by Diana Loski

The horrors of war have been well chronicled, especially at Gettysburg.  Due to the countless battle reports, journals, letters, and the personal accounts of dozens of civilians, much of the pivotal battle in the summer of 1863 has been recorded for posterity.  Great courage, heroism, barbarity and loss fill up myriad volumes.

There are, however, many acts of kindness that have been preserved through the years, and are less known.

The following are three memorable acts of great kindness that occurred during the three days of conflict.

On July 1, 1863, when the fight began at Gettysburg, most of the people in the town, and certainly the Confederate army, were surprised.  The battle had not been planned to occur there, yet the ten roads that intersected at Gettysburg made the meeting of the two armies inevitable.  While not all combatants had arrived by the first day of battle, those who did engaged in a terrible death grip; many dead littered the battlefield west and north of town.  Many more wounded and dying were borne from the fields and placed in houses, barns, churches, and other edifices.  Women from the town, learning of the need for nurses, hurried to the nearest makeshift hospitals.

One of them was a young mother, a cousin to Nellie Aughinbaugh, known only to history as Roseanne.  She left her young family to lend aid to the wounded placed in a neighbor’s farm just north of town.

It was growing dark when Roseanne entered the upstairs room of the farmhouse, and noticed a young boy, probably twelve or thirteen years of age, who had served as a drummer for a North Carolina regiment.  He was heavily bandaged and partially sedated.  The regimental surgeon, busy with so many others, had given the boy morphine to deaden the pain of his mortal wound.

Roseanne, who had given birth to three children of her own, looked well the part of a mother.  The boy, who whimpered in pain, spoke with difficulty as he saw her.  He called her “Mother”.  He then claimed that he knew she would come, that she would not let him die alone.¹

Roseanne, realizing that the coming darkness hid her true identity, sat on the cot and took the boy in her arms.  She had been told he did not have long to live.  He asked for a kiss, and she obliged.  He then died in her arms, “thinking his own mother was there.”²

The tender care of countless women at Gettysburg cannot be measured.

On the afternoon of July 2, John Rose’s twenty-acre Wheatfield was considered the bloodiest place, yard for yard, in the entire Battle of Gettysburg.  The courage and devotion of one soldier to another resulted in severe consequences.

Private George Washington Whipple, at age 20, was just a year younger than his company commander, Captain Henry V. Fuller.  Both served in the 64th New York Infantry.  Their regiment formed part of John Brooke’s Brigade in the Union Second Corps.  Because an errant commander of another corps disobeyed an order from army commander George Meade, the Wheatfield, in the shadow of the Round Tops, became a hotly contested field of fire.  Ringed by woods to the south, Brooke’s Brigade entered the field.  They were told to advance into the woods and engage with the Confederate troops there.  Brooke’s troops swiftly obeyed, and soon had outpaced the other Union brigades.  George Whipple remembered, “I stopped behind a clump of bushes while loading my gun, and a soldier near me was struck by a bullet in the forehead and he fell against me.”  The sight unnerved the young soldier, but Captain Fuller, who saw the look on Whipple’s face, said calmly, “Never mind, George. Forward.”³

Colonel Brooke, the brigade commander, fell wounded and was carried from the field.  Noticing the advancing Confederates, he realized that his troops needed to fall back or risk certain capture.  They were soon nearly surrounded by three Confederate brigades: Kershaw’s, Semmes’s, and Anderson’s.  With the din of battle making it impossible to hear, and with the trees enclosing them, the men of the 64th New York were not sure if they should stay or retreat.  When a courageous officer rode up to them on horseback and said to “get out of there”, the men began to step back through the trees.  Captain Fuller was hit in the leg and unable to stand, so George and three other soldiers from the company lifted him.  After a few paces, another shot rang through the trees.  Captain Fuller fell forward with a fatal wound.⁴

The other soldiers left him and continued to retreat to avoid capture, but George could not leave his friend.  “As I took him in my arms,” George remembered, “he looked up and said, ‘George, keep up good courage.’”  The young soldier added, “He had a look of resignation on his face.”⁵

Private Whipple continued to aid his dying leader, dragging him behind some rocks for shelter.  Three Confederate soldiers emerged and “demanded my surrender with awful threats.”⁶

George wanted to stay with Captain Fuller until he breathed his last, but the three Confederates would not permit it.  With a bayonet to his back, “with threats to run me through”, Whipple reluctantly left his childhood friend.  As a prisoner of war, Whipple was sent to Belle Isle, near Richmond.  He was exchanged the following year and survived the war.⁷

Captain Fuller’s body was claimed after the battle and returned to New York to his young wife and infant son.

