Boys of Wartime: Will at the Battle of Gettysburg Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER ONE - A Patch of Ground

  CHAPTER TWO - A Secret Railroad

  CHAPTER THREE - Springing to the Call

  CHAPTER FOUR - Rebel Cavalry!

  CHAPTER FIVE - Fighting for the Cause

  CHAPTER SIX - A Rebel at the Supper Table

  CHAPTER SEVEN - Intolerable Suspense

  CHAPTER EIGHT - Storybook Knights

  CHAPTER NINE - A Dance with the Enemy

  CHAPTER TEN - A Family Separated

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - “To your cellar!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE - A Risky Plan

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - White Flags

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Dr. Edmonds

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - The Weikert Farm

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Another Task

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - The Snapping Turtle

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - A Reb Prisoner

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - “This’ll decide it!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY - By the Dawn’s Early Light

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - “Where is my mother?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Reunions

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - A New Birth of Freedom

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  CHILDREN’S ROLES in the CIVIL WAR

  HISTORIC CHARACTERS

  TIMELINE

  GLOSSARY

  FURTHER READING

  Acknowledgements

  MAP of GETTYSBURG 1863

  For Chris DuBois and Martha Levine, two warm and generous

  friends, who were willing to cart a non-driver around the

  battlefield. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by the Penguin Group * Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. * Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) * Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England * Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) * Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camber well, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) * Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India * Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) * Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa * Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Although this is a work of fiction, many of the historical events portrayed and persons named are real. The author has used history as a stage for several fictitious characters, and any resemblance of those characters to actual people is unintentional.

  Copyright © 2011 by Laurie Calkhoven

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  Published in the United States by Dutton Children’s Books,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-47574-4

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  Civil War noun 1. A war between citizens of the

  same country.

  “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

  —Abraham Lincoln, JUNE 1858

  PROLOGUE

  A Town at the Crossroads

  When the Founding Fathers of the United States gathered to write the Constitution that would govern their new country, they argued most fiercely over two things. First, how much independence should each state have? And second, should slavery be abolished or allowed to spread?

  Over time, those two arguments only grew worse. The South wanted to keep their slaves. Northern states made slavery illegal. Then Abraham Lincoln, an antislavery candidate, was elected President of the United States. Southern states were afraid the federal government would take their power away and force them to set their slaves free.

  By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861, seven Southern states had announced they were seceding, leaving the United States to form their own country. They called themselves the Confederate States of America. They were later joined by four more Southern states.

  The North, led by Abraham Lincoln, declared secession illegal and a danger to the whole country. It would not be allowed. A war between the Union of the North and the Confederacy of the South began.

  The American Civil War was in its third year by the summer of 1863, and things didn’t look good for the Union. Even though Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army was outnumbered by Union troops and short of food and weapons, they defeated the Union army over and over again.

  On the heels of a victory in Chancellorsville, Virginia, Lee decided to march his army north. His plan was to cut Washington—the North’s capital city—off from the rest of the country. He hoped that a Union defeat in its own territory would force President Lincoln to bring the war to an end and allow the Confederate states to secede from the Union. Along the way, the undamaged farms of Maryland and Pennsylvania would feed Lee’s hungry army.

  Just over the Maryland border, the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, sat at the center of ten major roads. No one intended to fight there. In fact, the commanders of both armies had never even heard of the town of twenty-four-hundred people. But the citizens of Gettysburg were about to find themselves caught between two armies in the biggest, bloodiest battle of the war.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Patch of Ground

  Tuesday, June 16, 1863

  The battlefield had no name that I knew of. Just a patch of ground somewhere in Virginia where our men fell up against some Rebs. Someone fired and soon there was an all-out battle. Messengers galloped to us, urging our company to hurry. The general at my side ordered me to signal the men to march on the double-quick.

  I rattled my drum as we ran forward. The drumbeats urged the men to move faster. I could hear shells bursting ahead of us, along with muskets firing and the groans of men who got hit.

  Suddenly, we were upon it.

  My general nodded to me and I drummed the order to charge.

  Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.

  Our color-bearer waved the Stars and Stripes, leading the men into battle. I was proud to see that there wasn’t a coward among us.

  All was chaos. Smoke from the heavy artillery guns made it impossible to see. A shell landed near my feet, and I dove behind a tree before it could explode and take my life. The smoke cleared just for a moment. A line of gray and steel advanced toward us like a serpent in the grass.

