The Gettysburg Letter by Patrick E. Craig

Author:Patrick E. Craig
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-73476-354-6
Publisher: P&J Publishing

II

The Letter - 2013

11

Homecoming — July 2, 2013

Randy Culpepper drove the white 1996 Ford Explorer into the little town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The SUV was covered with road dust that nearly obscured the California license plates. The temperature was in the mid-eighties and the ancient air-conditioning labored to keep up. The occasional showers only added to the humidity and it was like a sauna outside. The streets and roads all around Gettysburg were packed with cars and the village itself was jammed with people.

This was not the first time Randy had been to Gettysburg. He had come with his grandfather several times when he was younger, before the old man passed and Randy left for San Francisco. But this trip was special. It was the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. There was going to be a big celebration, lots of exhibits and re-enactments of the major battles. Randy was a Civil War buff. It was his grandfather’s fault. There had been a special room at his grandfather’s house in Richmond, Virginia, dedicated to his great-great grandfather, Jed Culpepper. Randy loved that room. All of Jed’s civil war equipment was on display. The 1853 Enfield rifled musket hung on the wall beneath the stars and bars flag of the Confederacy. On a stand below the flag was Jed’s Colt 1851 Navy Revolver. When he was a kid, Randy often walked over to Grandpa’s house after school. As he came up the street he could see the old man sitting on the front porch, reading the paper and smoking a cigar.

“Here for a history lesson, son?” Grandpa would ask.

“Yes, Sir!”

Then the two of them went in the house, walked down the hall and entered ‘the room.’ Randy would drop down on the floor—his grandfather sat in the old rocker by the window. The hours flew by as his grandfather told him the stories—the glorious first days of the war when the South could not be beaten and General Lee never left a battlefield in the hands of the enemy, the victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, First and Second Winchester and finally, the battle at Gettysburg.

Gettysburg! His grandfather didn’t like the subject of Gettysburg. It was a sore point for sure.

“It was the turning point of the war, and even though Lee was like a god in the Southern states, it became obvious in later years that the ‘Old Man’ made major tactical blunders in his handling of the battle. Longstreet didn’t want to fight there,” Grandpa would say as he tapped his cigar ash into the flowerpot on the floor next to him.

“On the first day of the battle, Buford, the Union cavalry General, put a defensive line across the Cashtown Pike and kept A.P. Hill and Longstreet out of Gettysburg just long enough for John Reynolds to pack that bloody ridge with two Union corps. When Longstreet saw that the Federals held the good ground on Cemetery Hill, he advised Lee to slide south and east and pick another battlefield—ground of their choosing—in between Meade and Washington, D.

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