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CHAPTER 5 “Summer Is Ended” Assembled beneath the Pennsylvania sky, the soldiers of the 26th North Carolina turned their faces toward the regimental chaplain as he delivered a Sunday sermon in the field. It was their second day at the bivouac near Fayetteville , and those who had come to worship had to clear their minds of the things of war. Rumors had spread through Hill’s Corps as the men rested from the long march. According to camp gossip, 150,000 Yankee troops were waiting for them up near Harrisburg—but they were all inexperienced militia troops. General Hooker’s Army of the Potomac, the real threat to Lee’s army, was said to be lying back, staying close to Washington to protect the Northern capital. There was also good news from the Mississippi Valley: According to Southern newspapers making the rounds in camp, the Confederates at besieged Vicksburg had soundly whipped General Grant’s Yankee army.1 Julius Lineback dismissed the reports as unreliable. Granted, they had entered Pennsylvania unopposed—the only “action” he had heard of so far was when a company of the 26th was dispatched to round up some adventuresome Mississippi soldiers who had slipped into Fayetteville. It was generally accepted, however, among the troops that hard fighting lay ahead. While the march through Pennsylvania still seemed like a lark to some, others had begun to feel a sense of foreboding.2 Lineback listened intently to the sermon. The chaplain was preaching on a passage from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, chapter eight, verse 20: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” The application was obvious: They were surrounded by Pennsylvania’s rich summer harvest of wheat and oats, but soon the summer-like season of peace would end. Among the ranks of gray-clad young soldiers were men who needed to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. After all, only the Lord knew what awaited them down that road through the peaceful-looking countryside. It was an intense sermon, especially moving under the emotional burden of pending battle. As the preacher drove home his point, Lineback glanced at Colonel Burgwyn and was struck by the look on the young commander’s face: Burgwyn appeared deeply affected.3 When the worship service ended and the crowd of soldiers returned to camp routines that Sunday, Harry Burgwyn may have pondered the words that had so moved him. Surely he bore a far greater burden of responsibility than the typical twenty-one-year-old. Hundreds of men depended upon him for leadership even to the point of death. Some, perhaps many, might die in battle within days—Burgwyn could hardly escape that fact. He realized some kind of fight awaited them, and that it would likely be a great and decisive battle. But there were many unanswered questions. How would his men perform ? How well would he lead them? Who would live and who would die? God alone knew the answers. “I hope to be able to do my duty to the best of my ability and leave the result to His infinite wisdom & justice,” he had written his mother. Unlike some men in uniform, he seldom dwelt on his fears in letters home. He was not naive about the potential for death in battle—he had even arranged for a fellow officer to recover his body—but he did seem to have a sense of peace about the possibility. “Whatever may be my own fate,” he had once written his mother, “I hope to be able to feel & believe that all will turn out for the best.” He remained optimistic about his future. Not only did he face bright prospects for promotion and a promising political career back in North Carolina, but now he had another keen interest. Waiting for him back home, family members would attest, was a fiancée.4 Her name was Annie Lane Devereux—“Nan” to those closest to her. She was a nineteen-year-old Southern beauty waiting out the war in Raleigh. The oldest of eight children—six girls and two boys—Nan belonged to a prominent North Carolina family. Her father, John Devereux Jr., was a Yale-trained attorney who owned a sprawling plantation on the Roanoke River and a palatial home on the outskirts of Raleigh. He left both to volunteer for Confederate service, doing duty first as a major and staff officer but eventually accepting appointment as North Carolina...

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