by Tim Black
“Maybe this wasn’t the way to go,” Victor said in an understatement.
“I think we probably would have seen the same things any way we chose,” Bette said, realistically.
As they approached the rock formation of Devil’s Den, a lieutenant and three Union soldiers appeared and told them to halt.
“Where are you two headed?” the lieutenant asked.
Victor produced his pass from General Meade.
The lieutenant looked at the pass and shook his head in disbelief, but said, “You may pass, but be careful there still may be Rebs out there.”
“We will be careful, lieutenant,” Bette assured him.
They walked out to the Emmitsburg Road where the scenes of carnage and devastation dwarfed the death and desolation of the Valley of Death. The immensity of the slaughter took Victor’s breath away. Among the hundreds of dead men were dozens of dead horses, innocent victims of the brutality. Victor and Bette stood silently side-by-side for a moment, mesmerized at the landscape. Knapsacks and haversacks were strewn about the ground. Pistols, rifles and sabers were strewn about. This was the aftermath of Pickett’s Charge.
Bette was the first to notice. “The stench, give me the peppermint oil, Victor.” She placed a drop on her upper lip and donned her blue bandana. “That’s better,” she said in a muffled voice.
Victor put a dab of the peppermint oil on his finger and ran it across his upper lip. Then he added the red bandana, wondering if he resembled a stagecoach robber.
They walked slowly and carefully around and through the fallen, and made their way to the tree line on Seminary Ridge, not realizing that they were going in the wrong direction from the town and in the direction of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. Before they got their bearings, they had inadvertently come upon a Confederate rear guard detachment, which was covering the Confederate withdrawal. Unfortunately, Victor’s knowledge of the battle ended with July 3rd and he was unaware that the Army of Northern Virginia left troops on Seminary Ridge on the morning of July 4th to protect Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg. It was these troops that Victor and Bette chanced upon. Again, they were told to halt, but this time the command was accompanied by pointed bayonets.
“Remove your masks,” a Confederate captain said. “Let’s see some identification.”
Before Victor could stop her, Bette produced her pass from General Meade.
The captain smiled and looked at Victor. “Do you have one of these too, boy?” he asked.
Victor winced and turned Meade’s pass over to the Confederate captain.
“You can be on your way, miss,” the captain said. He turned to Victor. “Boy, you are staying with us.”
Bette protested. “I can’t leave my brother, captain.”
The captain replied. “I’m afraid you must, miss. We don’t take female prisoners. Except, of course, darkies. Are you a colored gal?”
“No,” Bette replied.
“Then you are free to go. Your brother, however, is our prisoner.”
“Prisoner?” Victor asked. “I’m a refugee.”
“Uh huh, and I’m Jeff Davis,” the captain commented. “For all I know you may be one of Meade’s spies.”
“My brother is no spy!” Bette cried.
The captain turned to an enlisted man. “Sergeant, please escort the girl back into town under a white flag. Take her as far as the first Federal you see and hand her off to him. She can be his problem then.”
Something came over Bette and she kicked the captain in the shin.
“She’s a little wildcat, captain!” One of the soldiers laughed. He grabbed Bette and held her hands behind her back. She continued to kick away at the captain but only connected with air.
The captain laughed, but he rubbed his leg. “Sergeant, you best tie the lady’s hands for your own safety,” he said. The other soldiers roared with laughter.
Victor could see that his classmate was fuming. But the ultimate indignity was when the rebels took her bandana and converted it into a gag.
Victor watched as Bette, gagged, hands tied in front of her, was taken by an arm and marched away from him toward the east and down the Chambersburg Pike toward Gettysburg. Victor was placed in the bed of a covered Conestoga wagon and sat next to a muscular African-American man who appeared to be in his thirties. Beside the man sat a beautiful woman whom Victor assumed was the man’s wife. Next to her, were two small, wide-eyed children, a boy and a girl, who appeared frightened by their surroundings. Their little faces expressed hopelessness, Victor thought.
The wagon headed west toward Chambersburg, Victor guessed. He was wrong. They were headed to Fairfield. In retreat, the Confederates split their forces. Some of the units went through Cashtown over to the western side of South Mountain, while others marched through Fairfield on the eastern side of the mountain, heading for the Monterey Pass, which would lead them to the western side of the mountain and a rendezvous with the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia at Williamsport, Maryland.
