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lengthening shadows along the slopes of Culp’s Hill.

Lizzie
Chapter 5
Not long after my picnic with Rosanna, there occurred a battle worthy of the name of war near a little river in Virginia called Bull Run Creek. The news of a Confederate victory reached Gettysburg a few days later. We read that hundreds of people had taken picnic lunches and ridden out from Washington to watch the battle from nearby fields and hills. When the Union army retreated, the picnickers found themselves amid the chaos.
“What did they expect to see?” Mama said, shaking the newspaper in disbelief. “Gentlemen dueling? A log-rolling contest at a county fair?”
I tried to imagine eating a cold beef sandwich while watching men kill each other, or being trapped on a road jammed with artillery, crazed horses, and fleeing soldiers covered in blood and dirt.
“That couldn’t happen here, could it?” I asked Mama.
“Of course not. We have more sense than most city folk,” she said.
Our Pennsylvania volunteers had not been in the battle. But the newspaper reported that over eight hundred men had been killed. And yet the battle had settled nothing. The war was not over; it was just beginning.
I thought of Rosanna. What would she say about the war now that there had been a real battle?
That very week we received our first letter from Luke and Papa. Mama cried softly as she read it, then without a word handed it to me.
24 July, camp on Carrol Hill nr. Baltimore
Dear Mama,
I had to go to war, I hope someday you will understand. Papa was angry and said think of your poor mother. I do every day but still I am staying here. Im sorry.
I am not the only boy in the company. There is Henry Phelps too, a good fellow. Wilson Nailor is 16 but they let him enlist. He put a paper with the number “18” in his shoe and when they asked “Are you over 18” he could say yes without lying. He gets to carry a rifle.
I’m learning the bugle. We drill daily. I’m learning reveille (wake up) and drill call, tattoo and taps, and retreat (which we will never need!). Capt. McPherson says buglers are needed in the cavalry because the drum cant be heard over the horses feet. But I dont want to leave this company. So Henry is teaching me to drum. He will march at one end and me at the other.
We were not at Bull Run but if we had been our side would have won it.
Your loyal son Luke
P.S. to Lizzie, I am sorry for leaving you the work but I know you can do it better than me.
Luke’s apology made me regret our quarrel and wish I’d been able to tell him good-bye. Papa had written too, but his letter was shorter, not counting the instructions for the shop and the reminder for me to help Mama after school.
Dearest Mary,
I have little to say except how much I miss you. The daily drills are pulling this diverse company of volunteers into a real fighting unit. We have been mustered into the regular army for 3 years or the war’s length. Thus far, however, war is more tedious than dangerous. The rebels were simply lucky at Bull Run, and I truly doubt that it will last more than a year, so have no fears for me.
Your loving husband, Albert
The loss at Bull Run and what it meant for the Union was the topic of conversation all over town. Would Lincoln choose a new commanding general? Would the Confederates strike at our capital, Washington? On Wednesday I went with Mama, Rosanna, and Margaret to Christ Lutheran Church to hear a woman from New York who came to help the town organize a Ladies Aid Society. She stirred up the church full of ladies like a preacher calling us to a great cause. While she spoke, my eyes roamed the church interior, following the tall pillars and the graceful arches that met overhead in a point. In the stained-glass windows and the plaques on the walls I read the names of people who had died years before. It was strange, I thought, to be in a church preparing for war, not worshipping God.
“An excellent project for the young ladies is the housewife,”