After the first death, there is no other.
—Dylan Thomas
What a monstrous thing they had gotten themselves into. From the first few shots out on the road to Cashtown, to the almost casual popping of carbines, to the nearly steady roll of volleys just in the forenoon, to the final destruction of the Federal line by evening, the first day at Gettysburg was like some immense tornado, drawing men and horses and weaponry from miles about into the vortex, then spitting out broken weapons, broken horses, broken men in a giant debris cloud that others had to clean up.
At least one of the Confederate officers who broke Lee’s intentions not to bring on a general engagement, would write later that he had gotten clearance from a superior, in spite of fresh intelligence that the Federals were near, to march into Gettysburg for, of all things, shoes.1 Even if there had been shoes—or the fictional “shoe factory” that buffs continue to tout as the reason for the great catastrophe—they would turn out to be very expensive footwear indeed. One man’s life is not worth a pair of shoes; over fifty thousand casualties for some sewn leather is obscene.
The battle would stretch through three fiery days in July and burn up nearly one third of the participants as dead, wounded or missing—read “deserted” or “captured” or “liquefied by a shell” for “missing.” Even more frightening is the fact that the armies caused those casualties in even less time, because they did not fight for three days straight. There were lulls in the fighting, such as the night of the first day and into the morning and early afternoon of July 2. As well, there was a lull on the morning of July 3. So, about 51,000 casualties were inflicted in only about 23–24 hours of fighting. Simple division shows us that during the fighting there occurred about 2,217 casualties per hour; which translates into about 36 casualties per minute; which further devolves into one casualty every two seconds.
Try snapping your fingers once every two seconds for a whole day and night. Your fingers will cramp after about an hour or so; you will thirst over that time period, you will get hungry, and you will get tired. You will be in agony after a while, but you can always quit any time you want. But the soldiers did not stop getting killed or struck by the lead and iron. One by one, monotonously they clicked on, and on, and on: healthy boys suddenly wounded, wounded boys suddenly amputees, amputees suffering and dying, and dead boys carried out to be piled up and later buried in grisly graves barely scratched into the surface of the earth. Twenty-four hours. One every two seconds….
The Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee, did not arrive on the battlefield until mid-afternoon. Initially he was perturbed at the sounds of pitched battle coming to him as he rode in from Cashtown. But arriving near the buildings of the Lutheran Theological Seminary, on the ridge upon which that institution dedicated to brotherly love stands, he saw the Federal line before him and to his left virtually in full retreat, collapsing, imploding as it were, into the little village below. His mood must have changed at that moment from anger at having his orders not to engage disobeyed, to satisfaction that his men were obviously winning the battle he had not wanted to fight.
All around him was evidence of the sacrifices his men had made to secure the ridge he now stood on as well as evidence of the tenacity the enemy displayed in attempting to hold it. He may have heard that his men had killed a Federal major general—Reynolds, shot in the back of the neck within sight of the small stone house on the ridge.
“General Lee’s Headquarters” and surrounding battlefield.
One of the best accounts of the fighting that occurred within yards of the Widow Thompson’s House (now the Lee’s Headquarters Museum) comes from Augustus Buell who claimed to be a member of Battery B, 4th U. S. Artillery.2 He noted that the battery formed in a small field just to the west of Mrs. Thompson’s dooryard. The battery had been split—three guns were across the railroad cut just to the north of Mrs. Thompson’s stone house and three were on the south side just west of her dooryard. The half battery near Thompson’s was ordered to swing 90 degrees to its left and form facing south along the Chambersburg Road to fire across the front of the advancing Confederates. This, of course, also exposed their right flank to enemy fire. As the Confederates began to advance, according to Buell,
…for seven or eight minutes ensued probably the most desperate fighting ever waged between artillery and infantry at close range without a particle of cover on either side. They gave us volley after volley in front and flank, and we gave them double canister as fast as we could load…Up and down the line men reeling and falling; splinters flying from wheels and axles where bullets hit; in rear, horses tearing and plunging, mad with wounds or terror; drivers yelling, shells bursting, shot shrieking overhead, howling about our ears or throwing up great clouds of dust where they struck; the musketry crashing on three sides of us; bullets hissing, humming and whistling everywhere; cannon roaring; all crash on crash and peal on peal, smoke, dust splinters, blood, wreck and carnage indescribable; but the brass guns of old B still bellowed and not a man or boy flinched or faltered! Every man’s shirt soaked with sweat and many of them sopped with blood from wounds not severe enough to make such bulldogs “let go”—bareheaded, sleeves rolled up, faces blackened….3
The very spot occupied by the left half of Battery B, 4th U. S. Artillery, is now occupied by the westernmost buildings of Larson’s Motel.
