The Union Quilters (16 page)

Wearily, Thomas pushed himself to his feet, leaving his gear in the shade. “Fetch me a shovel,” he ordered the man, who grumbled and obeyed. As the call sounded to resume the march, Thomas swiftly covered the men’s remains—two had fallen in the man’s yard, he counted two rib cages, two skulls—and patted the earth flat over their graves with the back of the shovel. There was no time to fashion a marker, barely time for a hastily murmured prayer. The corps was moving again. Thomas threw the shovel toward the house, snatched up his gear, and fell into place in the ranks. The whole country was one vast graveyard. They marched over battlefields where they had fought months before, treading on the fallen.

They marched until late afternoon and bivouacked near a creek, where Thomas and many others washed off the heat and dirt and fatigue of the day. It had been a terrible march, made in haste. Anticipating an attack on the rear or flank, their commanders had ordered them to destroy any broken-down teams, wagons, and equipment if they could not be easily brought along. Nothing could be left behind for the Rebels. The stench of burning had filled Thomas’s nostrils for hours and he seemed to smell it still, even after he scrubbed the dirt and smoke from his hair.

The next day they broke their fast with hard bread and coffee—Thomas pictured Jonathan in the field hospital grumbling about the lack of potatoes and fresh vegetables—and scrambled to write letters or mend clothing or seek respite in the Bible before resuming the march. They had barely set out when news spread along the lines that the Army of Northern Virginia was marching in force into Pennsylvania.

“Fifteen thousand crossed at Shepherdstown yesterday,” a man from Company A reported. “Near the old field of Antietam.”

“The Southern army is now north of us,” said another, shaking his head in disbelief.

Thomas knew well where Shepherdstown was—less than a hundred miles from Water’s Ford, from Two Bears Farm, from Dorothea and Abigail. Not since Jeb Stuart’s raid had the war come so close to those he loved most dearly. “They’ll set fire to property, destroy railroads, and take all the provisions they can find, but they’ll soon turn toward Washington or Baltimore,” he said, more to convince himself than his fellows.

Abner nodded. “They won’t head into the Elm Creek Valley, not with the southern pass so difficult to cross and far more appealing targets closer to hand.”

“They won’t get past Harrisburg,” said Rufus Barrows. “I hear Governor Curtin called upon the citizens of our fair state to defend their homes and firesides.”

“If they respond with the same courage they showed at Chambersburg when Jeb Stuart paid ’em a call,” another fellow chimed in, “then the city is surely doomed.”

A ripple of low laughter passed through the ranks, but Thomas felt a pang of alarm. “They’ll do some damage, as in Chambersburg, and perhaps they’ll even strike Harrisburg, but Washington or Baltimore must be Lee’s intended target,” he insisted. “That’s where we’ll cut them off. We can reach Leesburg and cross at Edward’s Ferry in short order. I’m sure that’s what General Hooker is planning right now.”

Someone snorted. “Hookerʹs preoccupied with his battle of wills with Mr. Lincoln.”

Thomas hoped not, and prayed not. If Lee’s army was indeed pushing deeper into Pennsylvania, he wanted the general to concentrate on casting him out.

The Army of the Potomac did indeed reach Edward’s Ferry and cross the river on June 25, with the last of brigades following the next day. They encamped around Frederick while Hooker set out for Harpers Ferry, which the Union held and the Confederates had bypassed on their way to Pennsylvania. Everyone knew that Hooker believed the post had outlasted its usefulness and was vulnerable to a devastating attack if the Confederates seized the high ground nearby. Rather than await an inevitable defeat, Hooker wanted the post abandoned and its garrison added to their army. It was common knowledge that Lincoln wanted Harpers Ferry held as long as possible. The two strong-willed men were at an impasse, and Thomas couldn’t guess how they would resolve their differences.

Encamped in the green hills of Maryland, in more comfort and safety than they had known since Camp Curtin, the 49th waited, rested, and thought of home and loved ones far away. Thomas wrote to Dorothea, and sleeping, dreamed of her, her bright eyes, her warm smile, her gentle curves, her fragrance, her soft skin beneath his hands. When he returned home, he was resolved never to leave her again.