“You a spy, boy?” the black man asked Victor.
“No, sir.”
“Don’t need to call me sir, boy. Name’s John Quincy Adams. Most white folks call me Quincy. Took that name when I got my freedom fifteen years ago, a week after that good man died. This is my wife Sarah and our two children, Gabriel and Rebecca. We are Bible-reading people. But the pharaoh has us now, that’s for sure.”
John Quincy Adams. Victor thought of the man’s name. He remembered how angry dead historian Henry Adams had been after their trip to Philadelphia unseated John Adams as the second president. Henry threw such a fuss, they had to return and correct that butterfly effect, and all because Victor had given Thomas Jefferson’s address to Peggy Shippen. How could he foresee that Peggy would wind up marrying Jefferson instead of Benedict Arnold? As a consequence of that chance meeting between Tom and Peggy, the bachelor Benedict, hero of the Battle of Saratoga, never betrayed Washington because he had no nagging wife to push him to sell out his country. John Quincy Adams was Henry Adams’ grandfather, the sixth president of the United States and an abolitionist member of the House of Representatives for seventeen years after leaving the White House. Victor thought it great that the former slave named himself after such a beacon of liberty.
“My name is Victor Bridges,” Victor replied to John Quincy Adams. “I’m from Mercersburg. People call me Victor, Quincy.”
“We’s from Caledonia, Victor. I was workin’ for Mr. Stevens out at his iron works until Jubal Early and his soldiers destroyed it.”
Stevens? Victor wondered, ”Is that Thaddeus Stevens?”
“Yes, do you know him?”
“No, I don’t, Quincy. Where are they taking us?”
“Over the mountain, by way of the Fairfield and Monterey Pass, I expect,” Quincy replied. “I am a freeman and so are my wife and my children. But the Rebs are sending us into slavery. You, they probably are fixing to hang, Victor.”
Victor shuddered at the thought. He felt his neck muscles tense up. They might hang him? Really? Mr. Greene had mentioned that during the Gettysburg campaign the Army of Northern Virginia captured free blacks as well as runaway slaves and sent both freemen and runaways south into slavery. These poor people in the wagon beside him had been working for the great abolitionist, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania who Victor envisioned as the actor Tommy Lee Jones who played the part of Thaddeus Stevens in the Stephen Spielberg movie Lincoln. Victor felt pity for the poor souls headed for slavery. He also felt nervous for himself.
They had traveled southwest on the Fairfield Road for two hours when John Quincy Adams and his family curled up together in the bed of the wagon and went to sleep. At the moment when they were all asleep, Shelby Foote made an appearance sitting on the end of the wagon gate.
A grateful Victor smiled when he saw the ghost, but Shelby Foote cautioned him to whisper so as not to alarm the corporal driving the wagon.
“Looks like you got yourself in quite a pickl
e, Victor,” Shelby said.
“Yes, Mr, Foote,” Victor said softly. “Would you float into Gettysburg and tell Mr. Greene about my predicament.”
“I’d be glad to, Victor,” Shelby Foote replied and floated off to Gettysburg.
*
After a short while the ghost came upon Bette, who was accompanied by a Confederate sergeant under a white flag, walking along the Chambersburg Pike.
“Hello, Bette,” Foote said, smiling.
Bette worked her gag loose with her tongue. “Mr. Foote!” Bette said through her gag.
The sergeant stopped and looked at Bette. “What did you do to your foot, miss?”
“Oh it’s okay, I guess,” she mumbled. “I thought I twisted my ankle.”
“Just think your thoughts as conversation, Bette. It is safer for you.”
Alright, Mr. Foote, Bette thought.
She really had no choice as the sergeant tightened her gag to silent mode.
“See, we can do that. Victor is headed west in a covered wagon. He asked me to tell Mr. Greene. If you don’t mind, I will just float along with you.”
Bette thought, making the images in her mind. Mr. Foote, I can’t believe the death and destruction. This is all so sad.
“It is,” Foote replied. “I wrote in one of my books: ‘The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things… It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads. Well, Bette, Gettysburg was literally the crossroads town. This was hell at that crossroads.”
