The Union Quilters (22 page)

“It wouldn’t be a burden if it made sense,” she exclaimed. “Violence is unpleasant, yes, and I can understand why you would not abandon your predilections when there are plenty of other men to fight and the war is far away. But now the war is coming here, and still you do nothing.”

“Anneke, these are not mere predilections,” he said. “You speak as if this is merely a matter of taste, as if deciding never to take another man’s life is akin to choosing between tea or coffee with my breakfast. I cannot and will not kill, not to save the Union, which you know I love and respect, not to end slavery, which you know I abhor, not to prove my patriotism to the neighbors, not even to please you.”

“But what about to save me?” she countered. “What if a Rebel soldier burst in here right this minute to shoot me and the children? What would you do?”

“There is no Rebel soldier standing on our front porch ready to burst in.” Hans let his head fall against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “I was just outside and can assure you of that.”

Tears of fury sprang into her eyes. “Not tonight, perhaps.”

“Or any other night. I’m still firmly convinced that General Lee will not cross the Susquehanna. Even if he does, he has nothing to gain by sending his army into the Elm Creek Valley. Even if he did, Abel Wright will provide a formidable defense.”

“And you will not even help him construct the fortifications,” she retorted. “If you don’t wish to take up arms, that’s one matter, but you will not even help build the defenses that will protect your own family, your own farm and property.”

“Those fortifications are the instruments of war. I can’t build something that will help one man kill another or it would be as if I fired the rifle myself.”

“But you helped build Union Hall! The sole purpose of Union Hall is to raise money to provide for the Forty-ninth!”

“That is not its sole purpose, and even if it were, there’s a difference between firing a bullet into someone’s chest and providing food, clothing, and necessities for men in need.”

“How so? Those ‘men in need’ are soldiers, and soldiers are instruments of war.”

Hans was silent for a long moment. “Very well, my love.” He rose and pushed in his chair, leaving his second piece of bread untasted. “You win. I should not have helped build Union Hall.”

“What precisely have I won?” Anneke cried tearfully. She heard a floorboard creak overhead as Gerda stirred, but she was beyond caring who overheard their argument. “Tell me what you would do if a Rebel soldier entered this room intending to kill me. Would you do for love of your wife what you would not do for love of country, or would you stand there and let him shoot me?”

“I would try to take his gun away so he could not shoot you,” said Hans. He seemed—not angry, not ashamed of himself, but disappointed, profoundly disappointed in her. “I would put myself between you and him, and he would have to get past me to get to you.”

“But you would not kill him, not to save my life, not to save the children.”

“I doubt very much that I will ever be put to such a test except in words, and except by you, but since you demand an answer—no, Anneke. I would not kill him.”

“Then I cannot believe you love me or our children.”

His locked his gaze on hers. She could not read the thoughts that lay behind his steely eyes, but she refused to back down and look away. “I do love you,” Hans said, “and it is because I love you and believe you love me that I will not kill for you.”

She took a deep, shaky breath. “If you will not look to the defense of your wife and children, then I will have to see to our safety myself.”

“Do what you must, Anneke.”

He left the room without looking back.

 

Men and boys from throughout the Elm Creek Valley responded to Abel’s call, bringing tools and rifles to the southern pass. The crowd in Union Hall thinned as men who had fled Chambersburg and York and Gettysburg joined the locals in the defense of their refuge. While Louisa and Margaret remained back at the farm to watch the children, Frances accompanied Constance to Union Hall to care for the refugees. “I can’t just sit and wait,” Frances fretted as they rode into Water’s Ford. “I must feel as if I am doing something to help, however small my contribution.”

Dorothea must have felt the same, for when they arrived they found her already hard at work serving cornmeal mush to the children. Anneke was there too, but whereas Dorothea had left her daughter at home with the housekeeper, Anneke had brought her sons along. Constance had not expected to see Anneke until later and the children not at all; Anneke usually left the boys at home with Gerda and did not arrive until mid-morning, after she had breakfast with her family and took care of her morning chores. When Constance remarked about this in passing, Anneke said coolly that she and her sons had taken up residence in Union Hall for the duration of the crisis, for she felt safer amongst men she knew would take up arms in their defense. Startled, Constance looked to Dorothea for an explanation, but Dorothea merely shook her head and went about her work.

