I returned to New York after the Gettysburg patients were either sent home or transferred back to their units. Reuniting with Henry and Rachel was bittersweet. I missed them dearly, but of course, it was heartbreaking to share the news of dear Joseph.

I continued to receive letters from David every week like clockwork, but they stopped after two months. I assumed there was just a delay, but a few days turned into a few weeks, and I started panicking, fearing the worst and crying nearly every night.

Until he came home.

I was on my way home from town when I saw him alight from a coach. My heart had never felt so light! I quickened my pace until he saw me, at which point, I ran into his arms.

“I promised I would come home to you,” he whispered as he held me tight.

He then kissed me, and it was not a kiss I ever wanted to end.

He explained that I was right: that the war was ending and that President Lincoln and General Sherman essentially had it under control.

A few months later, William returned home as well. Soon after, David and I were married. Ten years prior, I would have laughed if anyone would have suggested that. But he was so changed. He was tender, gentle, kind, passionate[hehe, you weren’t supposed to know that part]…

After we were married, David asked me if I was happy. Of course I was! We were both sad that Joseph couldn’t be there.

“So what comes next, time traveler?” he asked.

“Wellwe were not part of history.”

He suggested we change that, with a cheeky grin, and then asked what happens after the war. I sigh and tell him about how the president is assassinated and his successor essentially does everything opposite of what Lincoln would have done.

David then comes up with one of the most reckless ideas he had ever had. And I am including going back to war with a serious injury.

“And how do you suppose we do that?”

“Simple,” he shrugged. “You know where he will be and when, and we just persuade him to not go.”

“Oh yeah,” I snort. “So simple. And how do you propose we gain access to the most powerful man in America?”

He stopped to think, and as I imagined the Secret Service swarming the president, I realized that the Secret Service as I knew it in the future had yet to exist. I had a plan.

We went to Washington in early April. As I knew would happen, Lincoln was reelected. Not long after his second inauguration, the fall of Atlanta and the end of the war were announced. The exact date was hazy for me, but we went to the theater every night after the announcement until we ran into President and Mrs. Lincoln.

As the sun was setting, we approached and greeted them. It was way easier than I had expected, but then times were different. David introduced us and remarked that we were there for his address in Gettysburg.

“I remember you, young man,” he said. “And you were the brave young woman acting like a doctor.”

I was surprised he remembered David, let alone me. We hadn’t even said “hello” to one another.

“Mr. President,” I started, “I implore you, please do not attend this theater tonight.”

He was taken aback and momentarily speechless. I took the chance to go further.

“Mr. President, there is an actor named Booth who intends to assassinate you tonight.”

“Which Booth?” Mary asked.

Oh, right. He had brothers.

“John Wilkes Booth.”

“And how do you know this?” the president asked, suspicion growing on his face.

“It will sound crazy,” I said, taking a deep breath, “but the same way I know that you just created the Secret Service and that Napoleon very nearly supported the Confederacy.”

His eyes widened in shock.

“How on Earth could you have known that?”

“Is she a spy?”

“I assure you both,” David interjected, “that she is not a spy. We, meaning my family and I, thought she was insane when she told us the southern states would start seceding.”

He continued on explaining how everything I had told them, as unlikely and insane as it all sounded, was true.

“Mr. President, please,” I pleaded. “In the year two-thousand and twenty-one, you are widely regarded as the greatest president the nation has ever had.”

I explain how his Vice President would give control back to the southern states, thereby allowing them to create a legal system that was close to slavery all over again.

“If I can keep that from happening, I think the future could be brighter than the one I lived.”

In the end, the president agreed not to attend the play that night. Med were dispatched to find Booth on an “anonymous tip,” and he confessed to his plot.

“Now what?” David asked a few nights later.

“I know about as much as you do now,” I smiled. “I am more than happy to live in ignorance of the future, so long as that future is with you.”

He smiled back, took my face in his hands, and kissed me for a very long time.

David was offered a position in the Lincoln administration, but he opted to return home and run for office himself, which surprised everyone.

