I Survived the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 Read online

  And best of all, there was Henry, who’d barely let Thomas out of his sight since that day in the woods. “You know how it works,” Henry had told Thomas. “You save a man’s life, you’re stuck with him forever.”

  He really did remind Thomas of Clem, the way his voice rose up when he told stories about the children he taught in his Vermont schoolhouse, his patient way of listening when Thomas told him about his life with Mr. Knox, the feeling Thomas got when they were together, that he and Birdie were safe.

  Thomas had just climbed out of his tent when Henry appeared.

  “Morning, soldier,” the corporal said.

  Birdie’s head popped out of the tent. When she saw Henry standing there she leaped up and threw her arms around him.

  “I love my doll!” she said, beaming up at him.

  “No doll could ever be as pretty as you, Birdie,” Henry said, kneeling down. “Les and Homer are looking for you. Can you ask them to put an extra biscuit aside for me?”

  She nodded happily and scampered off toward the supply wagons, chattering hellos to every soldier she passed. Thomas noticed that even the weariest men looked up and smiled when Birdie breezed by, their faces lighting up as though Birdie herself were a bright candle.

  Henry turned to Thomas, his face serious.

  “We’ve gotten our orders,” Henry said. “We’re to march out today.”

  Thomas’s heart sank.

  The men were leaving? What would happen to him and Birdie?

  Henry seemed to read Thomas’s thoughts.

  “Of course you and Birdie are coming with us,” he said.

  “I’m glad about that,” Thomas said, relief washing over him.

  “You won’t be when we get out into that heat,” Henry said with a little smile. “It’s going to be brutal. Two days, I’d say.”

  “Where are we heading?” Thomas said.

  “We’re marching to Pennsylvania,” Henry said. “The town’s called Gettysburg.”

  Henry squinted into the distance.

  “It seems like we’re in for a big battle.”

  The men scrambled to fold up their tents, pack up their knapsacks, and fill their canteens at the stream. Already they were grumbling about the heat. Birdie skipped around as if she was getting ready to go to a party.

  Thomas helped Les ready the horses for the trip, keeping his ears pricked up as he worked. A person learned by listening; that’s what Clem always said. Sure enough, Thomas had learned more in the past two weeks than he’d learned in the past two years.

  The men were always talking about their families and their sweethearts, their hometowns and their plans for getting back home. And, of course, they talked about the war.

  It turned out what Clem had said was right: People in the North did think slavery was evil. It had been illegal in the North for years. Now President Lincoln wanted to end slavery everywhere in America.

  Except the people in the South didn’t care what President Lincoln thought. They wanted to keep their slaves. Eleven Southern states were already trying to break away from the United States to start their own country.

  A country with slavery.

  Here’s what Thomas had figured out: If the North won the war, the states would stay together, and slavery would be gone forever.

  And if the South won?

  Thomas tried not to think about that.

  But listening to the men each night, it was hard not to worry. The North had more soldiers, and better weapons and uniforms. But the rebel fighters were fierce, even though some fought barefoot, with rickety guns that could barely shoot. They had a ferocious battle cry — the rebel yell — that they screamed out when they were charging. “It sounds like you’re being attacked by a pack of wild beasts,” Henry had told him. “The sound will chill you right to your bones.”

  And now Thomas could see how worried the men looked as they packed up the camp. Thomas overheard Les and Homer talking behind the supply wagons. He didn’t mean to spy, but they were talking in loud voices.

  “This is going to be another Fredericksburg,” Lester said. “I can feel it!”

  “Don’t say that, Les! Don’t even think it!” Homer said.

  Later, Thomas asked Henry about what he’d heard.

  Henry didn’t answer right away.

  “Fredericksburg was a big battle we fought,” he said. “Back in December.”

  “What happened there?”

  Henry looked into his knapsack, rummaging around, as though he might find the answer folded up with his blanket.

  But then he dropped his pack and sat down. He patted the grass next to him, and Thomas sat, too.

  Henry’s face got a faraway look.

  And then, in a low voice, Henry told the story of that day.

  “We were told it was to be a surprise attack,” Henry began. “Tens of thousands of Union troops were to march to a town in Virginia — Fredericksburg. We would attack the rebels, take the town, and then march south to capture Richmond, Virginia’s capital.”

  Henry explained that the Union needed a victory badly, that people up north were losing faith in their army and their generals. “It seemed like we were sure to win in Fredericksburg.”

  Except that the rebels knew exactly what the Union was planning. And they were ready.

  Henry said that the rebels had a brilliant commander, the general Robert E. Lee. Somehow he always figured out where the Union army was going to be, and how they planned to attack. Sure enough, he had figured out the Union plan to attack Fredericksburg.

  “He sent thousands of soldiers into the hills above the town,” Henry said. “He also sent dozens of cannons into the hills.”

  Thomas knew that both sides had these mighty weapons, which were so heavy they had to be pulled by horses, and so powerful they needed at least four men to operate them. Some of the big guns shot cannonballs that were even heavier than Thomas. Others shot shells, explosives that were filled with razor-sharp metal strips, nails, and metal balls. Just one exploding shell could kill ten men in seconds.

