The Final Reunion
Born and raised in rural Maine, young Lowell Peabody was far removed from the world of cotton fields and grand plantation houses, but thanks to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, the young man became well acquainted with the evils of slavery. Although he shared the views of many well-known Northern Abolitionists, he had no desire to do battle on the field of politics. Rather, he intended to conduct his fight from behind a pulpit, for the idealistic young lad from Maine hoped to become a man of God.
Lowell was only sixteen years old when Confederate forces under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard fired on the Union Garrison stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and ushered in the War Between the States. Despite the fort being shelled for three days, there were no casualties on either side. However, when subsequent battles proved deadlier than the one fought off the coast of South Carolina, Lowell came to the conclusion that it was hard to fight guns and cannons with prayers alone.
In the summer of 1862, word spread quickly through Maine's Bowdoin College: Professor Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had volunteered to fight the Rebels. The school administration tried to persuade the professor to stay and even offered him a leave of absence and a trip to Europe to sway him from his potentially fatal course, but Chamberlain heeded a higher call. Students were faced with the same moral dilemma that had plagued their professor. It was up to each of them to decide whether to follow his countrymen into battle or remain in school, far from the hell of war. Every day brought heated debates between friends and classmates in those hallowed halls of learning.
"If the Southern states want to secede," one student argued, "who are we to tell them they can't? We wanted our independence from Britain, didn't we? As far as the Confederacy is concerned, it's the same principle: the freedom of a people to govern themselves."
"I'm sick of all this talk about states' rights!" his classmate countered. "We're all one country. What if Maine one day decided to leave the Union? Then Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island? What do you think would happen to the United States?"
"This is still our country!" a third young man exclaimed. "We just have eleven fewer states. As I see it, my home is here in Maine. Whether it's ruled by a president in Washington or a governor in Augusta—what's the difference? It's still Maine. After all, does a plow care what horse pulls it?"
"How could independent states hope to stand alone?" asked Lowell's boyhood friend and fellow divinity student. "Only if we remain united can we ever prosper and grow as a nation. Otherwise, we're very likely to fall prey to a more powerful country such as England or France. It's simply a matter of having safety in numbers."
Lowell had listened patiently to his peers' remarks. Now it was his turn to speak.
"I think we're missing the most crucial point here. To me, this war isn't about politics and states' rights. It's about freedom. If I should decide to volunteer, I'll fight to put an end to slavery, not to preserve the Union."
These heated debates abruptly came to an end during the early days of September when Lee's army headed toward Harpers Ferry, fifty miles north of Washington. Many men, young and old, realized that the war might not be confined to Southern soil; it could very well make its way to Washington, the Mid-Atlantic states or even as far as New England.
A week later, Lowell Peabody left Bowdoin College and, like his former rhetoric professor, signed up to serve with the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The untried recruit saw his first action at Antietam. September 17, 1862, was later referred to as the bloodiest day of the Civil War. With heavy fighting at the Cornfield, Burnside's Bridge and the Bloody Lane—more than five thousand men died on that Maryland battlefield, but it was just a prelude to the horrors that were awaiting the Maine regiment. In December 1862 they battled over Marye's Heights in Fredericksburg, and in May 1863 they fought at Chancellorsville.
Then in July 1863, the tide of war changed. In a little farming town in Pennsylvania, the Union's Army of the Potomac under the command of General George Meade met Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in arguably the greatest battle of the war. Led by the former Bowdoin College professor Joshua Chamberlain, the 20th Maine contributed greatly to the vital Union victory by staunchly defending its position on Little Round Top.
It was during that pivotal battle that Lowell Peabody first encountered Leslie Carver of the 15th Alabama Brigade, which was under the command of Colonel William C. Oates. Lowell had taken position behind a fallen tree and was firing down at the Rebels who made one futile assault after another on Little Round Top. Eventually, the 20th Maine came dangerously close to running out of ammunition. In desperation, Colonel Chamberlain made a daring move: he ordered a bayonet charge.