  Then I saw it. Our flag was falling. Our color-bearer had been hit. I threw off my drum and dashed to him, dodging bullets that flew thicker than bees. I caught the flag just before it hit the ground. I would sooner die than have the Stars and Stripes fall into the hands of those who wanted to destroy the Union.

  The color-bearer gazed at me w
ith grateful eyes, and then slumped over dead.

  I raised the flag high. “Courage, men!” I shouted.

  The men had faltered. Now they rallied.

  The general ran beside me, waving his sword. “There’ll be a medal in this for you, boy, if—”

  “William Joseph Edmonds,” my mother screeched. “If you don’t stop your woolgathering and help me, I will tan your hide.”

  Her words jerked me right out of my daydream. I wasn’t on a battlefield. I was sitting at our kitchen table.

  The twins, Sally and Jane Ann, set to giggling. They were just five, an age when the idea of a hide tanning was pure entertainment—if the hide was not one of their own.

  My fifteen-year-old sister, Grace, tugged me to my feet by the tuft of hair that was forever standing up on the top of my head. Bossy, she was. She dropped a smoked ham into my arms. “Will, take this to the cellar and hide it in the ash barrel.”

  Mother had more chores. “And then ride Molasses to the Bailey farm. See if they can hide her along with their own horses. The Rebels will steal every horse they can.”

  Mother was packing the good silver with the help of the twins. Her jewelry was already wrapped in a rag and hidden in a nook in the garret.

  I got to work, although I didn’t see the purpose. At least every other week since the war began someone rode through town with the news that the Rebels were coming.

  They never did.

  Nearest they got was Latshaw’s Tavern when Jeb Stuart came into Pennsylvania with a raiding party last fall. They were back on the Southern side of Mason and Dixon’s line before we even knew they were there.

  Not that I would mind fighting the Rebs. There were plenty of twelve-year-old drummers. I saw no reason why I couldn’t be one of them. I would have gladly mustered in with my brother, Jacob, when he went to be a soldier. But the government said you had to be eighteen to sign up without a parent’s permission, and there was no way mine would allow it.

  I had to content myself with reading the newspaper accounts of battles in places like Bull Run and Antietam, and, just recently, Chancellorsville. Sometimes the men in town had long, dull talks about the causes of the war, and some folks said the fighting wasn’t even worth it. I still didn’t understand why the South thought they could just bust up the country.

  I followed Jacob’s movements on the map on our parlor table, wishing I could be there with him to help save the Union.

  His letters were mostly about the food and the drills; he left out all the exciting parts. Maybe he was trying to spare Mother and Grace from worrying, but those letters sure were boring. As far as I could tell, he had done nothing heroic. Then he got captured in Fredericksburg, Virginia. We got a letter from a Southern lady who had nursed him, informing us that he had been transferred from an army hospital to a prison camp, and then no more. Father took the train to Washington two months ago to see if he could get Jacob released in a prisoner exchange, but he’s had no luck as of yet. While he waits, Father signed on to be a doctor in one of the army hospitals there.

  I tried to be the man in the family and make him proud, but Grace seemed to think that was her job. The only thing I got to do was pack away hams and hide our horse in case the Rebs marched into town.

  This time the governor had issued a proclamation urging the people to organize and defend the state. A few days later, he telegraphed a warning directing us to move our valuables out of town.

  Fahnestock Brothers and other stores filled railroad cars with goods to ship to Philadelphia. The cashier at the bank packed the cash and valuables in a valise and was ready to run. So were the postmaster and the telegraph operator. The roads were clogged with farmers, their horses, and other livestock. Wagons were filled with whatever crops that had come in. Everyone knew the Rebel army was hungry. They would eat every last thing they got their hands on if they invaded.

  I felt sorriest for the Negroes. It seemed like every other week they had to sling everything they owned on their backs and hightail it up Baltimore Street for the woods beyond Culp’s Hill. The Rebels were known to capture them and sell them in the slave markets down south—even those who had been born on free soil and had always been free.

  Aunt Bess, the woman who helped Mother with her cleaning and her washing, was ailing. Mother tried to convince her to stay with the promise that she would hide Bess if the Rebels came anywhere near.

  “I ain’t going to risk it,” Aunt Bess had said. “I’d rather die an early death as a free woman than live a hundred more years as a slave in the South.”

  I wouldn’t argue with that. I believed that slavery was evil through and through, but I still thought the town was in an uproar over nothing.

