The Mississippi Boys

A Novel of the Civil War

Summer wheat, heavy with grain, waved in the July wind, and when touched by the afternoon sun, cast a golden glow on the rocks of Cemetery Ridge. Jonathan stood with his countrymen, rifle drawn, wiping sweat from his eyes with the sleeve of a ragged Confederate uniform. Then the nod, Longstreet to Pickett, whose men charged screaming the blood-curdling Rebel yell. Brave soldiers, strength pressed to the breach, fell like autumn leaves. Blood ran freely down the hill. Gettysburg was a trough. Jonathan could see with horrifying clarity from the hillside that Kemper, Armistead, and Semmes were dead. Garnett, already wounded in the leg, gallantly rode his horse in the charge facing certain death, and it was so. Jonathan reached the crest of the hill, slashing Union soldiers with every move, the grotesqueness of the hour searing his consciousness. He took a saber slash through the leg, grabbed the rogue Yank, and pulled him from his horse. With his bowie knife, he put an end to the savagery. But Jonathan was a savage himself. Both countries had gone mad and, in madness, had taken along every southern gentleman.