Lowell's hand trembled as he fixed his bayonet to his gun barrel. He had never used one before and had prayed he would never have to. It was one thing to shoot a man with a gun from afar; all he had to do was load the ammunition, aim and pull the trigger. But how could he run a man through with a bayonet? That would require him to stand at close range and skewer a fellow human being like a piece of meat. He would then have to witness the agony on the man's features before he crumbled to the ground.
This is war, he thought despondently. I must do what I am ordered to do.
Lowell stood ready. The command was given, and he raced toward the Confederates making their ascent. The distance between the opposing forces closed rapidly. Suddenly, panic swept over the field. The Rebels had not expected to see their enemy charging down the hill at them with bayonets. Many of them turned and fled.
One brave Alabamian, Leslie Carver, stood his ground. He raised his gun as Lowell approached. The two young men stopped and stood face-to-face, only a yard apart in distance. Both were brave soldiers and men of principle, and neither one enjoyed killing. Their eyes met briefly, and they lowered their weapons. Then Colonel Oates gave the signal for retreat, and a cheer went up through the ranks of the 20th Maine.
* * *
The euphoria that existed after the victory at Gettysburg dimmed as the war dragged on. Lowell had to endure the battle at Sharpsburg, the Wilderness Campaign, Spotsylvania and a bitter defeat at Cold Harbor. By June 1864, few men in the 20th Maine remembered the glory of that bayonet charge on Little Round Top.
General Lee, who had taken a defensive position along Totopotomoy Creek in Hanover County, Virginia, skirmished with Union forces for three days. On June 2 Ulysses S. Grant decided to order a frontal assault. His advancing men were slaughtered; there were seven thousand Union casualties compared to only fifteen hundred for the Confederates. Then, Grant's men dug in, and the two armies remained in their trenches for the next ten days.
"A temporary truce has been declared," a young lieutenant informed Lowell.
"Why?"
"To allow us to move our injured and dead off the field."
What followed during that reprieve from war would stay with Lowell for the rest of his days. Men in gray, who had only hours earlier been trying to kill their counterparts in blue, were greeting the enemy like neighbors or, in some cases, like brothers. Yanks shared their rations with hungry Rebs. Men from opposing sides sat together sharing news of home, showing each other family photographs and putting both politics and enmity aside.
As Lowell turned away from watching a group of Union soldiers grimly check the bodies on the field for signs of life, he saw a young man in Confederate gray smiling at him. He looked vaguely familiar, but that was impossible. Lowell had never been out of Maine until he enlisted in the army.
"You don't remember me, do you?" the young Southerner drawled.
Lowell looked at him with uncertainty.
"No. I can't say that I do."
"We met at Gettysburg—briefly. You were holding a bayonet at the time."
"That was you?"
"One and the same. Of course, I had a little more meat on my bones back then. I haven't had a decent meal in weeks."
"I'm sorry," Lowell said automatically as if it were his fault that rations in the Confederate Army were so hard to come by.
"Don't you be sorry. If it weren't for you, I'd probably be buried in an unmarked grave in Pennsylvania."
"Same goes for me," Lowell said. "You had a gun; you could have shot me."
"Not without ammo. I suppose I might have tried to hit you with the butt end of my rifle, but it's not the same as shootin' a man. A bullet is kind of impersonal. You know what I mean, Yank?"
"Yes, I do."
"But I don't think I could have clubbed you to death. I don't have that kind of killer instinct inside me."
Lowell nodded.
"I was glad your commanding officer sounded a retreat. I dreaded having to be put to the test of using that bayonet."
The two young men spent several hours speaking of home, Maine and Alabama, of parents, friends and plans for the future—if either of them survived the war, that is. The truce, however, was only temporary. Eventually, the soldiers returned to their respective armies, and the war recommenced.
It was almost a year from that day that Lee finally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox and the war—at least for 20th Maine—came to an end.
* * *
Lowell Peabody, now sixty-eight years old, got off the train in Gettysburg, walked down the crowded station platform and joined the over fifty thousand veterans of the battle who were to stay at a specially constructed encampment as honored guests of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
As he passed through the center of town, Lowell noted how much the little farming community had grown, so much so that he barely recognized it. As the Civil War veteran neared the field, however, he saw rising above the rows of white tents two peaks: Big and Little Round Tops. Fifty years earlier the area had been the site of great carnage. Now survivors from both the North and South were greeting each other on the same field where Pickett's glorious charge had ended so disastrously. Lowell looked around at the faces in the crowd and noticed that he was not the only man with tears in his eyes.
