Gettysburg: The Crossroads Town

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Gettysburg: The Crossroads Town Page 7

by Tim Black


  “By the way, Minerva. If anyone should ask you about Mercersburg, you should know that President James Buchanan was born there.”

  “Didn’t you teach us that Buchanan was the worst president of all time, Mr. Greene?” Minerva asked.

  “Well, yes, I did, Minerva,” admitted Mr. Greene sheepishly. “But he has only been out of office for two years and Pennsylvanians were still proud of him as he was the only president from Pennsylvania. He was also the only bachelor president.”

  “I read an article that said he was gay,” Minerva said.

  “Well, there is speculation by revisionist historians, but no conclusive evidence was ever found to confirm that speculation. At any rate, I like to think of Buchanan as an American Nero; he watched as the Republic burned. Buchanan didn’t do a thing to stop secession in the months between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration. Remember when Jackson was president and South Carolina threatened to secede? What did old Hickory promise to do if South Carolina seceded?”

  Minerva remembered. She brightened and replied, “Jackson threatened to hang John C. Calhoun.”

  “Good job!” Greene said.

  “It was a multiple-choice question on the A.P. exam, Mr. Greene.”

  “Great!”

  “I nailed it,” Minerva said triumphantly, then added wistfully, “Somehow, that doesn’t seem to matter much now, though.”

  “Keep the faith, Minerva,” Green said and pointed to the retreating Union army. “Look! Do you see who is floating over the Union army?”

  “Why that is Mr. Catton!” Minerva said, waving to the ghost.

  Recognizing Minerva, the dead historian smiled and floated across the Diamond to the window of the Gettysburg Hotel and began a conversation.

  “Why are you two in the hotel?” Catton asked. “You are missing so much. I can’t tell you how enjoyable this all is!” he tittered, and for a moment his merriment shattered his ghostly image into a number of smaller pieces. “Excuse me a moment, while I put myself together,” said Catton who calmly rearranged his image by literally picking up the pieces and shoving them back together.”

  “Where is Shelby Foote?”

  “With the Confederates, of course. That’s what we agreed upon. We were sitting atop the Evergreen Gatehouse, eating popcorn and watching the battle—we even saw Bette and Victor... Well, as we were sitting there we decided that I would follow the Yankees and Shelby would stay with the Rebels and then we would compare notes at the end of the day on Big Round Top.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” Mr. Greene said.

  “I guess by this time Shelby is probably floating around Robert E. Lee at his headquarters tent, which in an hour or so will be a house on Seminary Ridge. The Thompson House. Did you know that Meade’s headquarters and Lee’s headquarters were in the homes of widows, Mr. Greene?”

  “Yes, I did, Mr. Catton,” Greene replied. “Meade set up his headquarters at the Leister farm, behind Cemetery Ridge. Some people referred to Meade and Lee as ‘widow makers,’ for they certainly created thousands of dead husbands and fathers in the three days at Gettysburg.”

  “That they did,” Catton agreed as he continued to float outside their hotel window. “You must forgive me, but I want to join the Yankees on the high ground. Please excuse me, perhaps we will meet again later on. I can’t believe I’m really here!” Catton said happily, and he seemed to skip as he floated away.

  “Mr. Greene, we have no luck with ghosts.”

  Mr. Greene smiled. “I believe you are right, Minerva. Shall we go down into the town square and offer our services to the wounded men?”

  “Yes, Mr. Greene. It is the Christian thing to do.”

  “Yes, it is. Minerva, but we must not interfere with the medical care at any time no matter how barbaric it is. Do you understand? We cannot save a dying soldier with any modern methods that we may know and the physician may not. We don’t know how that would upset the time continuum. Let’s not have another Peggy Shippen on our hands,” said Greene alluding to their prior trip to Philadelphia. “I don’t want to have to come back here once we get back home. Do you?”

  “I sure don’t, Mr. Greene,” Minerva replied. “No more butterfly effects,” she added, referring to the way the group changed history with its visit to Philadelphia in 1776. “I don’t want to see Robert E. Lee on the twenty-dollar bill.”

  “Yes, let’s keep it with Harriet Tubman,” Greene said. “It took long enough to get a black woman on our money.”

