Uncertain Glory (19 page)

“I heard this crazy story,” he said. “That Joe and Nell Gramercy had found Owen at Fort Edgecomb in the middle of the night.”

“You heard right,” said Pa. “Owen's probably to home by now, healing his broken leg.”

“But you haven't even heard the most exciting part,” I said. “Nell's aunt and uncle are leaving town, and she's staying here. With Ma and Pa and me.”

For a moment Charlie didn't say anything. He looked dumbstruck.

“Godfrey mighty,” he managed to say. “That's fierce!” He looked from one of us to the other. Then he got his voice back. “I have news, too. I've enlisted!”

“What?” Even Pa turned around for that. “Charlie, you're not eighteen.”

“I'm tall for being close to sixteen. And I got my father to sign a paper saying I just turned eighteen. Edwin Smith accepted me. He needs everybody he can to muster one hundred men for Wiscasset. So I'm going!” Charlie pretended to hold a rifle and pointed it at each of us in the kitchen. “
Pow, pow, pow!
I'm going to get those Confederates! I'm going to be a hero! Just wait and see!”

I couldn't believe Charlie, my friend, was really leaving Wiscasset and going to be a soldier in the army. Charlie, who had trouble keeping his mind on his work, would learn to shoot a gun and fight in battles.

“Captain Smith says we're leaving next Tuesday, the twenty-third. I can help you with your printing until then, Joe. Are you going to work today?”

Tuesday.
Pa and Charlie and all the enlisted men would be leaving for the war next Tuesday. Monday was the twenty-second, the day the money was due. Today was Friday.

I only had until Monday morning to get the rest of the money for Mr. Shuttersworth. Three days.

“I'm going now. I can use all the help I can get.”

“I'll go with you. I don't know anything about setting type, but maybe I can help with the press,” said Nell, smiling. “You've changed my life. Maybe I can help you with yours.”

“Go on, the three of you, then,” said Ma. “Go the back way, in case Nell's uncle is still wandering about. I'll bring you all some food later. With everything else that's happening, now's the time to focus on the
Herald.
”

Only the day before I'd thought it would be impossible.

“I don't know if we can print the Act in time,” I said. “But if you're both willing to help . . . let's go!”

Chapter 39

Tuesday, April 23, midday

My eyes were still burning from lack of sleep, but we'd done it.

Somehow Nell and Charlie and I had set the type and printed the Act and gotten twenty-five copies to the county clerk first thing Monday morning—just in time to collect the money I needed to pay Mr. Shuttersworth his $65. I was even able to give Charlie $6 to take with him soldiering.

While I'd spent most of the weekend at the
Herald
office, Ma'd been busy at the store, helping families to provision their men for the journey, and giving Pa numerous last hugs in preparation for his departure. Her eyes were swollen and red, but so were those of most women, and a few men, in town.

Reverend Merrill began the morning with a special church service to honor those departing to serve our country. He'd even composed a special patriotic hymn which the choir sang in their honor. Then the eighty-nine men (not quite the one hundred Edwin Smith had hoped for) who'd enlisted marched down the Village Green from the church onto Main Street. The entire town lined the block, waving flags and cheering for their family, friends, and neighbors.

Nell and Ma and I stood together near the corner of Water Street, where we could see everything. Right at the corner of Long Bridge and Water Street, Reverend Merrill said another prayer for the soldiers, and Captain Tucker declaimed some fine words about patriotism.
I can't remember just what was said, since most folks were crying, including many of the new soldiers themselves.

Some soldiers were as young as Charlie, and a few were in their forties, but most men were in their twenties and thirties, leaving sweethearts or wives and young children behind. As they marched over the Long Bridge to Edgecomb, the whole town followed them. On the Edgecomb side they were met by the Newcastle town band, which led everyone in a new assortment of hymns and patriotic songs before leading the soldiers up the hill toward Newcastle, their next destination. It would take several days for them to reach their first training ground at Rockland.

As we walked back across the bridge, Ma comforted a young woman whose husband had just left. Nell and I walked together, neither of us saying much.

We'd just gotten back to Main Street when Owen hobbled up on his new crutches. “News! I have news!” he shouted.

“What news?” I asked, trying to smile through the sadness of the day.

“I knew you were busy, so I checked with Miss Averill at the telegraph office,” said Owen. “Remember that regiment from Massachusetts that left for Washington last week—the Sixth Massachusetts?”

I remembered. The Massachusetts regiment that had managed to get organized so quickly, ahead of all the other New England regiments.

“They were on their way to Washington—they took a train to Baltimore—but when they started marching south from there, they were attacked by people on the side of the South. Four soldiers and a dozen
people in Baltimore were killed. They're the first to die in action in the war, and on the anniversary of Lexington and Concord, too.” Owen took a deep breath.

“That's awful, Owen,” I said.

“That's not all,” he added. “The first man killed a citizen of my color, Nicholas Biddle. Sumner Needham, a soldier from Norway, Maine, was killed too.” He looked at me. “Can we put all that in the newspaper, Joe?”

“Yes, we can, Owen,” I said, and I put my arm around his shoulders. “The soldiers have gone, but we on the home front still have a job to do.”

Owen and Nell and I headed for the
Herald
office. We needed to print a special edition.

Author's Historical Notes

Some of the major characters in
Uncertain Glory,
and many of the minor ones, were real people who lived in Wiscasset, Maine, during the 1860s.