As he headed toward his assigned tent, a voice called out to him in a thick Southern drawl.
"Lowell? Lowell Peabody? As I live and breathe, it is you!"
Lowell turned and saw a face he had seen only twice in his life, both times half a century earlier. The former Confederate soldier was a good deal older, as they all were, and he had filled out considerably, but the boyish twinkle in his eye and the ready smile had not changed.
"Leslie Carver. I was hoping I would see you here."
The two former enemies hugged in a bear-like embrace.
"Did you think I would miss this?" the former Rebel soldier asked.
"Well," Lowell observed, "a lot can happen to a man in fifty years."
"Hell," Leslie laughed, "I survived Chickamauga, Manassas, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and Cold Harbor. What was there to kill me back home in Alabama?"
"So you were at Fredericksburg, too?" Lowell asked, ignoring his jokes about invincibility.
"Yeah. Seems we keep runnin' into each other, doesn't it?"
"At least this time we're on the same side."
When the joking came to an end, the two men filled each other in on the past half-century of their lives.
"So, did you finish school when you went back up North?" Leslie asked.
"Yes. But I didn't join the church. I became a doctor instead."
"I thought you wanted to follow in your father's footsteps?"
"After the war, I knew I could never stand in front of a congregation and tell parishioners that there was a loving God in heaven keeping watch over them and that no harm would come to those who believed and led a righteous life. I saw too many good men die in agony during the war, men from both sides who unquestioningly followed God's laws."
"So, you became a doctor? Is that so you could save lives and thus gain absolution for killin' men during the war?"
"Maybe," Lowell admitted with his usual honesty. "What about you? You were going to be a career soldier, weren't you?"
Leslie laughed and replied, "That was before I saw what soldierin' was all about. Don't get me wrong. I admire men like Lee and Jackson, men of honor and principle, but principles and political ideals come with a very high price tag. I saw what clingin' to our 'glorious cause' did to the people of the South. To this day, many of them still haven't recovered."
"What did you do with your life?"
"I decided to build things. I started out small: helping my neighbors repair their homes or rebuild their barns. Then I went to school and studied architecture. I now have offices in Mobile, Huntsville, Montgomery and Birmingham. I guess most men that lived through the war had enough of death and destruction."
The following days were filled with ceremonies, dedications and speeches, culminating with one given by President Woodrow Wilson on the Fourth of July.
After the festivities were over, Lowell and Leslie walked the battlefield, revisiting sites where their comrades had fallen. Then, despite their age, they walked up Little Round Top.
"This is steeper than it looks," Lowell announced, breathing heavily.
"You boys in blue had it easy. You were coming downhill!"
The two men crested the top of the hill, turned and stared in silence across the field, both reliving their own private hell. Names they had forgotten came to mind as did the faces of men they had killed and friends who had fallen in battle.
"What a shame the North and South couldn't have come to an amicable arrangement," Lowell mused. "Why did so many people have to die?"
"You can't change the past," Leslie said. "Let's just hope we've all learned something from that horrible war."
When the fiftieth reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg at last came to an end, Lowell and Leslie bade each other an emotional farewell and headed toward opposite geographical regions of the country. Each man assumed it would be the last time he would ever see the other.
* * *
Another twenty-five years passed. Dr. Lowell Peabody, ninety-three, and his wife, Willa, eighty-nine, looked out over the Gettysburg National Military Park, as Lowell pointed out key battle sites.
"That group of rocks down there is known as Devil's Den. Over there is the Wheatfield and in back of that is the Peach Orchard."
"And here," a voice spoke behind them, "is Little Round Top."
Lowell turned with surprise.
"I'll be damned! You're still alive, huh?"
"You, too, Yank."
Lowell and Leslie, although both suffering the aches and pains of old age, embraced each other warmly.
"Willa," Lowell said, with his wife in one arm and his former enemy in the other, "this is the man whose life I spared."
