Gettysburg: The Crossroads Town

by Tim Black

  They checked in at the Gettysburg Hotel taking two rooms, saying they were refugees from Chambersburg.

  “The hotel goes back to 1797,” Mr. Greene said. “It is one of the oldest buildings in the town. It was a favorite hotel for visiting dignitaries. Of course, to my knowledge there was no indoor plumbing in 1863. You girls are used to privies. Remember Philadelphia in 1776?”

  “Yes, it was wonderful. I can’t wait to use an outhouse again,” Minerva said sarcastically.

  “Ah, the flies,” Bette added. “Not to mention the odor. What a bouquet. It would be great if movies could capture the stink of the past and not just its costumes.”

  “Well at least at the hotel you will have chamber pots beneath your beds,” Mr. Greene said, adding, “and probably a potty seat. Place the chamber pot beneath the seat…oh, never mind,” he went on, blushing. “You two girls will figure it out.”

  They had adjoining rooms, which looked out over the town square. Mr. Greene and Victor inspected their room. They had to share one large bed, but thankfully, two separate chamber pots. A dry sink contained a mirror and an ewer filled with water and a bowl in which to wash one’s hands and face. In a corner of the room was an odd piece of furniture, which Mr. Greene explained was a sitz bath, a shallow tub where a guest would take a bath in a sitting position. Mr. Greene added that a sitz bath was used to cleanse one’s perineum, the space between one’s rectum and his genitals. Victor winced at the description. “Water,” Mr. Green said, “would be brought to the room from the kitchen after being heated over a flame. Baths were not as common in 1863 as in modern times and a man who took a bath or shower more than once a week was considered somewhat prissy.

  “This is going to take some adjustment,” Greene admitted, bringing forth a pocket watch. Five minutes to eight. He walked over to the window to look out on the town square. “Victor, the Confederates will open fire any time now. As a result, the Diamond, the town square below us, will be in the hands of the Rebels by the late afternoon. It will be the second time in a week.”

  “Second time?” Victor asked.,

  “On June 26th, Jubal Early’s division marched into Gettysburg and occupied the town. The Rebels took down the Stars and Stripes and raised up the battle flag of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. To the chagrin of the people of Gettysburg, the Confederate army even played ‘Dixie’ as well. It was very humiliating.”

  “Don’t you think we should be out of here by the afternoon then, Mr. Greene?”

  “That depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “In which direction we decide to go…we can’t go west, because the Rebels are out there. Jeb Stuart and his cavalry are riding all over Adams County about now. In fact, Stuart’s romp over the countryside will cost General Lee his eyes. His army will be blind without Stuart’s intelligence of the Union Amy’s whereabouts. We could go south past Cemetery Hill, I suppose. That way we would stay behind the Union lines. They will line up behind Cemetery Ridge from Culp’s Hill to Little Round Top.”

  “Then we go south,” Victor agreed.”

  “Yes. But we can never disclose what we know about the battle ahead, Victor. We might be taken for spies. If we did anything to inadvertently help the Confederates win the Battle of Gettysburg the United States as we know it might not even exist to go back to. Who knows how the history of the world would have been different if the Confederates had won the Civil War and the nation was permanently divided. You know a historian named McKinley Kantor wrote a Look Magazine article on the that very subject…if the South had won the Civil War. Kantor also wrote a novel called Andersonville.”

  “About the prisoner of war camp in Georgia?” Victor asked.

  “Yes, Victor. Did you know the Yankees tried the camp commander named Wirz for war crimes, eighty years before the Nazis were tried at Nuremberg? The Yankees hanged Wirz, too, just like the Allies hanged the Nazis who were convicted of war crimes. Henry Wirz.”

  “Even sounds German,” Victor said.

  “He was actually born in Switzerland,” Greene added.

  “I read about Andersonville, it was more concentration camp than prisoner of war camp,” Victor said. “A terrible place.”

  “The Confederates had another nasty prison, Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. It was pretty notorious as well, but not as bad as horrid Andersonville. The Yankee prisoners taken over the next three days will wind up in Libby Prison. The Civil War was brutal, Victor. It has been glamorized by Hollywood, but it was horrific. I am afraid we are going to witness the horror, the horror I had hoped to shield you from by merely coming to the cemetery dedication.”