Long known in the Gettysburg area as one of the finer, more intimate motels situated right on the battlefield with a perfect view of the first day’s field, it rests on the site where a campground and cottages once stood. In response to the “vacation boom” which began in the 1950s, the campground was turned into Larson’s Cottage Court and eventually into Larson’s Motel. The current owners continue to upgrade the facility, constructing some luxurious suites and renovating rooms. Perhaps it is because of the changing of the physical status quo of the historic area that some unexplainable events have occurred in the vicinity.
One couple was staying in the westernmost wing of the motel. At night, that section of Gettysburg is relatively quiet. It was right around the anniversary of the battle. (Once again we must question, is it because there are so many more people to witness any random paranormal activity during the anniversary of the battle, or are the remnants of the men who fought here truly more active then, at the anniversary of their own trauma?) The man and his wife were sound asleep. Suddenly there was an explosion that rattled the walls and the mirrors in the room. The noise awakened his wife. He scrambled out of bed, grabbed his robe and sprinted outside to see what had been demolished by the explosion.
To his confusion, there was absolutely nothing outside that could have caused the loud “boom” he and his wife had heard in the room just seconds before. Not only that, there was no one else outside the building investigating the sound. That left him to conclude that he and his wife must have been the only ones to have heard it, and that the noise had been confined to their room alone. As he stood outside and his eyes became adjusted to the darkness, he realized that just before him stood two cannons and a historical marker that the government had placed there over fifty years before, marking the site where Battery B, 4th U. S. Artillery once stood.
The tear in the fabric of time—a “rip” if you will—has been referenced as the cause for visual apparitions that suddenly appear in a house, or some forlorn field, to torment the senses and sensibilities of an innocent observer. Time, like a curtain, slowly closes upon life; but it is a fragile curtain that sometimes parts then heals itself just as quickly. And who is to say that the sounds from a traumatic past event might not be able to sneak through the rip and into another time—ours. It has been recorded that voices and bugles and orders being shouted have been heard out on the darkened fields of battle. Why not regimental volleys or cannon blasts that sent men to their Maker wholesale?
Though Robert E. Lee’s official headquarters tents were erected in an orchard just to the south of the Chambersburg Pike, primary sources indicate that he used the Thompson House at least part of the time. Psychic Karyol Kirkpatrick may have been shown even more information from her own “primary sources.”
On Halloween morning in 1997, Karyol visited Gettysburg to participate in the local radio station’s broadcast from local historic houses. She stayed in the suites across Route 30 from the Thompson House. During the broadcast she mentioned that she had gone outside the night before and kept getting a severe pain in the right side of her neck and the left-back of her head when she stood at one corner of the house. “So there is a spirit out there that has experienced it,” she said. It happened again early that morning when she visited the same corner of the house. Of course, I mentioned to her that she had described perfectly the wound suffered by Major General John F. Reynolds just a few hundred yards from where Karyol stood at the edge of the house and within her eyeshot. Mysteriously—and honestly—she said no, it was not Reynolds’s death that she was feeling, but someone else’s. She also related how she had gone to bed the night before and awakened at about 12:30 a.m. to see a female standing over her. Karyol screamed. She later described the woman as about 5’6”, wearing something pink, with some sort of wrapping on her head or perhaps a nightcap. Karyol got the distinct impression that she might be sleeping in the woman’s bed. From somewhere she got the name “Miller.”
Later that night, from around the closet door in that room, she saw the glow of what she called ectoplasm. She explained her definition of ectoplasm as energy that a spirit draws from humans to create a light form.
She said she felt an energy field between the two houses in the small front yard, calling it “an encampment of spirit energy.” Peter Monahan, the owner of Larson’s confirmed that there was a graveyard there at one time. He has a tombstone from the old cemetery. The name on it, he believed, was Reverend Miller.