He saw no quick end to the war, and he knew he was not alone in this belief. The men of Company L would continue to fight, to do their duty to their country and one another, but experience had hardened them, given their patriotism a sharp, fatalistic edge as sure as any knife put to the whetstone. Their sacrifices might not be in vain, but they would not bring a swift end to the war either.

On the morning of June 29, the news sped through the federal camp like flames through tinder: Exasperated with his commander in chief’s refusal to acquiesce in the Harpers Ferry matter, Hooker had submitted his resignation. Major General George Gordon Meade, commander of the V Corps, had been named his successor, awakened at three o’clock that morning by a courier who prefaced his announcement with a warning that he was the bearer of “trouble.”

Thomas knew little of the new commander of the Army of the Potomac except that he was a regular army officer; his predilection for offensive action had won him the favor of Mr. Lincoln; he had led successful campaigns in the Seven Days’ Battles, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville; and bursts of temper interrupting his usual taciturn nature had earned him the nickname Old Snapping Turtle. Thomas did not envy him his promotion. The major general must have been surprised to be named the fourth commander of the federal army in eight months, and he could not have been pleased to take command in the midst of a campaign. He also had surely learned from his predecessors’ fates that failure usually meant swift replacement.

Thomas figured Meade had not slept any more that night after learning of his promotion, for by sunrise he had devised a plan to send the Army of the Potomac into Pennsylvania on a broad front. To increase their speed and flexibility, Meade divided the army into three wings and sent them northward along different routes. The left wing, comprised of I, III, and XI Corps and commanded by the intelligent and greatly admired Major General John F. Reynolds of Lancaster, led the advance, with Reynolds’s own I Corps forming the vanguard. Brigadier General John Buford’s cavalry would screen their advance and attempt to determine the precise location of Lee’s forces.

Thomas had no time to dash off a letter to Dorothea as they broke camp. Major General Sedgwick led the VI Corps through green hills and rolling farmland beneath hot summer skies, a tenmile-long column stretching down the dusty roads linking the sleepy towns of New Market, Ridgeville, and Mount Airy Station. At nightfall they reached New Windsor, where Thomas immediately sought out Jonathan, hoping he might know what awaited them. Though the field hospitals were typically at the rear, as an officer, Jonathan occasionally caught wind of dispatches before word reached the ears of the infantry. After a fruitless search during which he had begun to worry that maybe Jonathan had been killed and no one had thought to tell him, Thomas learned from one of the musicians in the ambulance crew that when Meade’s order to march north had come, Jonathan had been with the I Corps consulting with Dr. George New, the surgeon in chief of the 1st Division. He had moved out with them and was probably already somewhere around Uniontown.

Thomas absorbed the news, stunned. Jonathan wouldn’t have willingly left the men of the 49th to face battle without their most trusted physician. “Has Dr. Granger been reassigned?” he asked. The last time they had spoken, Jonathan had complained angrily about surgeons prevented from returning to their regiments after accompanying their wounded patients to hospitals. Jonathan’s skills would make him a prized addition to any corps or hospital, but he was devoted to the men of the Elm Creek Valley and would have fought a transfer.

“We were told he’d rejoin us in Pennsylvania,” said the musician.

Relieved, Thomas settled for leaving a hastily written note with the man, knowing that by the time Jonathan received it, his questions would have been answered one way or another.

The next day, the VI Corps trudged more than thirty-five miles to the northeast, encamping at Manchester. By then, speculation had traveled through the ranks that the Confederate troops were converging in south central Pennsylvania from the north and west. As far as Thomas could tell from the few plausible details he sifted from the rumors, Major General Meade intended first and foremost to protect Washington and Baltimore from a Rebel assault, which made perfect sense. If General Lee moved his army south, the Army of the Potomac could create a line of defense along the southern shore of Pipe Creek in northwestern Maryland—hence the need to send the VI Corps northeast to anchor the line. They surely would not linger long in Manchester but would march again in the morning, crossing the Mason-Dixon Line and pushing on to Hanover, Pennsylvania.

