holding a rifle!
I walked away again, this time back in the general direction of the train station. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, though what I intended to do there, I’m not sure. I wanted to run away and hide, to get on the first westbound train and go back to the convent in Pennsylvania.
I felt so alone and so foolish. What had I thought, that I would just walk up to the White House and walk in as if it were the house next door? How could I have been so naive? That was where the President of the United States lived! Who was I to think I could just walk up and knock on the door? He probably wouldn’t remember me at all. He probably wrote nice notes like that to hundreds of people, never expecting them to do anything so outlandish as actually come to the White House and try to see him! It was all so clear now! He had never intended me to visit him at all. It was just his way of being nice and expressing his gratitude, and I had misunderstood the whole thing by thinking of it as an actual invitation.
Oh, I felt like such a stupid fool! I had come all this way for nothing! And what was I to do now? I was three thousand miles from California. I didn’t even know where home was anymore! What should I do?
If a train had been available right then to take me back where I’d come from, I would have bought a ticket and boarded it at once. I was so discouraged I could not even think clearly! But after checking the schedule, I found that there weren’t any trains leaving until the next day. So I would be stuck in Washington at least overnight. I’d have to find someplace to stay, and then I’d leave the city the following afternoon.
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