Two for Home

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4

The letter from Pa arrived five months after Gettysburg. Folded inside was a strip of newssheet with the speech President Lincoln had given on 19 November. Sharps sat by his campfire reading the words the Great Emancipator had spoken that day, unaware of the tears that streamed down his cheeks until the captain paused in his patrol of the camp.

“Sharps? What’s wrong?”

Sharps handed him the paper.

Those three days at Gettysburg…Three hundred fifty-six men that he’d known and fought beside marched into battle. One hundred thirty-nine were killed, wounded, or missing.

General Reynolds sent the 2nd Brigade, of which the 14th Brooklyn was a part, onto the battlefield. The 14th dropped their packs and raced across the field, Sharps in their midst. He figured Pa couldn’t object. He wasn’t using a rifle, since the fighting had been reduced to hand-to-hand combat.

The Rebs eventually realized how untenable their position was and surrendered their flags to the 14th.

General Reynolds had fallen, though, and the 14th were given the honor of bearing his body off the field and into the town of Gettysburg.

The next two days were hard and bloody, but in the end…

They’d won the battle, and months later, President Lincoln arrived there and spoke the words that had brought Sharps to tears.

Captain Marriott sucked in a breath and with a hitch in his voice, he began to read the last sentence. “—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The cap held out the newssheet, and Sharps took it and stared numbly as his captain reached for a handkerchief. He didn’t mop at his face, as Sharps had expected, since he’d shed tears as well, but instead tipped up Sharps’s chin and dried his cheeks.

“Get some rest, Corporal. We’ll be on the march again tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.” Sharps folded the newssheet back into a neat square, tucked it and the letter that had accompanied it into his haversack, and watched as the captain strode off into the evening’s dim light.