"What was that you said?" Leslie asked with feigned shock. "You spared my life? What a line of bull—sorry, ma'am. Too scared to use your bayonet is more like it."
"I didn't see you wielding the butt of your rifle either."
"Maybe that's why you and I are still standing here and not buried over there in that cemetery."
"They wouldn't have buried you there anyway, my Rebel friend. Those are Union soldiers in those graves."
Leslie smiled, but the twinkle in his eye was at last growing dim.
"Not many of us here this time," the Alabamian noted sorrowfully.
"Nope." Lowell agreed. "The newspaper calls this 'the last reunion.' I suppose they're right about that. I sincerely doubt any of us will be alive in another twenty-five years, and if by some miracle we are, I don't think we'll be in any condition to hike up this blasted hill."
"It wasn't easy the first time," Leslie said. "We were wearing full uniforms in the heat of July, carrying all that equipment on our backs and charging straight into the Yankee guns. I've got to be honest, Lowell; a part of me was wishing a bullet would put me out of my misery. Of course, I wasn't expecting a bunch of howling madmen comin' down the hill with bayonets drawn."
The two men smiled. For a moment, Lowell saw not a ninety-four-year-old retired architect and millionaire philanthropist, but a nineteen-year-old boy, the half-starved young soldier he had met at Cold Harbor.
"Remember the truce?" Dr. Peabody asked. "That brief respite from battle?"
"You shared your rations with me," Leslie answered, exhibiting none of his usual humor. "I was always grateful to you, for that and for ...."
"You don't have to say it," Lowell said, his throat constricted with tears.
"I was only going to thank you for showing up here again. I'm getting senile in my old age, and I might forget which side I fought on. I need you here to remind me."
Willa and the two men went out to dinner later that evening. Afterward, she returned to her hotel room, and the two old veterans discussed not the long-gone War Between the States but the growing political unrest in Europe.
"I guess the 'War to end all Wars' didn't do the trick," Lowell said.
"I'm afraid the only war that will end all wars is Armageddon," Leslie remarked cynically.
"It's not like you to be so pessimistic."
"It just makes me damned mad when people don't learn from their mistakes."
"The Civil War was our generation's mistake. I guess this generation will have to learn a few hard lessons of its own."
* * *
July 1963. The Cold War is in full force, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, many Americans, fearing nuclear war to be inevitable, are constructing bomb shelters in their basements. There are fifteen thousand U.S. military advisors in Vietnam, an increase from only nine hundred back in 1960. In a few short months, President John F. Kennedy will be assassinated in Dallas and the country, led by his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, will find itself embroiled in a long, unpopular war.
Meanwhile, on a quiet battlefield in Pennsylvania, two friends stand on Little Round Top reminiscing about old times. Eventually, the focus of their conversation switches to the present state of affairs.
"Looks like the damned fools are at it again," Leslie grumbles.
Lowell nods.
"Only this time it's not Germany or Japan; it's some little country in Asia that many Americans have never heard of and wouldn't be able to find on a map."
"And for reasons most of them will never understand," Leslie adds.
"I wonder if there is going to be another ceremony here today," Lowell says, changing the subject.
"Of course, there will be. This is the hundredth anniversary of the worst battle on American soil. They wouldn't pass up an opportunity to celebrate an event as important as that."
There is no humor in Leslie's voice; only biting sarcasm.
"I guess you're right. They'll probably erect another monument or two while they're at it."
"I wish I was still an architect," Leslie muses. "I would love to design my own monument—one to man's colossal stupidity and his unrelenting desire to send his sons off to war."
The two old friends fall silent. There is nothing left for them to say.
Finally, as the morning sun climbs above the horizon, Lowell Peabody of the 20th Maine turns to Leslie Carver of the 15th Alabama and asks, "Will you be here for the next reunion?"
"You know I will," his friend replies. "Unless these damned fools succeed in blowing the planet out from underneath us."
On that ominous note, the two men bid each other goodbye with a ghostly embrace and then vanished into the early morning mist.
The photograph in the upper left corner was taken at the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.
When Salem's family comes to town for its annual reunion, our neighbors pack up and go on vacation.
