CHAPTER SIX

Philadelphia
April 1861

Michaela smiled as Josie finished reading Adam's letter to her.

"I am so excited I will finally get to meet the famous Adam Cartwright! I hope he stays long enough to accompany you to my wedding." Michaela and David planned to wed at the end of May, only two weeks after graduation.

"I expect he will," Josie said. "It would be silly to come all this way just to turn right around and go home." She added Adam's letter to the collection in her desk drawer, crossed back to Michaela, and sat next to her on her bed. The girls were chattering excitedly about the plans for Michaela's wedding reception when their friend Katherine poked her head in the door.

"Oh, there you are, Josie!" she said.

"Yes," Josie said, her voice good-naturedly sarcastic, "how unusual to find me in my own room."

Katherine playfully stuck her tongue out. "I was just downstairs, and I thought I would bring you your newspaper." She handed Josie the evening edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Not good news, I'm afraid." She dropped onto the chair next to Josie and pulled a few pins out of her hair, allowing the flaxen tresses to tumble around her shoulders.

Josie and Michaela peered at the main headline for that evening of April 11, 1861. "Warlike rumors," it pronounced. Josie began reading the story aloud.

"Washington, April 10 – The metropolis has been at fever war-beat to-day, and there has been no end of canards flying about, from the White House to the Capitol—from the Departments to the newspaper offices. Half of our population believe that fighting has actually commenced at Fort Sumter, and nearly all apprehend danger here."

Josie's heart sank as she read the rest of the article. Union troops had been holding onto Fort Sumter off the coast of South Carolina to prevent the Confederacy from seizing it, as they had done with federal forts throughout the seceded states, but the Union troops were running out of supplies. President Lincoln had wanted to resupply the fort even before his inauguration, but the Confederacy made it clear they would consider such a move an act of war. President Lincoln was being cautious—he didn't want the Union to fire the first shots of a war—but the newspaper said the troops at Fort Sumter would run out of food by April 15.

"That's only four days from now!" Michaela cried.

"It gets worse," Katherine said. She'd read the story before bringing the paper upstairs. "President Lincoln has begun fortifying Washington, DC."

Josie blanched. "Oh my God," she whispered. She knew her father would evacuate her mother, but Papa would never leave the city. Her father, the man by whom she measured all others, would deliberately leave himself in harm's way. Dizziness swept over her, and Michaela clasped her hand in support.

"President Lincoln must be really worried about Maryland and Virginia," Michaela posited.

The other two young ladies nodded. Neither Maryland nor Virginia had seceded, but common sense dictated that they must. They were both slave states. Additionally, the lower South had no industry, so the Confederate States of America would need the manufacturing capabilities of the Tredegar Ironworks in Richmond if they were going to survive a war. But this put Washington, DC, in a precarious position. If Maryland and Virginia both seceded, then the Union capital would be surrounded by the Confederacy.

The women sat in silence, Josie's mind racing, and Michaela and Katherine unsure what to say to their Washington-born friend. Their vigil was broken by yet another classmate popping in the door.

"Oh, there you are, Josie!" Lydia exclaimed.

Josie threw her hands in the air in exasperation. "Why is everyone so surprised to find me in my own room?"

"Pardon me!" Lydia huffed, tossing her head. "A telegram just arrived for you, and I thought I would do you the favor of delivering it." She thrust a sheet of paper toward Josie.

"Thank you, Lydia," Michaela said as she rose and accepted the telegram. "Please excuse Josephine. We've had some difficult news."

Lydia halfheartedly patted Josie on the shoulder and flounced out of the room.

Michaela handed Josie the telegram, fervently hoping it did not contain more bad news. Josie read the telegram and fell backward onto the bed in relief.

"It's from Papa!" She thrust the telegram in the air for her friends to read. "He and Mama will arrive on the train from Washington tomorrow."

"Wonderful!" Katherine exclaimed. "That should be a load off your mind."

"A bit!" Josie laughed weakly. "Enough that I can focus on studying again, at least." She sat up and grabbed a textbook she had unceremoniously dropped on the floor that afternoon. "Who wants to read about typhus with me?"

Michaela and Katherine groaned but gathered around Josie and the book.

The following day, Friday, April 12, 1861, Josie slipped away early from her work at the poorhouse to meet her parents' train. As she stepped into the warm spring sunshine and headed toward the train station, she noticed an unusual number of people racing up and down the streets. Philadelphia was a busy port city and people typically bustled about, but something in the spring air was different. It slowly dawned on her that the crowds were much more excited than usual. Businessmen normally walked briskly with their heads down, but today they chattered with one another like nervous birds. She tried to catch snatches of conversations as she passed, but everyone was talking over each other so quickly she could make no sense of any of it. She had a terrible suspicion, however, that she knew what everyone was on about.

When she reached the train station about thirty minutes later, she stopped a porter and asked what the news was.

The young man was shocked she didn't already know. "Why, it's war, miss! President Lincoln tried to resupply Fort Sumter this morning, and the Confederates began firing!"

Josie thanked the young man and sank onto a bench to wait for her parents' train.

