The katydids are singing tonight. I’m at my desk in the garage listening for the “peace of wild things.” I’m here because I don’t know. I’m worried. I’m sad. If it sounds like an election year in the United States, bingo. Lord have mercy.
I used to be able to make jokes from a distance, let my cynicism at the whole thing wash my hands of it. But when a candidate gets shot, I don’t know.
I keep a row of books on my desk in front of me: there’s a few books on writing, a lot on Jesus, a book or two about pirates, and a few books on the Civil War. I’ve been drawn to those lately. Not that I think we will fight another, but I can’t help but think that something back there, like a traumatic childhood memory, is speaking to us, begging to be understood.
And I think about Wesley Culp.
When the fighting stops at night, did the crickets and katydids sing? Or do they get the hell out of town with most civilians who saw what was coming?
Did Wesley Culp hear them on the night of July 1, 1863, in Gettysburg? He’d know. He was from there. That’s why he was going to see his sisters Anne and Julia at their house down in town.
We know Wesley was from Gettysburg, but his own decisions had taken him to Virginia, which meant that when he came back, he was in a Confederate uniform—an invader—or, in his brother William’s words, a traitor.
His unit was stationed not far from Culp’s Hill, named for Wesley’s uncle who had a farm nearby. He’d managed to convince his commanders to give him leave for a few hours. He needed to see his sisters and had an errand in town: he needed to see Jennie Wade.
He could see Cemetery Hill on his left, outlined in the fading blue of the long summer’s daylight. He could hear the battered Union Army digging in with shovels. Just a few hours before, the whole town had been flooded with fleeing blue-clad soldiers, a stampede of blue panic as they fled up to the high ground on the hill.
Did Wesley know his brother wasn’t with the battered Union Army on the hill? William’s unit had been out of commission since the Battle of Winchester back in June. Yes, Wesley’s regiment had fought them there — he’d shot at his own brother, picked them apart.
We know in the hospital in Winchester, after the battle, William found Jack Skelly, an old friend of his and William’s. Jack had been shot in the arm, bad. Given his station, Jack made a desperate move: he gave Wesley a letter for Jennie. Jack and Jennie had been exchanging letters since the war broke out; Jack, Jennie, William, and Wesley, they’d grown up together.
Wesley’s sisters welcomed him in and fed him whatever was left after both armies had been through town taking rations.
He told them about the letter. Why didn’t he let them take it? We know he insisted on delivering it himself. But the Wade’s weren’t home. Their oldest daughter, Georgia Wade McClellan, had just had a baby the week before. Jennie was over at Georgia’s house on Baltimore St., just below Cemetery Hill, squarely between Union and Confederate lines.
Did Wesley’s sisters ask him to stay? Did they beg him? Come home. Perhaps they’d heard the story of the prodigal at church. He could desert. They’d hide him.
We know Wesley refused and went back to his unit on the other side of Culp’s Hill. He said he’d be back in the morning.
We have questions, family stories, and the historical record. They answer some of our questions and give us others to ask, but rather cynically because they probably don’t have answers, history has kept a few just for herself.
We know Wesley Culp was killed in the fighting on July 2nd or 3rd — it’s just as likely he died in fields and forests where he grew up playing. We know he was buried in an unmarked grave, and his sisters never found him, though they looked. We know he was 22 years old.
We know that Jennie Wade was in the kitchen on July 3 when a stray bullet crashed through a window and killed her instantly. She was the only civilian killed in the battle. She was 20 years old.
We know Jack Skelly died in a Confederate Hospital in Winchester nine days later on July 12. He was 21 years old.
We know William Culp survived the war and that he refused to allow his brother’s name to be mentioned in his presence for the rest of his life.
And I sit here thinking about them on a warm July night, 160 years later, as the katydids sing. Lord have mercy.
SOURCES
Bellamy , J. (2013). Brother V: Friend Against Friend: A Story of Family, Friendship, Love, and War [Review of Brother V: Friend Against Friend: A Story of Family, Friendship, Love, and War]. Prologue Mazazine ; The National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2013/spring/gettysburg.pdf
Culp, D. A. (n.d.). Gettysburg Discussion Group ; Gettysburg Magazine. Retrieved July 2024, from http://www.gdg.org/Gettysburg%20Magazine/culpbros.html