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.

    Three Days in Gettysburg: An Intimate Tale of Lost Love and Divided Hearts at the Battle That Defined America
    Three Days in Gettysburg: An Intimate Tale of Lost Love and Divided Hearts at the Battle That Defined America
    Three Days in Gettysburg: An Intimate Tale of Lost Love and Divided Hearts at the Battle That Defined America
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    Three Days in Gettysburg: An Intimate Tale of Lost Love and Divided Hearts at the Battle That Defined America

    By Brian Mockenhaupt

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In July of 1863, the largest battle ever fought on American soil swept through the tiny town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. For three days, 160,000 Union and Confederate troops slaughtered one another in the streets, fields, and forests while the 2,500 residents of this small Pennsylvania town cowered in their homes.

    As the battle raged all around her, a woman baked bread for Union soldiers, unaware that she would soon become part of history. In a faraway hospital, the Union soldier she loved lay close to death, unable to get her a message. Meanwhile, a childhood friend to them both marched back into town wearing Rebel gray.

    Three Days in Gettysburg: An Intimate Tale of Lost Love and Divided Hearts at the Battle That Defined America tells the true story of the braided lives of these three people—Jennie Wade, Jack Skelly, and Wes Culp—against the vivid and horrifying backdrop of the crucial Civil War battle at Gettysburg. The three had grown up together, but by the time war came to their hometown, their lives had taken surprisingly different paths. Despite whispered gossip about Jennie’s family and her violent, thieving father, she and the upright Jack had fallen in love; with the coming of the war, he joined the Union army. Wes, on the other hand, had left his family, moved to the South, and renounced his kinsmen by joining “Stonewall” Jackson’s brigade. When he finally came home, he did so as a traitor.

    From Iraq War veteran and journalist Brian Mockenhaupt, author of the award-winning The Living and the Dead, this moving and cinematically descriptive tale shows the personal and tragically fateful side of war fought on home turf. He takes us inside the homes of Gettysburg, where snipers lurked in attics, families cowered in cellars and bullets smashed through the house where Jennie baked her bread. Outside in the dusty streets, panicked soldiers ran for cover and dead men and horses rotted under the July sun.

    Written with the clarity and empathy of a U.S. Army infantryman who served two combat tours, this is an intimate story of the largest, bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil. It is a brutal, heartbreaking tale, told through the experiences of the residents and soldiers caught in the chaos. Mockenhaupt poignantly reminds us why Gettysburg is the one battle that deservedly remains engraved in all of our minds.

    PRAISE FOR THREE DAYS IN GETTYSBURG

    “Three Days in Gettysburg affirms that history is made vivid not through its events—however epic—but through the individuals consigned by fate and circumstance to confront and endure them. The result is a compelling, beautifully researched book that is as enlightening as it is moving.” —Elizabeth Kaye, author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Lifeboat No. 8.

    "Three Days in Gettysburg provides the reader with a taut and refreshing perspective on the 150th anniversary of this epic event. It tells the story of both the soldiers who fought and died there, and also of the non-combatants – the people of Gettysburg who endured the battle and its fetid aftermath.... A vivid picture of what it was like to experience the battle of Gettysburg." —ThinReads

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Sager Group
    Release dateJul 9, 2018
    ISBN9780999633861
    Three Days in Gettysburg: An Intimate Tale of Lost Love and Divided Hearts at the Battle That Defined America
    Author

    Brian Mockenhaupt

    Brian Mockenhaupt is a contributing editor at Outside and is the nonfiction editor at the Journal of Military Experience. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Reader’s Digest, Esquire, Pacific Standard, Backpacker and The New York Times Magazine. He served two tours in Iraq as an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division. Since leaving the U.S. Army in 2005, he has written extensively on military and veteran affairs, reporting from Afghanistan and Iraq, hometowns, and hospitals. He was the winner of the 2013 Michael Kelly Award for “the fearless pursuit and expression of truth,” and a two-time National Magazine Award finalist for feature writing.

