The Girls of Gettysburg

Text copyright © 2014 by Bobbi Miller
Map by Tim Wallace. Copyright © 2014 by Holiday House, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
www.holidayhouse.com

ISBN 978-0-8234-3261-5 (ebook)w
ISBN 978-0-8234-3262-2 (ebook)r

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miller, Bobbi.
Girls of Gettysburg / by Bobbi Miller. — First edition.
pages cm

Summary: “Pickett's Charge, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, is the climax of this Civil War adventure, told from the perspective of three girls: a Union loyalist, a free Black, and a girl from Virginia who disguised herself as a boy to fight in the Confederate Army”— Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8234-3163-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863—Juvenile fiction.
2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Participation,
Female—Fiction. [1. Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863—Fiction.
2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Participation,
Female—Fiction. 3. Sex role—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M61234Gi 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013045645

For Karen, who believed in my dreams.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt

On July 3, 1863, twelve thousand Confederate soldiers stood on Seminary Ridge, to the west of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, armed and ready to join the fight. Almost a mile away, at the end of an open field, a copse of trees marked the Union line standing firm on Cemetery Ridge. When the signal was given, the men marched across the field. The line had advanced less than two hundred yards when the Federals sent shell after shell howling into their midst
.

Boom! Boom! Boom!
Shells pummeled the marching men. As one man fell in the front of the line, another stepped up to take his place. Smoke billowed into a curtain of white, thick and heavy as fog, stalking them
.

Still they marched on
.

Boom!
Men fell legless, headless, armless, black with burns and red with blood. Still they marched on across that field
.

When the smoke cleared, more than six thousand men lay dead or dying on the field. For days after the battle, the townspeople of Gettysburg buried the dead and tended the wounded. One Union soldier on burial detail came upon a shocking find: the body of a female Confederate soldier. But everyone knew girls were not strong enough to do any soldiering; they were too weak, too pure, too pious to be around roughhousing boys. That was why girls were not allowed to enlist in the army. So how could this ragtag girl be in the middle of a bloody battlefield? She carried no papers, so he could not identify her; instead, he buried her in an unmarked grave. A Union general noted her presence at the bottom of his report. His words—“one female (private) in rebel uniform”—became her epitaph. Her story remains a mystery
.