Teenagers Joe Wood and Charlie Farrar did own a printing business in Wiscasset, and published the
Wiscasset Herald,
a four-page newspaper. I've taken the liberty of moving the time of their business from 1859 to 1861, and of giving full ownership to Joe.

Charlie Farrar enlisted in the Union Army. When he and the others serving under Edwin Smith reached Rockland in 1861, the citizens of Rockland and Thomaston gave each of them a small Bible to keep with them while they were serving their country. Some of those small “Testaments” may be found in homes, libraries, and historical society museums in Maine today.

Charlie didn't stay in the army long. Perhaps war wasn't as glorious as he'd thought it would be. Instead, he settled in Massachusetts, where for many years he ran a printing business during the winters. During the summers he lived in northern Maine, where he captained a steamboat in the Rangeley Lakes region, and wrote guides to hunting, fishing, and hiking in the Maine wilderness and adventure stories for boys. Charlie married, but never had children. He died in 1893.

Joe Wood stayed in Wiscasset. At the beginning of the war he served in the Maine Home Guard under Richard Tucker. He then left for Portland, where he served an apprenticeship at the
Portland Evening Courier.
After attending business school he returned to Wiscasset, and,
in 1869, began publishing another, more ambitious, Wiscasset newspaper, the
Seaside Oracle
(1869–76). Joe spent the rest of his life in the newspaper business, publishing newspapers in Skowhegan, Bar Harbor, and Bath, Maine. He married in 1880, and named his children Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Frances (after his wife). He died in 1923.

The group of volunteers that left Wiscasset under the command of Edwin Smith became part of the Fourth Maine Volunteers, together with units from Searsport, Winterport, Damariscotta, and Belfast: a total of 1,085 men, including a band. They were not disbanded until July of 1864. During that period a total of 1,440 men served in the regiment: 170 were killed, 443 were wounded, 137 died of disease, and 40 men died in Confederate prisons. There is a monument to them at Gettysburg. Captain Smith was killed at the Battle of Fair Oaks (also known as the Battle of Seven Pines) in Virginia, on May 31, 1862. His body was returned to Wiscasset for burial.

Nell Gramercy and Owen Bascomb and their families are fictional, but there were real people like them in New England in 1861. In the mid-nineteenth century, between one and two million Americans believed that the dead do not cease to exist, but become spirits who can communicate with the living through “spiritualists.” Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of spiritualists toured the country, advertising their services. Many of them were young women and girls who were thought to be particularly sensitive and finely attuned to the voices of spirits.

Pure opium and its liquid form, laudanum, were commonly used during this period, though reports from Europe were beginning to indicate that addiction could be a serious problem. Despite this, there were no other medications as powerful for pain, and opium was widely
used to treat soldiers wounded during the Civil War. Many of them returned from the war addicted to the drug.

In 1861 the Union government took control of all northern telegraph lines for the war effort. During the four years of the war, more than 15,000 miles of telegraph wires (all strung between poles) were used exclusively for military communications. In the field, wagons containing reels of insulated wire and telegraph equipment batteries took the telegraph to the front, where, in the North, the telegraph operator's office was usually a tent near either General Meade or General Grant. More than three hundred telegraph operators were either killed or seriously wounded during the war.

President Lincoln spent hours in the telegraph office at the War Department, waiting for messages from the front and sending back commands. At the beginning of the war, both the North and the South used the usual dots and dashes of Morse Code to send information, but as the war continued, both developed secret messaging systems so their telegrams could not be read by the opposition.

All of the events mentioned in the book, except those related directly to Nell and Owen, did take place in Wiscasset during April or early May of 1861. For those wondering why Charlie, Joe, and Nell did not attend school: As in many other states, although public schools were available (the teachers were often recent graduates), Maine had no compulsory education laws until after the Civil War. It was common for students to attend classes only until they felt they'd learned enough reading and arithmetic to pursue whatever their future profession would be. A few students went on to higher education, but most boys stayed at home to help their fathers, or were apprenticed, and
girls learned homemaking skills from their mothers or “went into service” with other families.

Although the causes of the American Civil War can be traced to issues whose seeds were planted decades earlier, the war officially began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 12, 1861, and ended with the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. The four years between those dates were the bloodiest in American history.

By the end of the war, approximately half of the military-aged white men in the North had served in either the army or the navy, as had close to eighty percent of the white men in the South. During the first year of the war, African-American soldiers were not welcomed in the army (they were accepted in the navy), but in the summer of 1862, the Militia Act allowed them to enlist, although only to serve under white officers. By the end of the war, 179,000 African-American men had served in 166 black Union regiments.

Of all men who served, on both sides, 620,000 died; 414,000, or two-thirds, died from diseases contracted because of unsanitary conditions in the field and lack of medical supplies and knowledge.

Every citizen in the country was involved in the war. It was fought in farmyards and cornfields. It took sons and fathers away from families who needed their support. Women, children, and men too old or too disabled to fight took over the jobs of the men who were fighting.

More than 70,000 Maine men were in uniform at some time during the war, not including those who served in the Home Guard; 204 of those men came from the little village of Wiscasset. Maine had the highest percentage of volunteers of any Union state: sixty percent of
eligible men aged eighteen to forty-five. Close to 9,400 of those men died; an additional 5,800 were discharged for injury or illness; and more than 600 were listed as “missing in action.”

On the home front, the Bates Mills in Lewiston, Maine, advertised for 120 girls and boys, “to work nine hours per day to run their machinery extra time, to supply the government with tent cloth, so much needed by our soldiers in the field.”