  “The rebels had the high ground,” Henry explained. “Anyone trying to get near those hills was going to get mowed down. And that’s exactly what happened.”

  Henry described how the first Union regiment attacked, how lines of soldiers went charging across a field toward the hills.

  “They didn’t even get close,” he said.

  Kaboom!

  Kaboom!

  Kaboom!

  Rebel cannons thundered hundreds of blasts every minute.

  And with every blast, Union soldiers fell.

  Men who managed to survive the artillery blasts were met with a storm of bullets.

  “Within minutes, there were hundreds of our men lying dead and wounded in the mud,” Henry said.

  But the Union generals wouldn’t admit that their plan was a failure.

  They sent more regiments out to attack. And every time was the same:

  Kaboom!

  Kaboom!

  Kaboom!

  More soldiers dead or wounded, their bodies bleeding and shattered.

  “And then it was our turn,” Henry said.

  Henry’s regiment lined up and started charging toward the hills.

  “There was so much smoke, we could barely see,” he said. “There were bodies everywhere.”

  Halfway through the charge, Henry’s leg seemed to get stuck between two rocks.

  He pulled, but it wouldn’t come loose.

  As the smoke cleared, he saw that it was a fallen Union soldier who had taken hold of his boot, clutching it with all of his might.

  Henry thought the man wanted help.

  “But he didn’t,” Henry said. “He knew he was dying. He was trying to stop me from running into that death trap.”

  Cannons exploded with their deadly fire.

  Men fell like stalks of corn cut down by invisible blades.

  Henry managed to crawl off the field.

  Other men weren’t as lucky.<
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  “A hundred and fifty-six of our men died that day,” he said. “Over two hundred more were wounded.”

  Four more regiments were sent in before the generals finally ordered the Union army to retreat.

  In all, more than 12,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in Fredericksburg.

  Henry looked at Thomas now.

  “Our men are worried,” he said. “This is our first fight since Fredericksburg. And we need to win it.”

  All around Thomas, men were lining up to march, their faces grim and scared.

  Something terrible was coming.

  Thomas could feel it, too.

  They marched two by two along the dusty road, camping at night, and then setting out again before dawn. The days were scorching hot, and some men had collapsed on the side of the road, their faces beet red, their wool uniforms soaked in sweat.

  Birdie rode in the wagon with Les and Homer.

  But Thomas marched with Henry.

  Henry told stories as they walked, about his parents and the store they owned, how his town smelled like apples in the fall, about his sweetheart, Mary. He had shown Thomas and Birdie a picture of Mary, a pretty and serious-looking girl with a thick brown braid. They were both teachers at a little school in their town.

  Henry had also shown them his most precious possession: a small book Mary had made for him. It had a tin cover, and was filled with paintings of their town in Vermont. In one of the pictures the trees and grass were covered with what looked like a thick white blanket.

  “That’s snow,” Henry had explained. “It comes from the sky, like tiny icy flowers. There’s nothing more beautiful than the first snow in Vermont.”

  Birdie had closed her eyes and smiled, as if she could see it all in her imagination.

  Thomas wished he could. But it seemed his mind had stopped making happy pictures when Clem was taken.

  “I told Mary all about you,” Henry said now. “In my last letter.”

  “You wrote about me?” Thomas said, trying not to smile.

  Hearing that made him feel important.

  “One day you’ll be able to write your own letters,” Henry said.

  Thomas wondered if Henry was right. He hadn’t learned how to read or write; teaching a slave to read was illegal all over the South.

  “Clem knew how to read,” Thomas said.

  Henry always liked hearing about Clem.

  “How did he manage to learn?” Henry asked.

  “One winter, one of Mr. Knox’s sons got sick,” Thomas said. “So Mrs. Knox gave him lessons at home. Clem would sneak up to the house, and stand on a bucket outside the window so he could hear.”

  “That’s clever!” Henry said with a laugh.

  Thomas remembered how Clem would stay up late into the night. “He’d burn a candle so he could practice scratching letters into the dirt,” he told Henry.

  Some mornings Thomas woke up and the entire floor of their shack was covered with words, as though Clem had spelled out all of his dreams.

  “But then Mr. Knox caught him. He noticed that Clem wasn’t in the fields when he was supposed to be, and he found him up at the house, his ear close to the window. He saw all the words written in the dirt.”

  “What did he do?”

  Thomas glanced at Henry.

  He hadn’t meant to tell this part. He tried never to think about it.

  “He whipped him.”

  Thomas closed his eyes, trying to stop the flood of memories — the thwack of Mr. Knox’s whip, Clem’s shouts of pain, the sight of Clem’s blood-soaked shirt.

  “Clem couldn’t walk for two weeks.”

  “For learning to read?” Henry said, his eyes blazing with anger and shock.

  “Yes, sir,” Thomas said.

  They marched quietly for a moment, and then Henry turned.

  He put his hand on Thomas’s arm.