  Even so, I hid my own treasures. I opened my box and looked everything over: half a package of Necco Wafers I had hidden from the twins, a genuine Indian arrowhead, my spelling medal, drumsticks (Mother wouldn’t let me have a drum), the ten cents I was saving for the next time Owen Robinson cranked out ice cream at his confectionery, and my slingshot. On second thought, I slipped my slingshot into my pocket. Maybe I’d use it to scare some Rebs, if they ever did take it into their heads to show up.

  For days, folks did little more than stand around the street, sharing rumors. Last night the sky glowed red with flames. Emmitsburg, Maryland, was on fire. Folks were screaming, “The Rebels are coming, and they’re burning as they go!”

  This morning our neighbor Mr. Pierce came by with the news. “It wasn’t the Rebs,” he told us. “Some crazy firebug set his own town ablaze. Can you imagine that?”

  I couldn’t and I was glad we didn’t have anyone like that living in our town. “So the Rebs aren’t coming?” I asked.

  “Robert E. Lee’s cavalry crossed the Potomac and are in Chambersburg,” Mr. Pierce said. His expression was grim.

  Grace gasped. “Chambersburg! That’s just twenty-five miles from here.”

  Mr. Pierce turned to me. “I think it’s best you get that horse of yours to a safe hiding place. Your father will need him when he gets back from Washington.”

  I already had orders to do that right after lunch, but the last thing I needed was for Grace to get herself into even more of a flap over this latest piece of news.

  “Aww, I don’t believe they’re coming here,” I said. “What would the Rebels want with a place like Gettysburg, Pennsylvania?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  A Secret Railroad

  I was pleased to get away from the womenfolk for a while. Grace was a student at Mrs. Eyster’s Young Ladies Seminary, and as far as I could tell all they taught her was how to be a major irritation. You’d think the world would come to an end if a fellow put his elbows on the table or forgot to use his napkin to wipe his mouth.

  Grace had become more and more high-handed since Jacob left. He was five years older than her, and could tease her into giving a fellow a break. I sure missed him. Jacob taught me things and treated me like a man. Grace just ordered me around.

  Now that Father, too, was gone she was close to intolerable. You’d think she was in charge of the family.

  Today she yelled instructions while I saddled Molasses for the ride to the Bailey farm. Mother had packed me a cold dinner, as it would be a long walk back. With any luck, I’d get something delicious to eat from Mrs. Bailey, too. Her pies were prizewinners.

  “You headed out to hide that horse, Will?” Mrs. Shriver asked me as I rode by.

  I owned that I was.

  “Be careful out there. The Rebs could be anywhere.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. A fellow couldn’t get a break from women and their orders wherever he went.

  I rode down Baltimore Street and around the town square—we called it the Diamond—on my way to the Carlisle Road. Small clumps of townspeople shared the latest rumors. Some gathered at the newspaper offices. I knew others would be standing around the telegraph at the railroad station. I had done a lot of that when the war first started, waiting for news of Jacob.

>   As soon as we were out of town, I let Molasses have her lead. She was a good horse, accustomed to going fast when Father had an emergency call to the country. She knew her way to the Bailey place practically better than I did. Before the war started, old Mrs. Bailey used to get sick a lot. Father rode out to their farm two or three times a month.

  About eight months before the war began, he headed out there just after supper one night. I went along, sitting beside him in the buggy in the hopes of having a practice game of baseball with Calvin Bailey, old Mrs. Bailey’s grandson, before it got too dark. Baseball was the new craze among boys in town, and I wasn’t very good yet.

  When we got there, Cal was nowhere to be seen. Father bid me to wait in the buggy until someone came to fetch me. I wondered why he was acting so mysterious, but I did as I was told.

  I sat for a long time. It was a warm summer night. The stars came out along with a full moon. I heard a barn owl hoot and turned to try to find it. That’s when I saw Cal.

  “Cal!” I yelled. “Think it’s too dark for a game before I go?”

  He stopped short, scared like, and that’s when I saw there were people behind him. Negroes. Four of them. A man had a white bandage around his arm, bright in the moonlight. A woman put her hand over her mouth. Two children each clutched something. It looked like they were holding the kind of rag dolls Grace was forever making. Father said he carried them to give to sick children. I never imagined he was giving them to runaway slave children.

  It pained me to see them act so scared at the sight of me. “Never ... never mind,” I said to Cal. “I see you’ve got chores.”

  Cal nodded. The Negro man’s shoulders slumped in relief and the group continued on their way, slipping into the barn. I knew slaves used secret escape routes to make their way north to freedom. Folks called it the Underground Railroad. There were rumors of such in Gettysburg, but this was the first time I knew about it for sure. I was proud of Father for doing his part.