For a week, Constance and her sisters-in-law awaited word from the men defending the pass and prepared for the worst, packing clothing in satchels and food in barrels in case they had to flee. Occasionally, the defenders allowed refugees through the pass, and they brought news from the fortifications as well as from the towns they had fled. Small bands of armed and mounted Copperheads, invigorated by the Confederate approach, had picked their way through the forest and had approached the southern pass, but the men of the Elm Creek Valley had fought them off, engaging in three skirmishes before the attackers apparently abandoned their plans. The Army of Northern Virginia did not appear headed for Washington City or Baltimore after all but was gathering in Adams County. General Hooker had resigned and General Meade named his successor. A fierce battle raged in Gettysburg, not only in the surrounding heights but also in the very streets of the town. In response to the threat, a freeborn Philadelphian named Octavius V. Catto had raised a company of colored men and retained white officers under Captain William Babe, a white veteran with the Pennsylvania Volunteer Reserve Corps. Armed, uniformed, and equipped at the city arsenal, the company traveled by train to Harrisburg, where they were peremptorily rejected with the excuse that Negro troops had not been authorized. After three days of battle with horrific casualties on both sides, the Union Army emerged victorious at Gettysburg. General Lee’s army was retreating from Pennsylvania with the Union’s VI Corps leading the pursuit.

Little by little, as railroad and telegraph lines were repaired, news about the extent of the destruction in Gettysburg trickled in to Water’s Ford. Only when the Confederate Army was well south of the Mason-Dixon Line did the refugees feel safe returning to their homes. As the families and men and women with children departed, Union Hall gradually emptied and was restored to its former appearance. Soon only Anneke remained, bewildering Constance, who recalled that Anneke had said that she had moved into Union Hall for her protection. Now that her defenders had departed, she and her sons would be safer and far more comfortable in their own home, but as Anneke arranged cots and quilts in one of the upstairs offices, it was evident that she was in no hurry to leave.

When reports of scores of wounded soldiers languishing in barns and in homes and on the battlefield reached them, the Union Quilters organized a drive for bandages, food, and medicine. They sent off a wagonload of supplies with a group of volunteer nurses, many of whom were anxious to go not only to care for the wounded but also to seek news about their husbands, sons, and brothers who had fought at Gettysburg. They carried with them bottles of peppermint and pennyroyal to ward off what they had been warned was the overpowering stench of thousands of rotting corpses, human and equine.

Other civilians were also eager to visit the battlefield. Tales spread of sightseers and souvenir hunters, insensible to the soldiers’ distress and determined to take home relics and treasures from the conflict. They constantly got in the way, arousing the ire of the doctors and nurses who had stayed behind to care for the wounded, who numbered in the thousands. But inconsiderate tourists were not the only ones who earned the enmity of the caregivers and soldiers. For every story of valiant Gettysburg women who provided food, shelter, and nursing to the suffering, rumors abounded of local men who levied fees upon wounded soldiers to transport them from the battlefield into town, citizens who charged the troops exorbitant prices for food and drink and other necessities, and farmers who demanded rent from exhausted Union regiments camping overnight on their land. Constance hoped that the tales were false, but they were just awful enough to carry the ring of truth.

Abel was one of the last men to leave the fortifications in the southern pass, but he soon returned as a member of the new local militia formed from the defenders he had called together. On the sixth of July, the town council resolved to provide for the militia to man the defenses in shifts until the war concluded, and Mayor Bauer personally asked Abel to lead the colored company. If the Confederates threatened them again, they would be prepared.