  “It’s not your fault, Mr. Greene. It was the ghosts.”

  The roar of a cannonade interrupted their conversation and sent the girls scurrying into the males’ room.

  “What is that?” Minerva demanded.

  “Cannons,” Victor said calmly.

  “Wow!” Bette said in an excited voice. She moved over to the window to peer out to the west. Smoke was beginning to obscure the view of the Lutheran Theological Seminary on Seminary Ridge west of town.”

  “We should go to the Fahnestock Building on Baltimore Street,” Mr. Greene said. “They had an observatory on their roof. Who wants to go?”

  Victor and Bette raised their hands. Minerva did not. “I will stay here if it is okay with you, Mr. Greene.”

  “Certainly, Minerva.”

  Mr. Green walked over to the dry sink and poured a glass of water. From his inside coat pocket, he withdrew a plastic bottle, popped the cap and shook out one capsule into his hand then swallowed the pill, chasing it down with a swig of water.”

  “Mr. Greene, what kind of medicine is that?”

  “An antibiotic, Victor. From my dentist. I have an inflamed tooth.

  “You can’t have that here, Mr. Greene,” Victor said. “Penicillin wasn’t discovered until the 1930s.”

  “Alexander Fleming discovered it in 1928, actually.”

  “Whatever,” Victor said. “You know the rules, Mr. Greene. You can’t take a modern drug back in time.”

  “My tooth was killing me, Victor. I almost canceled the trip.”

  “I sure wish you had,” Minerva groused.

  Bette looked at Minerva and said, “Oh, stuff it, Minerva! We’re here and I intend to have a good time,” she said. “So stop whining and enjoy the war.”

  Minerva snapped back. “Bette Kromer, are you as mad as Victor Bridges? ‘Enjoy the war’? Good heavens!”

  Mr. Greene intervened. “Okay, let’s not argue. In retrospect, I should have canceled the trip with my tooth ache, but I thought we were only going to be gone for the day. I just grabbed my pills as I walked out my door.”

  “How many pills do you have, Mr. Greene?”

  Greene looked at the bottle. “Ninety, minus three or four I have taken today and yesterday.”

  “Maybe they will come in handy,” Victor said.

  “How so?” Mr. Greene asked.

  Bette spoke up. “I think I know what Victor is getting at, Mr. Greene. If any of us gets shot, the antibiotic would prevent infection, and from what I read gangrene is the danger. There are no antibiotics in the Civil War. Antiseptics, sure, but not antibiotics. If a limb became infected, the surgeons just hacked off the arm or leg. I saw it on PBS…Mercy Street.”

  “Cool show,” Victor agreed, looking directly at Minerva to gauge her reaction. “I call it Blue and Grey’s Anatomy.”

  Victor’s joke made even Minerva laugh, for Grey’s Anatomy was Minerva’s favorite television show.

  Chapter 4

  Out in the streets of Gettysburg there was a frenzy of excitement. Scared civilians were running toward the Diamond, on Chambersburg Pike from Seminary Ridge. Union soldiers were racing in the opposite direction toward the sound of thunder, which emanated from the artillery of both the Union and the Confederate forces. Instead of heading toward the Fahnestock Building, the trio curiously walked alo
ng Chambersburg Street to get a better vantage point on the battle.

  “Be careful,” Mr. Greene advised. “If anything comes close to us we are going to turn around and run back to the square. Is that understood…my Lord?” Greene said pointing. “That old man carrying the flintlock rifle is John Burns. He’s headed out to fight. The story is true,” Greene said, surprised. “I always thought the John Burns story was a myth.”

  Just as Mr. Greene said this, an artillery shell flipped over a military caisson as easily as an angry child might have turned over a toy. A horse, whimpering in pain, lay on the ground next to the overturned vehicle, gasping for air.

  “Oh, the poor horse!” Bette cried.

  “Yes,” Mr. Greene agreed. “Before this day is over scores of horses and hundreds of men will be lying all over the area. I think we should retreat to the observatory on the Fahnestock Store.”

  A Union officer raised a pistol and mercifully ended the horse’s agony with a shot to its head.

