24. The Heroine of Gettysburg

One morning in the awful days of the Civil War the boys in blue and the boys in gray met together for their decisive battle near the little town of Gettysburg, Pa. Hearing that this town was to be the center of the battle, a neighbor ran into a little red-brick cottage and cried, “Jennie, you must remove your folks at once.” “Hush, hush!” she whispered, “there’s a little new-born baby and its mother in the next room, and they cannot be moved whatever happens.” “Why girl, the shells will crash through these brick walls as through paper!” said the man. “No matter, my sister and her babe cannot be moved, and I must stay here with mother to care for them,” replied Jennie, and the neighbor hastened sadly away.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, marched regiment after regiment in turn belonging to both sides, as they passed the little cottage, and Jennie noticed that every soldier’s eye rested eagerly on the windlass of the well in front of the little red-brick cottage, for the July sun shone hot in the sky. “They are thirsty,” said Jennie, as she filled the old oaken bucket from the well, and brought out every dipper and ladle and cup she could find for the soldiers to fill their canteens or to drink as they hurriedly tramped by. “I’m glad I did not go away,” she said; “there is something I can do here to help others.” And so she helped all she could until the troops had passed by for the battle. Later in the day the tide of the battle turned. The boys in gray reached the ridge and captured the town of Gettysburg. Then the boys in blue, on the run, retreated, moaning and groaning as they rushed past the little red-brick house, which now became the very center of the battle. Cannon, like thunder, shook the ground. Bullets, like hailstones, fell around them. Balls crashed through windows and walls as through paper, as the neighbor had said. The space around the well was strewn with the dead and dying. Hungry men begged for bread and the brave girl gave everything she had until she had not a crumb left. Then she said, “I’ll make some bread.” But scarcely were the loaves in the oven before a loud knock was heard at the door, and a soldier-boy stood there pleading, “I’m so hungry. Give me a bit of bread.” It would be three hours before the bread was baked, but biscuit would soon be ready, she thought. She quickly took up the dough and was remixing it to make biscuits, when whizz! a rifle-ball crashed through the open door, striking the girl in the breast, and she fell to the floor dead!

That night they buried Jennie Wade, with the dough still in her hands—buried her as thousands were buried, on the field of Gettysburg, without ceremony. Should you visit her grave in the little cemetery there, on her tombstone you would see these words: “Jennie Wade, died aged nineteen. She hath done what she could!”