  “There are plenty of bad people in the world,” he said. “Too many to count. But there are good people, too.”

  “I know that,” Thomas said, looking around at all of the men.

  He had found that out over these past two weeks.

  Henry seemed to have more to say, but two soldiers appeared on horseback with a message for Captain Campbell.

  Tens of thousands of troops were already in Gettysburg. The battle had begun.

  “This is it!” the captain bellowed. “To Gettysburg!”

  The men raised their rifles and cheered along, but their eyes looked uncertain. Their words seemed to disappear quickly into the air, like dust.

  They’d just started marching again when Henry suddenly turned to Thomas.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that when all this is over, you and Birdie should come live in Vermont. You could go to my school. Mary is a wonderful teacher. She’ll have you both reading in no time.”

  Him and Birdie in Vermont?

  With Henry?

  Going to school?

  “What do you think?”

  Thomas smiled, too stunned to speak at first.

  And then the soldier marching in front of them fell to the ground. He landed on his back, his eyes gazing blankly up at the sky.

  There was a mark on the man’s forehead, like the wormhole in an apple, only bigger.

  Blood poured from the hole, making a puddle around his head.

  The man had been shot dead.

  Suddenly the ground was shaking, and hundreds of gray soldiers on horseback poured from the wooded hillside.

  “Rebel cavalry!”

  “We’re under attack!”

  Henry grabbed Thomas and dragged him back into the grass, throwing him onto the ground so hard that the air was knocked from his lungs.

  “Line up! Line up!” Captain Campbell shouted.

  Thomas had watched the men drill back at the camp.

  They’d practice for hours, lining up in different battle formations, shooting at targets hundreds of yards away. During drills they sometimes smiled and joked as they marched, tossing their hats into the air and catching them with the sharp metal tips of their bayonets.

  This was nothing like the drills.

  The men were dead serious. Even those who had been sagging during the march were now moving with lightning speed. With swift motions, the men ripped open their ammunition cartridges with their teeth, poured gunpowder down the barrels of their rifles, then pushed the bullets in with ramrods.

  “Stay down, Thomas!” Henry yelled. “Get behind me!”

  “Take aim!” the captain screamed.

  The soldiers all dropped to one knee, pointing their rifles at the charging cavalrymen.

  “Ready! Fire!”

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Bullets from a hundred muskets tore through the air.

  Five rebel soldiers fell from their horses, tumbling onto the ground, rolling down the hill.

  “Reload and fire at will!” the captain shouted.

  Within seconds, the men had their rifles reloaded.

  Boom, boom, boom!

  More soldiers fell.

  Black gun smoke filled the air, mixing with the dust.

  And as quickly as they had appeared, the cavalrymen were gone.

  The Union soldiers stood up, catching their breath, running to help the few men who lay on the ground, wincing in pain.

  And then suddenly Thomas’s mind roared with panic.

  Birdie!

  He leaped forward, staggering through the smoke.

  He managed to find the wagon that Birdie had been riding in. It was tipped over.

  Sacks of flour and beans were scattered everywhere, some burst open by bullets.

  Lester and Homer were both in the grass, looking dazed and bruised.

  “Homer!” Thomas said. “Where’s Birdie?”

  “Good Lord, I thought she was with you!” Homer said, jumping up. “Lester hurt his leg. I was trying to help him. And with all the smoke …”

  Thomas looked all around, praying he’d see Birdie
running across the field, calling his name.

  But she was nowhere to be seen.

  Soon dozens of men were looking everywhere for her.

  They searched other wagons.

  They combed through the tall grass.

  Finally Thomas and Henry crossed the road and walked to the edge of the woods.

  Something caught Thomas’s eye, something small lying on the ground.

  It was Birdie’s doll.

  He picked it up.

  It was splattered with blood.

  Captain Campbell studied the doll.

  Thomas could see the dread in the eyes of the men gathered around them.

  “I fear they took her, son,” Captain Campbell said. “The rebel cavalry has been kidnapping escaped slaves. Free Negroes, too, all over these parts. They’re rounding them up and taking them south to be sold.”

  Thomas’s mind spun. He swayed, and Henry grabbed his elbow to steady him.

  “We must do something, sir,” said Henry.

  Other men murmured in agreement.

  “I’m sorry,” the captain said. “But there’s a battle just ahead. Our orders are to double step it, to get to Gettysburg tonight.”

  “It won’t take us long to find her….” said Henry.

  A chorus rose up.

  “I’m in!”

  “Let’s go!”

  “Attention!” Captain Campbell shouted.

  The men fell silent.

  “There is a battle just ahead! We have our orders!”

  “Sir,” Henry said, glancing at Thomas, “what does this war mean if we turn our backs and let those men carry that little girl away? What are we fighting for, anyway?”

  The men seemed to hold their breath, waiting for Captain Campbell to speak.

  The captain shook his head.

  And that was it for Thomas.

  He took off into the woods, ignoring the voices of the men calling after him.

  He smashed through bushes, following the trampled path that the horses had made through the brush.