  “You mean ‘colored’ woman, Mr. Greene.”

  Mr. Greene smiled. “Touché, Minerva,” he replied. “Thanks for keeping me in the time period.”

  Minerva and her teacher stopped outside the courthouse on the Diamond and quietly watched as ambulance after ambulance pulled up and mangled men were led into the courthouse on stretchers. Minerva noticed one man was missing his right arm past the elbow, a hastily tied tourniquet tied around the stump of what remained. Minerva thought she was going to gag and throw up, but she kept control. Like many of the students at Cassadaga Area High School, she had taken nursing classes and was well versed on first aid.

  Mr. Greene saw the horror on Minerva’s face. He said quietly, “Minerva, as bad as the battles were, two thirds of the men who died in the Civil War succumbed to disease—to bacteria not bullets, I like to say. Six hundred twenty thousand soldiers died in the Civil War, more deaths than all other wars our nation fought in, including, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. But in treating the diseases during the Civil War, the medical community began to rethink its practices, especially its previous disregard for hygiene. Both sides suffered from tuberculosis, typhus and dysentery, as well as pneumonia, mumps and measles. Did you ever read Gone with the Wind?”

  “I love that book,” Minerva said. “I have read it three times. I named my dachshund Rhett Butler.”

  “Do you remember Scarlett’s first husband?”

  “Charles Hamilton?”

  “Yes, what did he die from?”

  “Measles!” Minerva said.

  “He sure did. The poor lad went off in search of glory and contracted the measles. So much for glory. The fictional Charles Hamilton wasn’t alone. The unsanitary camp conditions contributed to the deaths as well. Tuberculosis preyed on men who were in fierce battles and were poorly fed. Today, we have vaccinations for mumps and measles. Smallpox is the danger you kids face here in 1863. Since smallpox was eradicated in our time, they stopped giving routine vaccinations for smallpox in the 1970s. I have a vaccination mark for smallpox, but you kids don’t. That is the disease that should scare us, if it pokes its head up. The pockmarks on George Washington’s face were the result of smallpox that he contracted and survived as a child. Civil War doctors were ignorant of germ theory, and antiseptic conditions were rare if at all. The famous poet Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse during the Civil War, witnessed and documented many an amputation, and once wrote about one makeshift hospital that ‘it was quite crowded upstairs and down, everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done, the men in their old clothes, unclean and buddy.’”

  Minerva marveled at Mr. Greene’s ability to cite from memory a plethora of quotations from hundreds of sources, as if he were merely recalling a conversation with an historical figure. In this case Walt Whitman. His mind was a veritable search engine of synapses.

  “It was the women, Minerva, who led the fight for sanitary conditions. There was Dorthea Dix, and Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross. Both women worked tirelessly to improve the sanitation in hospitals and, as a result of their efforts, probably saved thousands. When William Hammond became the surgeon general of the Union army, he designed new hospital layouts and wrote a book on the importance of hygiene that eventually caught on with his subordinate physicians.”

  “Is it true that one out of five children died before the age of five?” Minerva asked.

  “That’s about right,
although I have seen a study that says one out of four. I think one out of five children dying by age five is probably more accurate.’

  An out-of-control ambulance ended their conversation. The driver was trying desperately to rein in his horse and suddenly the horse pulled up, causing a wounded soldier to slide from the ambulance onto the dirt of the Diamond. Minerva sprang into action and darted to the stricken soldier who was gasping for air. After a moment, however, the man stopped breathing and Minerva’s cardiopulmonary resuscitation training kicked in. She heard the song Another One Bites the Dust in her head and began CPR, pushing the soldier’s chest with the beat of the song. As the ambulance driver watched curiously, Minerva completed thirty chess compressions, followed by two rescue breaths. The man revived.

  “Where did you learn that, missy?” the orderly asked.

  Thinking quickly, Minerva came up with a lie. “My mother was a midwife and she used to do that for stillborn babies. She saved some of the children. I didn’t know if it would work on adults, but I thought I should try it.”

  “Oh,” the ambulance driver said dismissively as he and an orderly retrieved the wounded man and put him on a stretcher. The man smiled at Minerva as the stretcher bearers took him inside.