Under protection of the white flag, they came to a Federal barricade on Chambersburg Street.
“Whatcha want, Johnny Reb?” a Federal sentry asked.
“Well, Yank, this little hellcat has a pass signed by General Meade. We don’t want her. We figure she’s your problem.” He handed the Union corporal Meade’s pass.
Bette was irritated when the Union soldier smiled in response. The corporal looked at the pass and said, “Well, it looks alright, will you untie her and remove her gag?”
“I’ll leave that to you, Yank, if you don’t mind. She already kicked my captain. I’m afraid she might bite me.”
Two other Federal soldiers chuckled. Bette was simmering at being the object of ridicule among a bunch of men, boys really, she thought, looking at the peach fuzz on the young faces. She wanted to kick the Confederate in a spot that he’d always remember her.
The Confederate, holding his white flag high, turned and literally ran away from Bette.
“Looks like you scared that Reb, pretty good, miss,” the corporal said as he untied her hands. She removed her gag herself. Expletives were forming in her mind. She was afraid that she might unload a string of F-bombs, but into her mind came the kindly face of her grandmother, waving a finger, shaking her head in disapproval, and admonishing her to, “count to ten before you speak.” She made it to seven, but by that time the expletives had vanished from the tip of her tongue and once more she could feign 19th century femininity.
“Thank you, corporal. My uncle is waiting for me at the Gettysburg Hotel. I shall be fine from here on.”
“Did you really kick a Confederate captain?” asked the corporal, a big grin on his face.
“Yes,” Bette replied. “And I would have shot him had I a gun.”
“Huzzah!” one of the Union soldiers shouted. It was followed by more of the same.
Bette felt strangely patriotic; she was pleased by their response. She smiled and curtsied to the boys. They in turn bowed to her. She liked the attention. Narcissistic nymph, she told herself. You are acting like Minerva.
The corporal assigned two privates as her honor guard to escort her to the Gettysburg Hotel. Chuckling, Shelby Foote floated alongside her.
“It seems you are a star, Bette. You see that two-story frame house?”
Bette nodded in the affirmative.
“That is the home of John Burns, the hero of Gettysburg. He grabbed a rifle on the first day of the battle and joined the Federals west of the Lutheran Seminary. He was wounded several times and left for dead on the battlefield. But he survived and the next day crawled a mile to a makeshift hospital. A truly marvelous story. When you get back to your time you should read Timothy H. Smith’s biography of Burns. Today, John Burns is recuperating in his own home, but he is surrounded by wounded Rebels. And it galls him. In a few weeks, Matthew Brady, the famous Civil War photographer, will take Burns’ picture and he will become a national hero and will sit beside Abraham Lincoln at the church service after the cemetery dedication and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Funny thing, most people in Gettysburg disliked John Burns. He exaggerated his war service in the War of 1812 and lied about his combat experience, but for one day he truly was a hero. Sixty-nine years old.”
“Wow!” Bette said aloud.
“Wow what, miss?” one of the soldiers asked.
Bette scrambled to cover her tracks. “Wow, there are so many dead bodies. Horses, too.”
“Yes, miss, and they are starting to smell pretty ripe.”
“Uh huh,” Bette replied. She put her bandana back on. Too bad the peppermint oil’s protection was wearing off. She would need more of the oil.
She shook each soldier’s hand at the threshold of the Gettysburg Hotel and thanked them for her escort. One of the soldiers was bold enough to ask if he could call on her if he received some time off. Bette was demur enough to smile, but say nothing, giving the soldier a bit of hope. She was officially a tease, she decided, liking it. Scarlett O’Hara at the Wilkes’ barbecue, she mused.
Shelby Foote took his leave, saying that he wanted to float over to Pennsylvania College, but he would return directly.
Bette thought to herself as she entered the hotel: A Union soldier had asked her out, but the boy she secretly liked, Victor, was a prisoner. Mr. Greene! she thought. She needed to report in and talk to her teacher.
She knocked on the door to Mr. Greene’s hotel room.
“Come in!” came Minerva’s voice.
Bette wondered what was up. She walked in to find Mr. Greene sitting on his bed, a leg resting over a chair and Minerva changing a bandage.
“Mr. Greene? What happened?” Bette asked.