Somewhere outside the building Karyol felt that there was “a trough next to a treeline” that she saw as an open mass grave. She felt an insanity and that someone wanted to commit suicide.4
But perhaps the most amazing things she was shown occurred in the Thompson House, the place where Lee was thought to have spent only a small amount of time. It must be remembered that Gettysburg was a huge battle and has historical details that, in some cases, are obscure to the average visitor. If you ever meet someone who claims to know everything about the battle, avoid them. The true historians of this battle will admit that they are still learning about the battle. Karyol is an infrequent visitor to this battlefield. Her knowledge of the great battle is not only limited, but she is not interested in studying it. She is often surprised when, after one of her sessions, I tell her about events at that site that are documented and that coincide with what she is “shown.”
We went inside the Thompson House and toured the facility with Karyol, sometimes moving a little ahead of the rest of the group. (Too many people, she has said, can sometimes be psychically distracting.) She entered the Thompson House kitchen area. The following quotes come verbatim from the tape she made for me.
She asked if “four major generals sat here and developed the tactics for communications at Devil’s Den and the procedures for the next two days.” Not wanting to give her any historical material before she gave us her input, no one answered. She continued with her eyes closed. She felt as though there was “a lot of confusion…it seems as though one of the generals was not happy with what was going to take place; and that he did not agree with it or was not in tune to what possibly Lee was going to do. And there was some conflict.” She continued: “I felt as though Lee went out leaving the other three men to confer. But I felt as though two of the men really didn’t want to take sides. There were two major men in here at a mental conflict….But there were four major generals.”
She obviously meant “major” in the sense that they were important, rather than their rank being “major-general.” Someone on the tape can be heard confirming that Longstreet was definitely against Lee’s plans. Karyol asked, “Who were the other two?” meaning the other generals at the meeting. Since no historian who was there that morning could document Lee holding a council of war at the Thompson House, no one could be certain who else was there. It is documented, however, that Lee, James Longstreet, A. P. Hill and John Bell Hood—all “major” generals with the Army of Northern Virginia—had met near the Seminary and spread some maps out on a fallen tree and there had the controversial discussion on the proper direction of attack upon the south end of the Union line—the fight that would include the battle around Devil’s Den. It is also well known in historian’s circles that Longstreet argued with Lee as far as the tactics for the upcoming battle were concerned. He argued at least five times and nearly to the point of insubordination. Lee did eventually leave the conference upset.
Karyol mentioned that two of the generals refused to take sides. She identified the fact that Lee and Longstreet had a conflict. This she may have picked up from some of the background discussion in the room. But she could not have picked up what she said next, because nowhere on the tape is it mentioned: “The one general did not want to be aggressive in the battle and Lee did. And there was a conflict; Lee got mad and left. But there were four of them conferring at a table over the maps and it seems as though the tall man which I’m going to call Longstreet did not like the position or the activity to which the soldiers were going to be put in; he had scoped out the area seeing and knowing that it was going to be a most difficult attack to under go. And he had had…I hope this is documented…he had had dreams or visions or talked about that he did not see the aggression from next to the creek going up into Devil’s Den working. He felt as though there was not enough artillery or whatever was needed or necessary to take that field.”
Longstreet at Gettysburg, as some historians will say, was putting forth his view on warfare—an essentially modern opinion that emphasized maneuver as opposed to frontal assault. He argued this point to Lee several times during the course of the battle and finally gave up. Lee ignored his most trusted subordinate’s ideas here at Gettysburg. The results were the costly assaults through the Peach Orchard, The Wheatfield, and Devil’s Den until his troops were finally stopped at Little Round Top. The climax of Lee’s immovable, aggressive policy came the next day during Pickett’s Charge. Pickett’s Division was a part of Longstreet’s Corps and so, the supreme irony: The man who was so against frontal assault at Gettysburg was forced to use his own men in carrying out just the orders he had argued against so emotionally.
Manfully, after Pickett’s Charge was repulsed, Robert E. Lee admitted that, “This has been all my fault.”
The ramifications of this controversy—Lee versus Longstreet; aggressive attack versus skillful, swift maneuver—can be nothing less that the difference between defeat or the distinct possibility of victory here at Gettysburg. And with Gettysburg considered by many historians to be the watershed battle of the American Civil War, and the Civil War to have been the watershed war of our nation’s history, then perhaps it is no wonder that the spirit echoes of great men’s emotional turmoil are imbedded deep within the walls of the Widow Thompson’s house.
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