The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (22 page)

Then I notice that not all the Alabama soldiers have surrendered. I notice because one of them has risen from the ground with his sword in both hands. His eyes moving from the flag to me, as if deciding what to strike first, the hated Yankee flag or the boy holding it.

He hesitates.

At that moment exactly, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain appears and aims his pistol at the swordsman’s head with a steady hand.

“Surrender or die,” he suggests.

The man drops the sword and falls to his knees.

“I’ll take the flag,” the colonel says. “See to your brother.”

T
HAT DAY THE BATTLE
ends for us, but not for others.

All that night, as I waited in the surgeon’s tent with Harold, the wounded were carried from the field. Supplies were brought in, meals were cooked or eaten cold, artillery cannons were shifted into new positions. Men sang and cried and waited for the dawn. And when the sun rose it did not seem so bad at first. A few skirmishes, a cannonade or two — it was as if the rebels wanted only to give us a little slap, to remind us they had not been truly beaten.

Then, early that afternoon, the Confederate artillery began to fire in earnest, hurling thousands of explosive shells upon the Union positions, and the earth itself began to shake, as if some mad giant was stamping his feet in rage.

Our tent was more than a mile from the field of battle but the shaking was so bad that water sloshed in the glass and dust rose from the ground. One of the surgeons shouted that it was like an earthquake, but unlike an earthquake it did not stop.

Eventually, of course, it did stop, and the Confederates, thinking the Union artillery had been pounded into oblivion, launched an infantry attack into the very middle of the Union forces. They sent almost thirteen thousand men marching in line across a mile of open ground. And in that bloody mile, pounded by Union artillery and hundreds of Union sharpshooters, half of the Confederates were killed or wounded.

Among those who participated in that doomed assault was Reginald Robertson Crockett, the gentleman spy, the man I knew as Professor Fleabottom. Having bribed his way free of his jailers, paying them with the golden buttons on his coat, he rode hard for the battlefield and soon perished there, as his famous ancestor did at the Alamo, fighting to the last man.

That night Robert E. Lee and his rebel army fled south, and would never again set foot on Northern soil.

A
FEW DAYS AFTER
the battle, while the dead were still being buried in the fields and meadows of Gettysburg, and some of their fallen officers shipped home in boxes, Colonel Chamberlain came to see us. Harold’s wound was healing nicely, so it seemed, and the colonel had sent a telegraph message to Pine Swamp, Maine, and received a reply.

Harold’s age was proved as seventeen.

“You are released from your service as being too young to enlist,” the colonel informed him.

Better words I never heard, although Harold was none too pleased — he wanted to keep on fighting, once his leg had healed.

Before he left us the colonel turned to me and asked why I did it. Why did I stand my ground and hold the flag?

“You’re only a boy and could have run away with no shame,” he says, fixing his cold blue eyes on me. “What made you stand?”

Try as I might, I could not think of an answer that day. And all these years later, I still cannot say why I did not run. Surely I wanted to, but something made me stay.

“If we are still fighting in two years’ time,” the colonel said, “I will send for both of you.”

In two years time the long and terrible war finally came to an end, and we were never again called upon to fight. Instead we wandered north, relying upon each other, working wherever we could, on farms and in small factories, and searching all the while for a medicine show as good as Professor Fleabottom’s.

We never did find one.

Eventually Jebediah Brewster located us in our wanderings and took us in and made us feel at home, and was made our legal guardian. By then the slaves had been freed of their bondage and the Brewster Mines were opened up again, bringing precious stones out of the dirt and rocks.

Mr. Brewster says me and Harold are like tourmaline. We come in dirty but we wash up shiny, and he is proud to call us his kin and make us his heirs. It was him that suggested I write down my true adventures, so if you hate this book put the blame on Jebediah Brewster, not on me.

One more thing I got to say about my big brother, Harold, and that’s what happened after the battle at Gettysburg. At first his wound healed, and for a few weeks it seemed like his leg would be saved. Then one day an infection set in, and it swelled up blue and nearly killed him. Nothing to cure it but the knife and the saw.