  They entered the Fahnestock Store to find one of the Fahnestock brothers still at his post behind a counter.

  “May we climb to the rooftop observatory, sir?” Mr. Greene asked politely.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure,” the proprietor said graciously.

  “My name is Greene, sir, a refugee from Mercersburg in town with my niece and nephew. We fled ahead of the Rebel horde, sir.”

  Fahnestock extended his hand and Greene shook it. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Greene, my name is Fahnestock. You and your family feel free to go up on the roof. There are several folks up there already, including General Howard.”

  *

  They climbed up the stairs to the roof of the building, surprised to find the roof had a railing around it and benches on which to sit. Obviously, Victor thought, people came up to the roof on a regular basis. Several people had already congregated along the rail, watching the smoke to the west. The trio joined the gathering off to the side and no one asked who they were. The roof provided a clear view, and a general held a pair of binoculars with one hand, as he was missing his second.

  “Oliver Howard,” Greene whispered to his students. “He took over General Reynolds’ corps after Reynolds was shot.”

  The name rang a bell for Bette. She whispered, “Isn’t he the general who made Elizabeth Thorn prepare supper for him?”

  “Yes, Bette, I see you read Mrs. Thorn’s memoir. What an incredible woman; her husband off at war, she became the caretaker of the Evergreen Cemetery. Even though she was six months pregnant, she continued to dig the graves. A pregnant gravedigger. Let’s keep our voices down and just watch for a few minutes.” Bette and Victor nodded agreement.

  They continued to watch the battle unfold west of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. Victor recognized the face of Daniel Skelly from the photograph on the cover of Skelly’s reminiscence, A Boy’s Experiences During the Battle of Gettysburg. Remembering that the booklet was published in 1932, Victor realized that the boy on the roof of the Fahnestock Building had died nearly a hundred years before the time from whence the Cassadaga contingent came. Daniel, who had recently been out on Seminary Ridge near the fighting, was telling the few people on the rooftop about what he had witnessed. “I climbed a good-sized oak tree,” Daniel began, his face animated. “I had a good view of the ridge to the west, and the battle began out at Marsh Creek about three miles outside town, I reckon. Buford’s cavalry was trying to stop the Rebs by themselves without any infantry support. They were being pushed back and the Rebs’ artillery opened fire and shot, and shells began to fly over our heads and one round hit the top of the tree I was perched in and I scrambled down to the ground and skedaddled back into town as fast I could run,” Daniel admitted.

  “Is it true General Reynolds is dead, Daniel?” a lady asked the boy.

  “Yes, Mrs. Fahnestock,” Daniel replied. “I am sorry to say that he is gone. Shot by a Rebel sniper.”

  “Damn the Rebels!” the lady shouted, and the men were shocked at her outburst. Seeing their reactions, the lady blushed and apologized. A lady did not say such things, Victor realized.

  Victor, Bette and Mr. Greene had listened to Daniel’s eyewitness account and the teacher whispered to his two students. “Reynolds’ death was a great loss for the Union. We’d better get back to the hotel and pack up our things,” Greene added, still whispering. “It is almost time to move south of town before the Rebels get here.”

  While the people on the roof were mesmerized by the battle, the three visitors slipped unobtrusively down the stairs.

  When they were out on Baltimore Street, Victor asked his teacher, “Mr. Greene, why did you say we were from Mercersburg instead of Chambersburg?”

  “I recalled that the Fahnestock brothers did business with Chambersburg merchants and I was afraid Mr. Fahnestock was going to ask me if I knew so and so in Chambersburg.”

  “Quick thinking, Mr. Greene,” Victor said. “Well done.”

  “Thank you, Victor. I guess I still have most of my marbles, and I’m not ready for the Old Teachers’ Retirement Home, yet.”

  Bette chuckled. “I’m glad you haven’t gone senile, Mr. Greene. I think we are really going to need you over the next few months.”

  “I am truly sorry about all of this, children,” Greene lamented. “I never suspected our historians of subterfuge and chicanery.”