George never regretted staying with Captain Fuller, though he suffered greatly in the prison camp. “He was the best leader and best friend I ever had,” he said.⁸

Fuller would undoubtedly have said the same.  His last admonishment had been to show courage, and George had obeyed, in spite of the inevitable consequence.

On July 3, 1863, multiple thousands of men wearing blue, gray, and butternut engaged in the most climactic episode of the Battle of Gettysburg in Longstreet’s Assault, more commonly known as Pickett’s Charge.  From Seminary Ridge to the west, rushing across the undulating farmland toward Cemetery Ridge to the east, three Confederate divisions attempted to take the Union center.  The charge failed, and thousands on both sides struggled and fell to wounds or death in the interim.

Albert Hamilton crouched behind the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge with the rest of his regiment, the 73rd Pennsylvania.  Deployed near the Angle, the men watched in amazement as the Southern troops marched steadily toward them.  Artillery pummeled the Confederate lines, and men fell, while others pressed onward.  Hamilton noticed a young Virginian in gray draw near to the wall and succeed in scaling it, when he was shot.

Albert remembered that he felt a need to help the young Virginian.  “I lifted him up and gave him a swig of water,” he said, “and then got him on my shoulders and carried him off.”⁹

Taking the wounded soldier behind the lines, he left him and returned to his regiment.  He did not see him again. 

The soldier, A.C. Smith of the 56th Virginia Infantry, part of General Garnett’s brigade, was captured.  Because of Hamilton’s aid, Smith survived the battle – and the war.

Fifty years later, there was a grand reunion at Gettysburg.  On Thursday, July 3, 1913, on the anniversary of Pickett’s Charge, the surviving veterans gathered around the Angle, explaining their experiences with the public.

Albert Hamilton stood near the Angle, explaining to his listeners about rescuing the wounded Confederate.  “They got about to here ,” he said, pointing to the area near the wall, “and then we beat ‘em back.  And it was right here that a Johnnie fell…”¹⁰

Several yards away, an elderly gentleman, wearing his old uniform, was conversing with others about his own adventure: “Here it was !” he said.  “Here’s where we leaped across.  I got a yard beyond that wall…when I got hit and down I went.  I remember a chap in blue coming on a run to me, and giving me a drink of water.  Then he picked me up and carried me off.  Next thing I knew I was in a Yank hospital, and the boy who carried me off was gone.”  He looked wistfully at the stone wall, remembering the moment.  “He’s gone to his reward by this time, I reckon.”¹¹

Through the crowd, their eyes met, and fifty years had not diminished either memory or recognition.  Smith rushed toward Hamilton and exclaimed, “Praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord, it’s you, brother!”  The two veterans embraced one another and wept for joy.¹²  

War usually demonstrates the worst that people can do to one another, but sometimes it also brings out the best in humanity.  We will likely never know all of the good that came from kind men and women to those in the midst of terrible suffering.  From civilians opening their homes to treat sufferers in makeshift hospitals to the soldiers on the field of battle, in the midst of terror and death, there was also kindness shown in the midst of the brutality, in the worst of times.

Sources:  Aughinbaugh, Nellie.  Civilian Accounts File, Adams County Historical Society.  Blake, Walter H.  “The Great Reunion at Gettysburg.”  Newton, Bucks County Pennsylvania (untitled newspaper fragment), July 26, 1913.  Gettysburg 1913 Grand Reunion File, Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter GNMP).  Letter, George W. Whipple to the Cattaraughus Freeman Newspaper, January 9, 1864.  64 th New York File, GNMP.  Whipple, George W.  Pension File, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 

End Notes: 

1.  Aughinbaugh, Civilian Accounts File, ACHS.

2.  Ibid. 

3.  Letter, 64 th NY File, GNMP.

4.  Ibid. 

5.  Ibid. 

6.  Ibid. 

7.  Letter, 64 th NY File, GNMP.  Whipple Pension File, NARA.  

8.  Letter, 64 th NY File, GNMP. 

9.  Blake, p. 21. 

10.  Ibid., p. 22. 

11.  Ibid. 

12.  Ibid, p. 23.