But the first day of July dawned hot and sultry and brought an unsettling turn of events—Sedgwick had been ordered to redirect the VI Corps to Gettysburg with all speed. As the men made haste to break camp, rumors abounded; the most convincing ones claimed that John Buford’s cavalry had arrived in Gettysburg on June 30 in search of Lee’s army, only to be warned by frightened civilians that a Confederate division had marched eastward through town four days earlier, and that more enemy troops, perhaps numbering in the tens of thousands, were at that very moment approaching from the west. Buford’s patrols had confirmed some of these alarming reports and received others from local farmers that a Confederate army twenty thousand strong had reached Cashtown, only nine miles to the west. At night their campfires could be seen dotting the foothills of South Mountain. The Rebels had cut telegraph lines and severed railways, cutting off communications and isolating the town. Buford’s exhausted cavalry brigades stood alone where perhaps as many as fifty thousand Confederate infantrymen would soon converge.

Realizing he lacked sufficient numbers to hold the advantageous high ground controlling the roads along which Meade’s army would approach Gettysburg, Buford had deployed his men north and west of the town, hoping to delay the Confederate advance long enough for reinforcements to arrive. He had sent couriers racing to General Meade as well as to Reynolds, six miles to the south with the I, II, and XI Corps, the nearest Union infantry, to urge them to hurry. Buford’s cavalry, numbering fewer than three thousand, then engaged the enemy.

Fierce fighting carried on throughout the morning of July 1. By half past nine o’clock, Buford’s men had taken up a final defensive position along McPherson’s Ridge, when a lookout spotted horsemen galloping up Emmitsburg Road. One carried a flag, a white circle on a field of red—the I Corps had arrived, just in time, and there was Reynolds, leading his infantry column. He and Buford, old friends, had conferred, had planned the infantry’s advance, and had sent couriers to warn the citizens to seek shelter in safer parts of the town, warnings that went mostly unheeded. Reynolds had deployed Cutlerʹs brigade, and then the Iron Brigade, and then as the gallant Reynolds had urged his men forward to engage the enemy, he had been shot in the head, knocked from his horse, and killed.

Thomas went cold at the news of the shocking loss. He prayed the rumors were exaggerated—perhaps Reynolds had been merely wounded and was even now regaining his strength in a field hospital, perhaps with Jonathan attending him—but the tales rang with severe and solemn truth. He steeled himself and marched on with his fellows, backtracking through Manchester, making haste for Gettysburg. In northern Maryland they passed a few resolutely secesh folk, who shut themselves up in their houses and scowled out the windows as the men in Union blue went by, but others welcomed them with cheers and visible relief. One stoop-shouldered, white-haired woman stood at the gate of her small cottage, a basket on her arm, handing out chunks of bread still warm from the oven as the men passed by. From several yards away, Thomas heard her murmur, “God bless you, son,” to each soldier, and the men’s grateful replies. The sourdough aroma made his mouth water, and as he approached the gate, he gnawed the inside of his lip and estimated the diminishing supply in her basket. At last he reached the woman, and he thanked her even before the bread was in his hand. As he took the first welcome bite, their eyes met briefly before she glanced down the road to the scores of hungry men still coming after him. “Gracious me,” he heard her exclaim in despair as he marched on. “There won’t be enough by half!” Not by half, not by a small fraction of a half, he thought as he hungrily savored the last crumb. His stomach growled, a gruff plea he could not satisfy.

The Littleton Pike was crowded thickly with wagons, frightened people fleeing the scene of battle with horses and cattle and worldly goods they dared not leave behind for the Rebels. The corps crossed into Pennsylvania, and all around him Thomas could feel the men of the 49th quickening. These were not the hills of home, but they were on the soil of their home state, and the enemy preceded them. They passed through towns the Rebels had raided, saw the stark, stunned terror mixed with relief on the faces of the Northern civilians who had never expected the war to come to their fields and front doors and now thought they beheld their rescuers. In Union Mills they were greeted by cheering, weeping crowds, who shouted warnings of the Confederate forces they had witnessed, their numbers, their ferocity, their lean and hungry avarice. Several pretty young women scattered flowers in their path, declared the men their gallant liberators, and sang patriotic songs. One lovely, spirited girl threw an entire bouquet, and whether she intended it for Abner, no one could say, but he was the one to catch it. Some fellows teased him and joked about her evident good taste, but Abner never broke stride as he reminded them that he was happily married and handed the ribbon-tied flowers to a younger, single man.