But for the moment, it seemed that the crisis had passed. Lee’s army had withdrawn to Virginia. Normal life, for wartime, resumed in the Elm Creek Valley. Abel’s family returned to Mercersburg and began inquiries into the fate of Ephraim and their other colored friends and neighbors who had been taken south into slavery. The Union Quilters resumed their usual efforts to provide for the men of the 49th, eagerly awaiting their first letters in the aftermath of Gettysburg, because until they knew how their loved ones fared, they would stand on a precipice of doubt and worry and fear. But there was pride too, for they had responded to the threat of danger with courage and resourcefulness.

Proudest of all was Constance, for her husband had at last served his country as he had so longed to do. He had been hailed by the town council and appointed the leader of the colored company of the local militia. His resourcefulness had saved the valley, and everyone who heard of it acknowledged him as the hero of Wright’s Pass.

 

Dorothea pushed Abigail on the swing Thomas had made by boring holes through the ends of a sanded board, threading sturdy ropes through them, and knotting the ropes around a branch of a towering elm a few yards from their back door. The lowest branch was still fifteen feet off the ground, and Dorothea could not glance up at the tight knots high above without remembering how nervously she had watched as Jonathan climbed the tree to tie them.

“Abigail won’t be able to use a swing for more than a year,” she had said, trying to talk her brother out of it. She had thrown Thomas a beseeching look, but he was too busy watching Jonathan shinny up the tree with the swing slung over his shoulder to notice. “You can hang a swing for her when you return home.”

“That could be years,” Jonathan had replied, his voice strained from the effort of climbing. “I should do it now, while I’m thinking of it. You’ll be glad to have a diversion for her when she’s big enough.”

“Let him do it,” Thomas joked, “or I’ll have to.”

Now Abigail was almost two years old, and she loved the swing. “Your father and Uncle Jonathan made this for you,” Dorothea reminded her each time they walked hand in hand to the elm tree. Abigail had been only a baby the last time she had seen her father, too young to remember him except from Dorothea’s stories. How would she respond when he finally came home? Would she smile and run to him, or would she hide her face in Dorothea’s skirts, since she would not truly know him?

Thomas seemed to think Dorothea would not know him either. His last letter, sent from Virginia before the Battle of Gettysburg, had consisted of a single sentence: “My love, I fear you will not recognize me when I return, I have changed so much and done such wretched things.” Distressed, she had written back immediately, two pages expressing her undying love and devotion and assuring him that nothing he could have done was unforgivable. He had not yet replied. She had not heard from him in weeks. The most recent letter any of the Union Quilters had received had come to Mary from her husband, Abner, while encamped in Frederick, Maryland, but that letter too had been written before Gettysburg. Dorothea and her friends were so anxious for news that they could hardly think of anything else.

When Abigail tired of the swing, Dorothea led her back to the house, taking their time, picking wildflowers, wistfully enjoying the simple pleasures of Abigail’s happy prattle. She was a contented child, beloved and bright, but often quiet and contemplative, her fatherʹs daughter. Thomas would be so proud of her.

After lunch on the porch, Dorothea left Abigail in Mrs. Hennessey’s care, saddled her bay mare, and rode into Water’s Ford, with her sewing kit and letters to mail in the saddlebag. She stopped first at the post office, her heart leaping with joy to behold a letter from Thomas. Thanking the postmaster, she blinked back tears and traced her name written in her husband’s familiar, elegant script. Opening the letter, she walked outside and nearly bumped into Gerda on her way in. “A letter from Thomas,” Gerda exclaimed happily. “What a relief. I hope it was sent after Gettysburg and not merely delayed all this time.”

Dorothea fervently hoped so too. “Hurry back and we can read it together.”

“Perhaps I’ll have one of my own to read, and not merely these to send,” said Gerda, a note of longing in her voice. Dorothea could not resist glancing in her basket and glimpsed three letters—one to Gerda’s parents in Germany, one to Josiah Chester in Virginia that was unlikely to be delivered any time soon, thanks to the war, and one to Jonathan. Dorothea had not heard from her brother in so long that she almost would not care if he had sent Gerda a love sonnet just as long as he had sent some word to assure her of his safety.