Rebel Guests: A Tale of a Pennsylvania Household Surrounded by Confederate Soldiers: Alicia Ryan, "A Woman for the Times of the Times"

A Woman For the Times of the Times

            The Battle of Gettysburg occurred from July 1st, 1863 - July 3rd, 1863 in Pennsylvania and has long been a battle of great interest to the American imagination. This battle was considered one of the most pivotal battles of the Civil War. Most stories  about the Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg either focus on what the soldiers themselves experienced or, if from a woman's point of view, focus on the loss of family members. More rarely is seen an account written by one who was a bystander in the war, watching it happen from their home, but also someone willing to put themselves at risk to help others. Harriet Hamilton Bayly gives her account of the Battle of Gettysburg as she experienced it. As an inhabitant of the town and a noncombatant, Bayly's account of the battle gives a unique perspective on the war and, particularly, the Battle of Gettysburg. However, not only does Bayly give a unique perspective, her well-written narrative offers more than a surface retelling of the battle. Bayly immerses her reader into her story even as she maintains her humanity as a just, though clearly biased, observer of the world she lives in, while she also manages to reflect her own strength within a culture that still oppresses her and other women.

            Bayly's narrative was told to a family member sometime before she died in late December of 1904 who wrote it down. According to the Gettysburg Compiler, Harriet Bayly was eighty-four years old when she died, which would have made her forty-three at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, having been born on February first in 1820 ("Harriet"  1). Her story is entitled "Rebel Guests: A Tale of a Pennsylvania Household Surrounded by Confederate Soldiers". The letter can be found in the Wisconsin Historical Society Archive in Madison, Wisconsin as SC 2022. The letter was last known to be in possession of a great grand niece of Mrs. Bayly, a Mrs. Maud Elting Telford who lived in Eau Claire, Wisconsin when she allowed the Chippewa Valley Historical Society to make a copy of the letter. The letter has never been published, although another version of the story was submitted by Harriet Bayly in 1880 to the Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, very similar to this letter version.

            Mrs. Harriet Bayly's experience of the Battle of Gettysburg offers the perspectives of those who are often overlooked in war. Her story remains compelling in part because she is a woman whose voice isn't lost to the annals of history. However, Bayly also gives us the chance to see the war and the concerns as an everyday citizen living within the war zone would see it. Many of those farther to the north or northwest never experienced the devastation and destruction that came with the battles fought in the Civil War, but Bayly worries about "the reckless raiders and their foraging expeditions" (Bayly 1), just as the rest of her Gettysburg neighbors worry about this. Mrs. Bayly and her family nursed their soldiers, fed the rebels, and had their animals stolen and consumed as all of their stored food that they couldn't hide quickly enough before the soldiers of either side found them disappeared. While clearly on the side of the Union, Mrs. Bayly shows compassion for the Rebel soldiers even in instances where it was unlikely to be forced. At two a.m. she opened her door and "found a woe begone little 'reb', about seventeen years of age ... fearing to seek shelter ... [and he] remained with the family until the battle was over" (Bayly 7). After finding a frightened teenager on her doorstep, she chooses to take him into her home and hide him until the armies; he does on to become a permanent resident of the town. Harriet Bayly shows a very human kindness and consideration for the scared young man that reveals the complex relationship between the Union and the Confederate forces and the citizens. Mrs. Bayly deftly provides us a brief glimpse into the intricacies of the very human relationship and delicacy necessitated by the Civil War. Yet, Harriet Bayly's sympathy for one young rebel does not stop her from soundly scolding other Confederate soldiers without hesitation when she feels justified.

            Harriet Bayly displays the fire within her as she comments on stragglers and makes her own demands on the battlefield while tending to the wounded and she stretches beyond her traditional role to find autonomy for herself, even if only momentary. The Civil War had a huge impact on American culture, moving American culture from Romanticism towards Realism. Some of that shift can be seen in the pragmatic approach of Harriet Bayly to the wounded soldiers she tries to nurse which she glosses over with little mention of the awful gore and suffering that she must have seen on that battlefield. Her acceptance of the awfulness of the war shows a shift in attitudes that the war necessitated. However, Harriet Bayly takes this opportunity to find a strength within her to do what she believes to be right.  While on the battlefied, tending to the wounded, she "rose up in her wrath" when she "found that these men had none [water] for twenty-four hours" and "said, 'Is it possible that none of you will bring water to these poor fellows" (Bayly 9). Appalled by the lack of care shown to the soldiers, Harriet Bayly demands water and her demands are promptly met as she directs the soldiers where to get water. She also taunts the Confederate soldiers after they tease her when she tells them, "Oh, yes, you boys are well fed, you have been living on the fat of the land for several days ... but why are you not in the line of battle fighting to make your prophecy sure" (Bayly 6). She points out that they've been so busy forcing her to feed them that they haven't been fulfilling their duties on the battlefield. She draws particular attention to the gluttony of the soldiers, while implying the soldiers are lazy without actually saying so. Bayly boldly responds to the soldiers taunts and teasing and even makes demands of the soldiers when she visits the battlefield. According to Christina Ericson, "[s]pirited exchanges with military men were usually initiated by older women and took place with both Union and Confederate troops" (95). Harriet Bayly represents a trend of women who were able to defend their opinions with the military men that interrupted their lives. While Harriet Bayly is not an anomaly among older women at the time in her spirited grasping of autonomy, she gives a voice to these women that we have heard little of in our history books.

