Horsemen in the Sky
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11 July 1863, Saturday, 9:15 P.M. Old Mill Crossing, Gettysburg
The battle outside these walls ended eight days ago, but the battle within these walls continues.
Many accounts of this bloody contest will be written. I suspect that my perspective of the conflict will be different from those of my fellow journalists. I begin with the 19th of June. Our entire family spent that evening on the porch. A crescent moon provided little light so we brought out two lanterns, so Elizabeth could see to mend Thomas Peter's trousers and Angelina and I could read. At 8:30 P.M. we heard loud rumblings from the east. We assumed it to be the Union Cavalry on night maneuvers, but we saw nothing on the road. The sound came from above. Angelina grabbed my hand. We rose and moved to the edge of the porch, our heads tilted toward the clouds, watching the tall, oddly shaped moonlit columns, their twisted and contorted forms passing swiftly overhead. A rumble like the sound of hoofbeats passed over us in a clamorous uproar, gradually moving northwest and ending with a solitary, blistering flash of lightning just beyond Big Round Top. I shrugged off the display as an atmospheric occurrence, an odd mixture of dry summer heat and pressure in the air, producing thunder and lightning without rain as July evenings often do. The following evening, Angelina called to me as she ran toward the front porch. Elizabeth pulled the wagon into the barn. "Sam! Sam!" she shrieked, "It's him! The old man! Just like Mamma saw! A red sky--a crescent moon!" I put my arm around her as she told her story. On their return trip from town, they had made a visit to the Rose house, delivering several items from Fahnestock's store to the elderly Mrs. Rose. While Elizabeth helped Mrs. Rose, Angelina hiked through the woods, as she often does, to the home of young Melanie Timbers, a friend who lives on an adjacent farm. Just before she reached Melanie's house, she saw an old man shuffling along the precipice above the rock known locally as the Devil's Den, near the west side of Big Top where lightning struck the night before. There was a crescent moon that evening and a rosy sky, but at the time, I unfortunately dismissed her account for a more practical explanation. "It was probably just old man Timbers," I said, "shuffling after his turkeys on his gimpy leg. Besides, it is I who have been given the ability to see the Devil. Am I not right?" My spirit was not sensitive that evening. Had it been, I would have connected the two events and read the portent for what it really was. Two weeks have passed and our time is now spent tending to the wounded and dying. Angelina has gone to bed. Sitting alone in the kitchen once again, I partake firsthand of the bitter fruit brought forth by sin. What my spirit was amiss in discerning on those two evenings I now understand: Angelina had not seen Old Man Timbers. She had seen the Devil, directing his henchman, a grim demonic Power who sits upon a throne of Violence and Murder and reaps a bloody harvest from this peaceful market town. Outside, the familiar stillness has only recently begun to return to the pastures and forests of Adams County. Fields and meadows, charred by thousands of cannon salvos, and trampled by the feet of 160 thousand soldiers are now quiet. I consider the glistening bloodline that is being drawn through the heart of our Nation--Manassas, Shiloh, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Vicksburg, and Gettysburg. Such death and destruction! What lies ahead for this torn and bleeding land? The cry of another soldier in pain compels me to place my pen in its well. The house is silent again. I return to my journal having witnessed the departure of yet another soul. I consider John Kline's words from our last meeting: "Verily, the sons of men sink into the grave like raindrops into the sea and are seen no more. As a pitcher is broken at the fountain even before it is filled with water, unexpectedly does death come to man." One broken pitcher, Tommy Alexander, an infantryman from Surry, Virginia, resisted the Gospel's call to the bitter end. An ardent foe of Lincoln and everything Northern, his dying words to me and the young Union amputee beside him were simply, "Us Rebs hate you Yanks more than you hate us." Refusing to surrender his life and hatred to Christ, I fear he cast his soul into the sulfury fires of Hell. What might have been if Tommy, and others like him, had not met such an untimely end? Perhaps the Spirit might have slowly softened his hatred and the grace of God might have visited him later in life. Now the opportunity has passed forever and the door to heaven has been irrevocably shut by the Devil's bloody sword. Such a premature harvest of souls can only be the present fruit of man's stubborn defiance and the selfish ambition of him who is the true Enemy of both man and God. Unde malum: is it not collusion, a seamless union between the Devil and the unrepentant heart of man?
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