My brother lost his leg.

He still feels it sometimes, like the ghost of a limb that used to be. When that happens he will smile and say, “Remember when we were boys? Remember how you saved my life by trying to kill me? Remember how you stood your ground, a small boy of twelve that never owned a pair of shoes? Don’t you worry, little brother, don’t you shed a tear. Wasn’t you that took my leg, it was the war.”

I think in some ways it’s like that for all of us, living with the ghosts of things that used to be, or never were. We’re all of us haunted by yesterday, and we got no choice but to keep marching into our tomorrows.

Keep marching, boys and girls. Keep marching.

A
BOLITIONIST

One who wants to abolish the institution of slavery.

A
BRAHAM
L
INCOLN

The prairie lawyer whose election as president prompted many of the slave-holding states to declare that they were no longer part of the United States of America, and would form a nation of their own. The new Confederacy struck quickly, attacking Fort Sumter a mere thirty-nine days after Lincoln took office. Lincoln’s own view that slavery should not be expanded into the new states — a view that failed to prevent war — eventually evolved into the belief that slavery itself should be abolished. His short speech honoring the dead at Gettysburg is considered to be one of the most powerful and eloquent in the English language. He was assassinated a few days after the Confederacy surrendered.

A
RTILLERY

Cannons and big guns, some with ranges of more than a mile. Arguably the most effective cannon used in the Civil War was the Napoleon, which fired a twelve-pound exploding shell loaded with small iron balls. It was, in effect, a giant sawed-off shotgun.

B
ALLOONS

Large silk surveillance balloons filled with hydrogen gas. The advantage of height enabled pilots to survey the entire battlefield and report to the generals. After a time the opposing army learned how to shoot down the balloons, and their use was discontinued.

B
ASEBALL

Sometimes called “town ball” or “bat ball,” it was encouraged by the army to improve physical conditioning. Teamwork on the field was thought to lead to teamwork on the field of battle. Organized baseball grew in popularity after the soldiers returned from war.

C
ASUALTIES OF THE
C
IVIL
W
AR

More than 600,000 lives were lost, the most in any war fought by American soldiers.

C
ONDUCTORS

Men and women, often of color, who guided slaves to freedom.

C
ONSCRIPTION
L
AW

Required all males between the ages of twenty and forty-five to register for the draft by April 1, 1863. A man could be exempted by paying three hundred dollars or by hiring a substitute to serve in his place.

E
MANCIPATION
P
ROCLAMATION

Lincoln’s executive order on January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in the Confederate states. Slaves in the border states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware would not finally be freed until the war ended.

F
IREARMS

The rifled musket — soon shortened to “rifle” — was the most common firearm of the Civil War. It fired a new lead slug developed by French army Captain Claude Minié. Often called a “minié ball,” this modern half-inch bullet was made to spin by the rifling inside the barrel of the weapon, which greatly improved accuracy. It could be deadly at a range of half a mile, and changed the nature of warfare. The author refers to this new form of ammunition simply as a bullet, for clarity.

F
REDERICK
D
OUGLASS

One of the most amazing men of the 19th century, Douglass secretly taught himself to read while laboring as a slave in Maryland. When he began to teach other slaves to read, fearful slave owners menaced him with clubs and stones. After several attempts, he finally escaped to freedom in 1838, at the age of twenty. Soon after, he was asked to speak at an abolitionist meeting, and his powerful eloquence and intellect made him one of the most celebrated orators and authors of his age. He championed the rights of all humans — whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant — until the day of his death in 1895.

F
UGITIVE
S
LAVE
L
AW

Meant that escaped slaves could be seized and returned to their “owners” without trial, relying only on the word of the owner. There were many instances in which legally freed blacks and some who had been born free were “returned” in this way. The Fugitive Slave Law outraged many Americans, even those not opposed to slavery itself.

G
EEK