  Victor smiled. He appreciated that Mr. Greene never talked down to them and wasn’t afraid to use his sophisticated vocabulary with his students. Victor believed his high verbal S.A.T. scores were a direct result of listening to Mr. Green’s vocabulary. Harry Potter had Professor Dumbledore, Victor thought. He had Mr. Greene.

  “Heck, Mr. Greene. The only one who is upset is Minerva,” Bette said. “She thinks she’s going to miss her college visits…but we will return to the day we left…won’t we?”

  “I think it may depend on our spirit guides. Has anyone seen Mr. Catton or Mr. Foote floating around?”

  “No, sir,” Victor replied.

  *

  Meanwhile back at the Gettysburg Hotel, Minerva was reading from Sarah Broadhead’s diary, which the Quaker matron kept from June 15th to July 15th of 1863, and from which filmmaker Ken Burns had extensively quoted for his Civil War series.

  Diary of Sarah Broadhead

  July 1, 1863

  I got up early this morning to get my baking done before any fighting would begin. I had just put my bread in the pans when the cannons began to fire, and true enough the battle had begun in earnest, about two miles out on the Chambersburg pike. What to do or where to go, I did not know. People were running here and there, screaming that the town would be shelled. No one knew where to go or what to do. My husband advised remaining where we were, but all said we ought not to remain in our exposed position, and that would be better to go to some part of town farther away from the scene of the conflict. As our neighbors had all gone away, I would not remain, but my husband said he would stay at home. About 10 o’clock the shells began to “fly around quite thick,” and I took my child and went to the house of a friend up town. As we passed up the street we met wounded men coming in from the field. When we saw them, we, for the first time, began to realize our fearful situation, and anxiously to ask, Will our army be whipped? Some said there was no danger of that yet, and pointed to Confederate prisoners who began to be sent through our streets to the rear. Such a dirty, filthy set, no one ever saw. They were dressed in clothes of all kinds and no kind of cuts.

  Some were barefooted and a few wounded. Though enemies, I pitied them. I, with others, was sitting at the doorstep bathing the wounds of some of our brave soldiers, and became so much excited as the artillery galloped through the town, and the infantry hurried out to reinforce those fighting, that we forgot our fears and our danger. All was bustle and confusion. No one can imagine in what extreme fright we were when our men began to retreat. A citizen galloped up to the door in which we were sitting and called out, “For G
od’s sake go into the house! The Rebels are in the other end of town, and all will be killed!” We quickly ran in, and the cannonading coming nearer and becoming heavier, we went to the cellar, and in a few minutes the town was filled of the filthy Rebels. They did not go farther, for our soldiers having possession of the hills just beyond, shelled them so that they were glad to give over the pursuit, and the fighting for the day was ended. We remained in the cellar until the firing ceased, and then feared to come out, not knowing what the Rebels might do. How changed the town looked when we came to the light. The street was strewn over with clothes, blankets, knapsacks, cartridge boxes, dead horses, and the bodies of a few men, but not so many of the last as I expected to see. “Can we go out?” was asked of the Rebels. “Certainly,” was the answer, “they would not hurt us.” We started home, and found things all right. As I write all is quiet, But O! how I dread to-morrow.

  Just as Minerva was about to turn the page to read the Quaker mother’s entry for July 2nd, the ghosts of Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton appeared in the hotel room. Great, she thought, she had to entertain the revenant rascals, but she couldn’t help but smile at Shelby’s twinkling eyes. He was a merry old ghost, she thought. Mischievous, but merry. The dead historians were floating about her room, inspecting the furniture and making comments.

  “The hotel is more rustic than I imagined,” Catton said. “For some reason I thought they had water closets; they had water closets in Arlington. Of course, Arlington was more modern than Gettysburg. Gettysburg was rather backward, really. The furniture is rather drab, Shelby, clearly functional but drab,” Catton evaluated.

  “Her window has a nice view of the battlefield, though,” Shelby Foote remarked. “We should see your Army of the Potomac boys running with their tails between their legs anytime now, Mr. Catton.”

  “Enjoy the day, Shelby,” Catton countered. “It was the Confederates’ best day of the whole battle.”

  Minerva, who was sitting on a bed quietly listening to the two dead men, finally decided to speak. “Why did you do it, gentlemen? Why did you alter the time line?”