Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath
    Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath
    Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath

    By Elsie Singmaster

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath is a work of historical fiction.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles River Editors
    Release dateMar 22, 2018
    ISBN9781537823973
    Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath

    Read more from Elsie Singmaster

    Related to Gettysburg

    Related ebooks

    Historical Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      What We Loved This Week

      May 25, 2018

      What We Loved This Week
      5 min read

    • Article

      Trent Dalton On Heroes And Hope

      Sep 13, 2020

      THE HEROES NEVER changed form. Always flesh and blood; arms and legs and beating hearts as wide as this country. It was the villains who kept morphing on me. I once thought the bad guys all dressed like Darth Vader. Then I learned that the villains i

      8 min read

    • Article

      Writing Family History

      Dec 15, 2021

      Writing Family History
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Bill Morris

      Dec 20, 2020

      This was the year I finally, belatedly, decided to figure out why people make such a fuss about Joy Williams. The post A Year in Reading: Bill Morris appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Way Home

      Feb 5, 2022

      The Way Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Way Home

      Feb 4, 2022

      The Way Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Allende, Smith, Eisenberg, Cummins, Chayka, and More

      Jan 21, 2020

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from the likes of Isabel Allende, Danez Smith, Emma Copley Eisenberg, Jeanine Cummins, Kyle Chayka, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read ou

      5 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      May 25, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Village Affair

      Jul 14, 2021

      AS an attentive aunt, Jane Austen was keen to encourage her niece, Anna, with the novel she was writing. ‘Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on,’ she wrote to her in 1814, adding, ‘such a spot… is the delight of my

      4 min read

    • Article

      What We’re Reading: Writers And Readers On The Books They Enjoyed In October

      Oct 26, 2022

      In this series we ask authors, Guardian writers and readers to share what they have been reading recently. This month, recommendations include a feminist cookbook, a piercing memoir and revisited favourites. Tell us in the comments what you have been

      4 min read

    • Article

      Magnets: Carried through time, lovers seek their purpose.

      Feb 6, 2014

      Moon Colony B, 2213 Former Ponzi-schemer Mary Pillar digs through a trashcan. It smells like rotten eggs and milk. She is elderly and homeless, living in an alley between two eco-efficient skyscrapers. Dust particles dance around her. She has lost ev

      11 min read

    • Article

      Back To The Future

      Nov 12, 2019

      Back To The Future
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Books Briefing: The Best Books to Get Lost in This Summer

      Jul 9, 2021

      Memoirs and novels that satisfy the urge for high drama: Your weekly guide to the best in books

      3 min read

    • Article

      Projections of Life

      Jun 1, 2023

      Projections of Life
      14 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jan 23, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Tales From The Echoing Green

      Jul 19, 2023

      Tales From The Echoing Green
      4 min read

    • Article

      New Titles

      Oct 10, 2018

      By George Keithley George Braziller, Inc. “The Donner Party is one of the three or four finest book-length American poems ever written.”—Poetry. “Out of the western migration of the 1840s…Keithley has made a lean, taut narrative poem that moves with

      9 min read

    • Article

      Sterner Stuff

      Feb 24, 2022

      Sterner Stuff
      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘In the Country of Women’: Featured Nonfiction from Susan Straight

      Nov 19, 2019

      In our latest edition of featured nonfiction, we present an excerpt from National Book Award finalist Susan Straight’s new novel, In the Country of Women, out now from Catapult. The post ‘In the Country of Women’: Featured Nonfiction from Susan Strai

      8 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    • Article

      Landladies Under Attack

      Feb 17, 2022

      Landladies Under Attack
      1 min read

    • Article

      Cosplaying Jane Austen

      Jul 22, 2017

      Cosplaying Jane Austen
      7 min read

    • Article

      Allegiance

      Nov 6, 2023

      Allegiance
      12 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Apr 19, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Gettysburg

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Gettysburg - Elsie Singmaster

      GETTYSBURG: STORIES OF THE RED HARVEST AND THE AFTERMATH

      ..................

      Elsie Singmaster

      LACONIA PUBLISHERS

      Thank you for reading. If you enjoy this book, please leave a review or connect with the author.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2017 by Elsie Singmaster

      Interior design by Pronoun

      Distribution by Pronoun

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      1863-1913

      I JULY THE FIRST

      II THE HOME-COMING

      III VICTORY[1]

      IV THE BATTLE-GROUND

      V GUNNER CRISWELL

      VI THE SUBSTITUTE

      VII THE RETREAT

      VIII THE GREAT DAY

      IX MARY BOWMAN

      GETTYSBURG STORIES

      OF THE RED HARVEST

      AND THE AFTERMATH

      BY

      ELSIE SINGMASTER

      GETTYSBURG

      TO MY FATHER

      JOHN ALDEN SINGMASTER, D.D.

      THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY

      DEDICATED

      1863-1913

      ..................

      FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty; and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

      Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

      But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—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.

      ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

      Gettysburg, November 19, 1863.

      GETTYSBURG

      I JULY THE FIRST

      ..................

      FROM THE KITCHEN TO THE front door, back to the kitchen, out to the little stone-fenced yard behind the house, where her children played in their quiet fashion, Mary Bowman went uneasily. She was a bright-eyed, slender person, with an intense, abounding joy in life. In her red plaid gingham dress, with its full starched skirt, she looked not much older than her ten-year-old boy.

      Presently, admonishing herself sternly, she went back to her work. She sat down in a low chair by the kitchen table, and laid upon her knee a strip of thick muslin. Upon that she placed a piece of linen, which she began to scrape with a sharp knife. Gradually a soft pile of little, downy masses gathered in her lap. After a while, as though this process were too slow, or as though she could no longer endure her bent position, she selected another piece of linen and began to pull it to pieces, adding the raveled threads to the pile of lint. Suddenly, she slipped her hands under the soft mass, and lifted it to the table. Forgetting the knife, which fell with a clatter, she rose and went to the kitchen door.

      Children, she said, remember you are not to go away.

      The oldest boy answered obediently. Mounted upon a broomstick, he impersonated General Early, who, a few days before, had visited the town and had made requisition upon it; and little Katy and the four-year-old boy represented General Early’s ragged Confederates.

      Their mother’s bright eyes darkened as she watched them. Those raiding Confederates had been so terrible to look upon, so ragged, so worn, so starving. Their eyes had been like black holes in their brown faces; they had had the figures of youth and the decrepitude of age. A straggler from their ranks had told her that the Southern men of strength and maturity were gone, that there remained in his village in Georgia only little boys and old, old men. The Union soldiers who had come yesterday, marching in the Emmittsburg road, through the town and out to the Theological Seminary, were different; travel-worn as they were, they had seemed, in comparison, like new recruits.

      Suddenly Mary Bowman clasped her hands. Thank God, they would not fight here! Once more frightened Gettysburg had anticipated a battle, once more its alarm had proved ridiculous. Early had gone days ago to York, the Union soldiers were marching toward Chambersburg. Thank God, John Bowman, her husband, was not a regular soldier, but a fifer in the brigade band. Members of the band, poor Mary thought, were safe, danger would not come nigh them. Besides, he was far away with Hooker’s idle forces. No failure to give battle made Mary indignant, no reproaches of an inert general fell from her lips. She was passionately grateful that they did not fight.

      It was only on dismal, rainy days, or when she woke at night and looked at her little children lying in their beds, that the vague, strange possibility of her husband’s death occurred to her. Then she assured herself with conviction that God would not let him die. They were so happy, and they were just beginning to prosper. They had paid the last upon their little house before he went to war; now they meant to save money and to educate their children. By fall the war would be over, then John would come back and resume his school-teaching, and everything would be as it had been.

      She went through the kitchen again and out to the front door, and looked down the street with its scattering houses. Opposite lived good-natured, strong-armed Hannah Casey; in the next house, a dozen rods away, the Deemer family. The Deemers had had great trouble, the father was at war and the two little children were ill with typhoid fever. In a little while she would go down and help. It was still early; perhaps the children and their tired nurses slept.

      Beyond, the houses were set closer together, the Wilson house first, where a baby was watched for now each day, and next to it the McAtee house, where Grandma McAtee was dying. In that neighborhood, and a little farther on past the new court-house in the square, which Gettysburg called The Diamond, men were moving about, some mounted, some on foot. Their presence did not disturb Mary, since Early had gone in one direction and the Union soldiers were going in the other. Probably the Union soldiers had come to town to buy food before they started on their march. She did not even think uneasily of the sick and dying; she said to herself that if the soldiers had wished to fight here, the good men of the village, the judge, the doctor, and the ministers would have gone forth to meet them and with accounts of the invalids would have persuaded them to stay away!

      Over the tops of the houses, Mary could see the cupola of the Seminary lifting its graceful dome and slender pillars against the blue sky. She and her husband had always planned that one of their boys should go to the Seminary and learn to be a preacher; she remembered their hope now. Far beyond Seminary Ridge, the foothills of the Blue Ridge lay clear and purple in the morning sunshine. The sun, already high in the sky, was behind her; it stood over the tall, thick pines of the little cemetery where her kin lay, and where she herself would lie with her husband beside her. Except for that dim spot, the whole lovely landscape was unshadowed.

      Suddenly she put out her hand to the pillar of the porch and called her neighbor:—

      Hannah!

      The door of the opposite house opened, and Hannah Casey’s burly figure crossed the street. She had been working in her carefully tended garden and her face was crimson. Hannah Casey

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1