Had anyone been paying attention, Josephine Cartwright would have appeared frozen in time. While everyone in the station rushed around, babbling about the war, Josie sat still as a statue.

"How can they be excited?" she thought. "Don't they understand what a war is?"

But of course they didn't. Not in the way she and her medical colleagues did, at least. In her studies, Josie had read descriptions of the gruesome, horrifying wounds men had sustained during the Mexican War thirteen years ago. And amputations, scarring, massive blood loss, and disfigurement were but a fraction of the story. In any war, far more men died of illness than injury. Army camps were perfect breeding grounds for epidemics.

When the train from Washington arrived, Josie rushed across the platform into her father's arms. Tearfully, she told her parents of the war's outbreak. Tears spilled down Hannah's cheeks, and Jacob held his daughter more tightly, burying his face in her soft, dark hair.

"Let's go to our hotel," Jacob said. "We have a lot to talk about."

Over supper that evening, Jacob and Hannah filled Josie in on their plans to continue to Boston, where Hannah would stay with Aunt Rachel.

"But you intend to return to Washington," Josie said to her father as she cut into her lamb chops.

"I'm a surgeon. The Army will need me, and I intend to offer my services."

"I'll come home immediately after graduation. I will run the clinic while you are away."

Jacob and Hannah shared an uncomfortable glance.

"Well, actually, sweetheart," Jacob began. Josie looked up at her father. Her intuition was running high today, and she sensed what was coming. "Your mother and I have decided you will not be returning to Washington while the war is going on."

Josie cocked an eyebrow but stayed cool. "You have, have you?"

Jacob knew he was in for an uphill battle. Josie had just pulled off a singular impression of her Uncle Benjamin when he believed someone had another think coming.

"Yes." Jacob sat straighter in his chair, trying to appear authoritative. "President Lincoln has called for troops to protect the city, and it's no place for a young lady. After graduation, you will join your mother in Boston."

Josie's silverware hit her plate with a clatter. "Boston!" she cried. Diners around them turned to stare.

"Yes." Jacob nodded his head once for emphasis. To his and Hannah's very great surprise, Josie broke out not in a diatribe but in crazed laughter. Her parents gaped at her.

"That's ridiculous!" Josie said when she had recomposed herself enough to speak. "Can you imagine me living in Boston? Worrying about corsets and hairstyles and teas with the ladies' abolition society and trying to think of inane things to say. It's preposterous. Besides, what would I do there?"

"You'll be a doctor, of course," Hannah said. "We thought you might be able to work with Michaela's father."

"Michaela is all the help he needs at a practice his size," Josie countered and turned to her father. "And you can't honestly expect that any of the hospitals would take me on, Papa. Not as a doctor, anyway. And if I end up as merely a nurse, then there was no point in sending me to medical school, was there?"

"I am sure you will be able to find a position," Jacob said.

"I won't. And you know it, Papa. Boston has dozens of doctors. They don't need me." She played for time by dabbing at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. "It's a shame, really," she muttered. "All those physicians in Boston when Adam's forever lamenting in his letters the absolute dearth of doctors out w-" she cut off abruptly, her eyes huge, pupils dilated. "Oh my goodness!" she cried.

"What?" Jacob said.

"That's it!"

"What's it?" Hannah asked.

"Out west!" Josie exclaimed. "Papa! Send me to Nevada! Send me to Uncle Ben! I could be useful out there. Adam said they have only one doctor for the entire span between Virginia City and California."

"Oh, Josie, I don't know." Jacob cast an uncertain look at his wife.

"The West is such a rough place," Hannah added. "I don't know that it would be appropriate for a young lady."

"It was appropriate enough eleven years ago," Josie argued.

"Josephine," Jacob said, "that was different, and you know it. That was a short visit. We could be talking about years here. I don't believe for a second the people who say this war will last only ninety days."

"It's dangerous, Josie," Hannah said, laying her hand gently atop her daughter's.

"Mama, it's Adam. What could be safer? He and Hoss and Little Joe and Uncle Ben, why, any of them would die before they'd let anything happen to me."

"I'd rather not put them in that position," Jacob said.

Josie knew she was losing this argument, but she was not going down without a fight. The thought of living with Aunt Rachel, possibly for years, gave her the courage to openly defy her father for the first time in her life. She stared straight into his dark brown eyes and very calmly said, "You can't stop me."

"Excuse me?" Jacob was dumbfounded.

"I said you can't stop me," Josie repeated evenly. "Adam will be here for my graduation next month, and you can't stop me from returning to the Ponderosa with him. I am twenty years old, and I have enough money saved up to pay my own passage. If I ask Adam to take me away from this war, he will. I am going to Nevada, and that is the end of it."

Jacob sighed and cast a despairing look at Hannah, who nodded. "All right, Josie," he said, suddenly feeling very tired, "you win. I will wire Ben in the morning to let him know."

Josie was astonished. She had never expected her parents to agree, and now it hit her all at once. Their fellow diners turned around once more as she shrieked and leapt out of her seat to embrace both her parents.

"Thank you!" she whispered in her father's ear as tears of joy streamed down her face. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"