    Related to Three Days in Gettysburg

    Related ebooks

    Wars & Military For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Return To Gettysburg

      Apr 26, 2022

      Return To Gettysburg
      11 min read

    • Article

      Memory And The Rosebud

      Mar 26, 2019

      Memory And The Rosebud
      9 min read

    • Article

      Hero’s Welcome

      Dec 15, 2020

      Hero’s Welcome
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Time To Laugh, A Time To Weep

      Jul 1, 2020

      A Time To Laugh, A Time To Weep
      7 min read

    • Article

      Big Fish In A Small Pond

      Jul 28, 2020

      Big Fish In A Small Pond
      4 min read

    • Article

      War at Their Doorstep

      Jan 16, 2024

      War at Their Doorstep
      4 min read

    • Article

      EXTRA ROUNDS Hired Hands

      Oct 4, 2022

      EXTRA ROUNDS Hired Hands
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Never-ending War

      May 1, 2024

      The Never-ending War
      8 min read

    • Article

      On The Road

      Aug 24, 2021

      On The Road
      6 min read

    • Article

      Death Valleys …and Ridges

      Jan 12, 2021

      Death Valleys …and Ridges
      6 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Mar 1, 2019

      Letters
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Place Of Their Own

      Mar 9, 2021

      A Place Of Their Own
      11 min read

    • Article

      Sins Of The Fathers And Mothers

      Mar 4, 2024

      "Oh let me, let me kill them,” one woman cried, a knife in one hand, a rasping file in the other, as she struggled with the soldier trying to restrain her. “They killed my husband. They burned my house and child. Oh, let me through.” It was November

      5 min read

    • Article

      Moral Courage and the Civil War

      Sep 3, 2019

      Moral Courage and the Civil War
      17 min read

    • Article

      Gettysburg: Profiles in Courage

      Jul 1, 2020

      Gettysburg: Profiles in Courage
      4 min read

    • Article

      Shared Quest

      Jan 17, 2023

      Shared Quest
      4 min read

    • Article

      Whistler’s Murder

      Jul 24, 2018

      Whistler’s Murder
      4 min read

    • Article

      Grant’s Vicksburg Game Changer

      Feb 26, 2019

      Grant’s Vicksburg Game Changer
      10 min read

    • Article

      Home Front Heroes Part 2

      Apr 18, 2023

      Home Front Heroes Part 2
      14 min read

    • Article

      Southbound

      Dec 14, 2021

      Southbound
      5 min read

    • Article

      Jersey Boys

      Feb 22, 2022

      Jersey Boys
      10 min read

    • Article

      58 Bodies

      Aug 15, 2023

      58 Bodies
      12 min read

    • Article

      ‘Carnage Infernal’

      Oct 4, 2022

      ‘Carnage Infernal’
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Three Days in Gettysburg

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Three Days in Gettysburg - Brian Mockenhaupt

      Prologue

      Rebels in the Streets

      She had not heard from him for several weeks, and the worry festered. She carried his last letter in her apron pocket, along with a photograph that he had given her, a picture of pride and duty. Johnston Hastings Skelly Jr.—Jack to his friends and family, her Jack—in a straight-backed chair, wearing his Union blues, collar raised to his throat, army cap cocked slightly to the side. The thin mustache and small goatee made him seem even younger than his twenty-two years. He had laid his rifle across his lap and cradled the barrel in the crook of his right arm. How many times she had looked at the picture, wondering if he was safe and longing to see him again, as she told him so often.

      I am always awaiting anxiously for tidings from you. It does me good to get a few words on paper from you, Jennie Wade had written earlier in the year, on Washington’s birthday, February 22. I remember this day two years ago as well as if it was yesterday. I wish I could see you just half as often today as I did that day. I would be satisfied. I wish one more twenty second was over and then it would not be long till you would be home for good.

      She had been just seventeen when Jack left for the war two years earlier, with so many other young men of Gettysburg. Most every family she knew had a husband, son, or brother who had gone to fight. Just a week earlier, her own brother, John, had joined a local cavalry regiment as a bugler and was now off in the South.