            Despite the autonomy that Harriet Bayly displayed, she was also still very much a woman of her times who lived under the rule of her husband within societal expectations. Only consider the contrast between the boldly demanding Mrs. Harriet Bayly of the battlefield and the Mrs. Harriet Bayly celebrating her birthday with "Refreshments ... which consisted of sandwiches, coffee, ice cream, cake, candies, and violet wafers", while her grandchild read her letters and handed her gifts, as reported by the Gettysburg Compiler ("Last Week" 1). Harriet shows up frequently in the society pages, enumerating visits to her sons and events and celebrations she attends. She is a woman who lives her life within the societal expectations of a woman of the 19th century. When she first goes to the battlefield on Thursday she states, "I packed a market basket full of bread and butter and wine, old linen and bandages and pins, for I belonged to a society which prepared such things" (Bayly 8).  Harriet was a member of one of the many women's societies that were cropping up in the 19th century. She exhibits many of the same characteristics of America's well to do farmer's wives. Evidence of this can also be found within her explanation as to why she did not return to the battlefield to tend to the wounded soldiers as she and her niece had already done. Bayly tells her audience, that, despite the fact that they were certain the Union would win, "if the rebels won we felt sure that the tide of battle would sweep back over us...hence my husband would not listen to my proposal to get new supplies and go back to where I had been during the afternoon" (Bayly 10). Bayly's husband would not allow her to return to the battlefield to tend to the soldiers there, despite the fact that the result he was supposedly protecting her from was seen as a highly unlikely contingency. This shows some discomfort with Bayly's activities on the battlefield, the freedom she was able to exercise outside the home. Bayly says her husband "would not listen" to her, not only does he not allow her to return, but he won't even listen to her, showing her subordinate position in the household. Ericson notes, "Going out and ministering to the wounded embodied a certain level of autonomy, as Harriet Hamilton Bayly no doubt realized when her husband forbade her to return to the risky work" (96). Harriet's husband found her autonomy a threat to his patriarchal power in the household. Harriet's reach for autonomy while living in a society that demanded women live by a patriarchal norm allowed her the freedom to be fierce on the battlefield, but reduced her to silence in her own home.

             Harriet Hamilton Bayly's strength of character and her resiliency, even as she's left completely alone with rebel soldiers swarming all over her house as she's forced into cooking for them nonstop during the day, is more than admirable and worthy of being added to the too few women in history whose voices are heard. She proves to be a just observer of the battle of Gettysburg while also showing an everyday woman struggling for autonomy within a system that still regulated women to a subordinate position. She may not have changed the world, but she lived through and survived the Battle of Gettysburg with fierce determination and some heartbreak even though she lost no family members, while also showing the drive that women of the 19th century began to have after experiencing a brief moment of autonomy during the Civil War. Her bravery and resiliency shows the idealistic side of the 19th century that the canonical authors espouse and her deft, yet riveting, way with words captures the imagination, while exposing some of the darker underbelly of being a society woman in the 19th century.

Harriet Hamilton Bayly Narrative

Works Cited

Bayly, Harriet Hamilton. Rebel Guests: A Tale of a Pennsylvania Household Surrounded by Confederate Soldiers. SC 2022, Madison Wisconsin Historical Society Archives.

Ericson, Christina. "The World will Little Note nor Long Remember: Gender Analysis of Civilian Responses to the Battle of Gettysburg." Making and Remaking Pennsylvania's Civil War, edited by William Blair, and William Pencak, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001, pp. 81-102.

"Mrs. Harriet Bayly." Gettysburg Compiler, 28 Dec. 1904, No. 18, p. 1. Access NewspaperARCHIVE.

"Over from Last Week; A Birthday Celebrated." Gettysburg Compiler, 11 Feb. 1896, No. 23, p. 1. Access NewspaperARCHIVE.