  “Minerva,” Greene cautioned. “You fibbed your way out of that very well, but don’t practice CPR. You don’t know how that might change things.”

  “Mr. Greene,” Minerva said, holding her ground. “I thought it was my Christian duty to help the poor man. He is shot in the stomach.”

  “Well,” Greene replied, “CPR probably won’t make any difference in his case. More than likely with his stomach wound, he won’t survive long.”

  “That’s a cheerful thought,” Minerva replied. “I want to go inside the courthouse and see how things are going.”

  Greene shook his head. “No, Minerva.”

  “I want to see the primitive medicine, Mr. Greene. If I am going to major in pre-med at either Duke or Yale,” Minerva said, “I need to witness the medical care of the era.”

  Mr. Greene smiled. Minerva knew he had a soft spot for students who were curious and knew where they were going. Minerva had always known where she was headed from the first time she watched Grey’s Anatomy. Although unlike Meredith Grey, she decided she would definitely not sleep around when she hung up her shingle. She planned to marry a brain surgeon and stay true to him. Then why, she asked herself, did she see Victor Bridges in her dreams?” Victor had as much of a chance of becoming a brain surgeon as the man in the moon, Minerva mused, irritated at herself for the cliché that formed in her mind.

  “Minerva?” Mr. Greene said as he waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you still here? You seem to be thinking about something else.”

  “Oh, sorry, Mr. Greene. I guess I was daydreaming.”

  “Go into the courthouse and watch the medical procedures if you want, but do not administer any modern medical treatments, no matter how necessary. You can help with bedpans and give the boys water, but you are not to save any more lives, hear?”

  “Yes, sir. I understand. No lifesaving,” Minerva said, irritated. She felt like a lifeguard at the beach who was not allowed to save swimmers from drowning.

  “Good!” Greene said. “Go on then. I am going up to my room at the hotel to watch the events from my window.”

  The first thing that Minerva noticed when she entered the courthouse was the blood. It seemed to be everywhere: Puddles on the floor, handprints on the wall. Then came the groaning and the screaming. Primeval sounds. It hurt her ears to hear it and she was powerless to stop it. Pain and agony personified. Already, there were scores of wounded men lying all about. The fighting had only been going on for a few hours, but there seemed to be nearly a hundred wounded soldiers in the courthouse. Minerva counted two doctors and several women acting as nurses. From what Minerva had read about the residents of Gettysburg, many of the women of the town volunteered their help to the wounded men during and after the battle. A young woman who appeared to be about Minerva’s age approached Minerva and asked, “Are you here to help or looking for a loved one, a husband perhaps?”

  “I am here to be of assistance if you can use me. My name is Minerva.”

  The other young woman smiled. “I didn’t think I would meet the goddess of wisdom today,” she said with a smile. “I am Julia Culp. And I help both Rebels and Yankees. I have a brother with the Union army and a brother with the Confederates.” Julia Culp handed Minerva a bedsheet. “Either or both of them may show up here by the end of the day. I certainly hope they don’t, but that is a possibility.”

  “That must be difficult for you,” Minerva replied.

  Julia nodded.

  “What is the sheet for?” Minerva asked.

  “We are making bandages from the sheets,” Julia said. We tear the sheets into strips. Women from all over town are bringing sheets or tearing them up at home. There may be hundreds of casualties before the day is over.”

  Try thousands, Minerva thought, but held her tongue. Julia led Minerva to a room where other women were rolling bandages and Minerva got to work tearing the sheet into strips. How rudimentary, Minerva thought. Minerva sat at a table and Julia Culp sat down beside her.

  “I haven’t seen you before, are you from out of town?” Julia asked Minerva.

  “Yes. I came with my uncle from Mercersburg. My full name is Minerva…Greene,” she said, unaware that Bette had told Elizabeth Thorn that the “family” name was Kardashian. Minerva, never as imaginative as Bette, merely adopted her teacher’s surname.

  “Why did your parents name you ‘Minerva’?” a curious Julia Culp asked.

  “My mother likes Greek mythology. I guess she could have named me Hestia?”

  “Which one was that?”