      Many had been lost. Frederick Huber, killed at Seven Pines. Craig Wisotskey, killed at Mechanicsville. William Little and his brother David, dead from disease. Nesbit Baugher, dead from seven bullet wounds at the battle of Shiloh. And more had come home terribly damaged. Each time news of a battle trickled into town, families awaited the tally from the ghoulish lottery to find out if their loved ones had been spared. This was life in Gettysburg during the first years of the Civil War: worry and waiting.

      Rumors regularly swept through town that the Rebels were advancing to burn and plunder, and each time people would cluster in the streets, trading scraps of gossip. But by the summer of 1863, with Confederate troops already across the Potomac River and on Union soil, the rumors carried more truth than fearful speculation, and Gettysburg would fast move from home front to battlefield.

      The Union cavalry had arrived in town at the end of June and pushed into the fields to the west. The soldiers brought relief and joy, for the Confederates were close now: from the heights west of town residents could see the twinkle of hundreds of enemy campfires, seven miles away on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

      As Union infantry marched into Gettysburg the next morning, July 1, young women in hooped skirts waved handkerchiefs and handed out cakes and pies. Another group gathered along Washington Street and sang to them as they passed.

      The Union forever,

      Hurrah! boys, hurrah!

      Down with the traitors,

      Up with the stars;

      While we rally round the flag, boys,

      Rally once again,

      Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.

      The soldiers whooped and cheered, and they seemed eager for battle, so confident as they marched toward the crack of rifle fire and the thud of artillery in the fields west of town. From the hills just south of Gettysburg, people could see more Union soldiers approaching in a thick column that stretched back to the horizon like a giant black snake writhing across the hills and fields.

      This would be a phenomenal collision. General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, needed a great victory on Northern soil, which he hoped would bolster the position of Northerners who wanted peace, make President Abraham Lincoln’s plans for continuing the war untenable, and even prompt recognition by Britain and France of the Confederate States of America as a sovereign nation. He had not planned on Gettysburg as the battlefield, but now more than 160,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were converging on this town of 2,400 in southern Pennsylvania, funneling in on ten roads arrayed like spokes on a wagon wheel, with Gettysburg as its hub.

      The townswomen had already been notified that morning to prepare bandages for the wounded who would be pulled from the battlefield, and in the early afternoon a Union rider galloped down Baltimore Street, stopped in front of the Presbyterian Church, and ordered that it be opened for use as a hospital.

      Soon a wounded soldier rode into town from the west on a white horse stained red with blood. The ambulances were close behind. And then, to the great horror of Gettysburg’s residents, came their army, in full retreat. Frothing horse teams pulling cannons, caissons packed with artillery shells, and supply wagons raced down the rutted dirt streets nearly out of control, harnesses clattering, as soldiers whipped the reins.

      Riders urged residents to shelter in their cellars, expecting that either the town would be shelled or the armies would soon be fighting in the streets, house to house. For God’s sake go in the house! a soldier yelled. The Rebels are in the other end of town, and all will be killed!

      The soldiers who had marched so orderly into battle that morning now ran panicked through unfamiliar, narrow streets, darting through alleyways and between houses, trampling the vegetable gardens most people grew beside their homes, losses that would be felt in coming days as food stores dwindled.

      For the past eight hours, they had marched and fought in summer heat wearing uniforms of heavy wool and cotton soaked through with sweat, their bodies drained from the adrenaline and terror of close combat, watching friends die by the dozen. Canteens long dry, heads light from dehydration, they stumbled through the town. Give us water! men shouted. Give us water! Women and children dipped cups into buckets and the soldiers drained the water at a run and tossed back the cups.

      Confederates shot at soldiers as they fled into the town. They brought up artillery pieces and fired shells packed with metal balls, giant shotguns that cut men down several at a time. Fleeing soldiers barged into homes seeking safety. They hid in cellars, attics, and sheds. Families peeked from their

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1