“I was shot,” Mr. Greene replied. “Minerva has been my Florence Nightengale.”
“I prefer Dorthea Dix,” Minerva said. “She’s American. Welcome back, Bette,” she said, standing up to give her classmate a sisterly embrace.
Bette got right to it. “Victor has been taken prisoner,” she said.
“Oh no!” Minerva said.
“Where?” Mr. Greene asked. “When?”
“We were coming back to town from the Weikerts’ farm when we ran into some Confederate soldiers.”
“The rearguard,” Mr. Greene said, explaining. “The Confederates kept some men on Seminary Ridge the day after the battle to protect their withdrawal from a counterattack.”
“We had passes from General Meade and when they asked for an I.D. I stupidly gave them my pass from General Meade.”
Mr. Greene was impressed. “You had a pass from General Meade? You met George Meade?”
“Yes. We met a man named Chamberlain, too. The man who led the bayonet charge on Little Round Top.”
“You met Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, too!” Mr. Greene said, envy in his voice.
Minerva looked at her teacher. She was afraid that he was about to faint like Julia Culp. But instead of fainting, Mr. Greene groused.
“I stayed in town and got shot for my troubles while you two kids got to see everything.”
Minerva intervened. “You passed Robert E. Lee our salt shaker,” she said.
“Wow, you met Lee. Cool,” Bette said.
“Yes, but I would have loved to meet Chamberlain, too,” Mr. Greene complained.
“Uh huh,” Bette replied and brought her teacher back to the matter at hand. “What are we going to do about Victor, Mr. Greene?”
“That,” Mr. Greene
remarked, “is a good question.”
Chapter 13
Mr. Greene, Minerva and Bette sat in Mr. Greene’s hotel room, contemplating rescue plans for Victor. The first thing Mr. Greene asked Bette was in which direction Victor was taken.
“I’m not sure,” Mr. Greene.
“Why aren’t you sure, Bette?”
“Well, they marched me off down Chambersburg Pike before they took him away,” Bette replied.
“Well, the Confederates retreated in two different directions,” Mr. Greene said, thinking aloud for the benefit of his students. “One group went west on the Chambersburg Pike and the other went toward Fairfield. You girls are going to rescue Victor, I’m afraid. I won’t be off these crutches for a couple more days. We need horses. One of you go out to the west and the other down the Fairfield Road.”
“I would suggest the Fairfield Road,” came a voice from outside the hotel window.
“Mr. Foote!” Bette cried. “You’re back.”
“Indeed, I am, Bette. Nothing much to see at Pennsylvania College except the dead and dying I’m afraid. I don’t need to witness yet another amputation. It will take the college people ages to clean it all up.”
“Why do you suggest Fairfield, Shelby?” Mr. Greene asked.
“Because that’s the direction he went. You will have a chance to rescue him tonight, very late tonight,” Foote said.
“How do you know that?”
“The Battle of Monterey Pass, Nathan, remember that from my Civil War narrative, the second volume?”
Mr. Greene drew a blank. “I’m afraid not,” he said.
Minerva was stunned. She had never seen her teacher unable to answer a question, but she admired his honestly. Too many teachers would never admit to not knowing something. At least that had been Minerva’s experience.
Shelby Foote explained: “The Battle of Monterey Pass was the second greatest Civil War battle fought in Pennsylvania, although the clash will encompass both Pennsylvania and Maryland as it will take place back and forth the Mason Dixon line, the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania. You see South Mountain is really a range of high hills that runs from Pennsylvania to Virginia. The Union army for the most part was on the east side of the mountain. The Confederates were on the west side. The Rebels at Fairfield were trying to get to Williamsport, Maryland, on the Potomac River by way of the Fairfield Gap and the Monterey Pass. And a Federal cavalry unit was sent to intercept the Confederate wagon train from Fairfield. This will happen late tonight and Victor will be caught in the middle of it, but it will give him a chance to escape and for us to rescue him. There will be a heck of a thunderstorm and the battle will be fought in a torrential rain, so you will need raincoats, and I am sure the Fahnestock brothers stock Talma coats or India rubber cloaks. Pick up one for Victor as well. And you need peppermint oil and bandanas for the smell of the corpses that you pass along the way. I believe Minerva and Bette have some experience in rescuing boys, Nathan?”