  “Hestia is the goddess of the hearth and home.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that one,” Julia replied. “I mean I’m sixteen and I don’t want to wind up a spinster. I think a girl should be married before she is twenty. After that she’s an old maid… I heard the Rebs were rounding up the coloreds in Mercersburg, did you see that?”

  Minerva paused for a moment, trying to recall what Mr. Greene had said about the enslavement of blacks in Mercersburg during the Gettysburg campaign. Then she remembered. “The Rebels threatened to burn down houses if the African…ah…coloreds weren’t turned over to them.” Minerva had almost inadvertently said “African-Americans,” even after Mr. Greene’s warning. She was annoyed with herself.

  “Most of our colored folks left town a week ago, before the Rebs came here on June 26th,” Julia said. “But there are still a few around. It might be dangerous for them. Do you think the Rebels will ravish us, Minerva?” Julia said, somewhat excitedly.

  Minerva was taken aback by Julia’s comment. From what she had read, the Confederates did not violate the women of Gettysburg. They were perfect gentlemen to the ladies. The only people the Confederates abused were the blacks. “I don’t think they will molest us, Julia,” Minerva said, thinking there was something wrong with Julia Culp. Minerva had read that Victorian women were pretty repressed, but she didn’t know how to take Julia Culp. Julia Culp? She tried to recall what she had read about Julia. She had a brother named Wesley who fought with the Army of Northern Virginia. Wesley Culp died on the last day of the battle on his uncle’s hill. Gettysburg was Wesley Culp’s hometown and he returned with the Confederate army only to be killed on his uncle’s property, Culp’s Hill. Truth was indeed stranger than fiction, Minerva thought. But Minerva was unaware that the Rebels had been in Gettysburg the week before.

  “You say the Rebels came to Gettysburg a week ago?” Minerva asked. “We just came in here two days ago,” she lied.

  “They sure did,” Julia said. “Jubal Early’s division it was. Captured a group of the college boys playing soldier and humiliated them in the Diamond. General Early told them to go home to their mothers and leave the fighting to the men. I have never seen so many red-faced boys
in my life, let me tell you! The Rebels took down the Stars and Stripes and put up their damn ‘X’ flag. And then they sang Dixie. They left early the next morning and marched off to York.”

  “Did they ravish any girls?” Minerva asked.

  Julia smiled. “No, but a girl can hope can’t she?” said Julia who then began to laugh. It was at that moment that Minerva realized Julia had been, as her grandmother used to say, “pulling her leg.”

  Minerva sensed that Julia was waiting for Minerva’s chuckle, so the modern girl smiled and laughed along with her nineteenth century counterpart, thinking that Julia had an odd sense of humor. Julia would fit into her A.P. class, Minerva thought. She was just that weird.

  When they had rolled several bandages, Julia suggested to Minerva, “Let’s take these to the surgeons. Have you ever seen an amputation, Minerva?”

  “No,” Minerva replied.

  “Do you want to?”

  “I guess,” Minerva said, not wanting Julia to know how much she wished to witness the surgery. This wasn’t something that Meredith Grey would shirk from, Minerva thought. Meredith Grey would relish the chance to watch such surgery.

  As they carried their bandages to a room where a surgeon was at work, Julia said to Minerva, “They use chloroform to put the men to sleep before they start sawing off an arm or leg. Pour the chloroform into a cattle horn. It is the latest thing, chloroform.”

  The two girls stood at the entrance to the converted operating room and Minerva watched in horror as the surgeon placed the cattle horn atop the patient’s face. The man was lying face up on a courtroom wooden table.

  Minerva was struck by the surgeon’s dirty hands and lack of latex gloves, forgetting for a moment that latex was far in the future. But the surgeon didn’t even wear a face mask, she thought, wondering what germs he was passing along to his unsuspecting patient. She also wondered if the surgeon was sober, and whether he drew from the whiskey bottle on a smaller table beside the larger one.

  The surgeon poured chloroform through a cloth. But on this occasion the primitive anesthesia was unsuccessful and Minerva witnessed the patient awaken to the sounds of a saw cutting off his leg. In distress, the poor soldier flailed his arms wildly, and screamed in agony, as his limb was severed from his body. The operation was a success, the limb was neatly severed, but the patient died on the table. Minerva wanted to throw up. Instead, the surgeon handed her the severed limb.

 

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