He became a successful state senator and then a successful governor. I decided to work on an old passion from another life and took up writing, though my stories were not much to the stylistic preferences of 19th century publishers. Though I did make a name for myself playing piano, both solo and as an accompaniment to orchestras and plays.

When he was 45, David ran for President. I and our children were, of course, fully supportive, as was William. Henry and Rachel would have been immensely proud. He won.

Henry had given William half of the earnings on his railroad and telegraph investments, and my brother-in-law made his own career of investing. Then he started a bank.

I mentioned our children. David and I were blessed with two charming boys and a beautiful little girl. Henry was the oldest and had a talent for the arts, not unlike his father, who continued to draw and paint. Oliver had a brilliant mind and followed in David’s footsteps, though he went with a law career before politics. Our youngest, Elizabeth, became a doctor and a poet.

We lived with Henry and Rachel until they passed, both from a bout of what you would know as pneumonia. Then the house was ours, as William was living in New York City.

I watched my beloved husband transform New York and the nation in inspiring ways. The day he died was the worst of my life, but I followed not long after.

My story became somewhat of a family legend: my children, their children, and so on were well aware of my connection to the future. The journal I had written in when I arrived in the 19th century, which contained both what I knew of the time and what my life had been before, has been carefully locked away, treasured by those in Oliver’s direct line. Henry had one son who died of the Spanish Flu before he married. Elizabeth had four children, but she thought it best that the family history stay with the one making history.

The Baldwin House, as it became known, was turned into a museum by Oliver’s children. People came from all over the country to see how two of the country’s most notable presidents lived. David’s paintings of his wife and children were hung throughout the house.

His presidential library was constructed across the street, with a public library built right next to it. That was to honor me, as I had written that libraries were important to me and that I had wanted to be a librarian in my past life.

I had been terrified of being stuck in the past and not being able to get home to the 21st century. But along the way, I found home in the 19th and with a man it turns out I couldn’t live without. It did not take long for me to stop missing the technology I had grown accustomed to. While I did miss my family, I believed they were still happy. I had to believe they even still existed after we changed history.

My former life had been full of depression and anxiety and also love and passion (not that kind, unfortunately). My new life in the past was perfection.

The End.

It was surreal and frightening to witness the coming of a war that I had studied and watched documentaries about. As it was becoming increasingly evident to the Baldwins that I was indeed not making any of it up, they started asking more questions about the future.

By the time summer rolled around, men of all ages were beginning to enlist in and be drafted by the army. Including William and David.

Henry was the only one brave enough to see them off, though the rest of us had said our farewells and offered our best wishes.

I knew community groups, often led by women, would be having fundraisers and collection drives to support the troops, and Rachel and I participated in some.

I wrestled with whether I should do more. Would it affect history? Would it be a bad thing if it did? What could I do?

Joseph had mentioned he wanted to join the army, too. Rachel was concerned he would be too soft on the field and end up getting hurt. I stayed out of the argument, though I did know how he could at least stay healthy, or healthier than his fellow soldiers.

I had offered some advice to William and David that they should make sure to boil all water before drinking it, to take water from upstream to make sure it was cleaner, and to wash their hands with clean water after contact with sick people. I knew illness ran rampant in war camps. In fact, I had done some genealogical research and found a document about a camp around the capitol my 2x or 3x great grandfather had served in where a large portion of their ranks had died from dysentery and other such illnesses. I thought of this as I listened to Rachel and Henry discuss their concerns for not only Joseph enlisting but also the others.

The doctors during the war couldn’t even pass the MCAT in the 21st century. I had greater understanding about the spread of disease than they did. I knew leeching was useless and that you had to keep instruments clean to help avoid infection.

That night, as Rachel lost her cool and all but begged her youngest son not to go to war, I decided there was something I could do. The next day, I paid a visit to Mrs. McIntyre, a woman who lived down the road and whose daughter had just left to serve as a nurse.

It did not take much for me to become a battlefield nurse. I knew how bloody war could be, but I was underprepared for witnessing it. The doctors initially scoffed at my suggestions for cleanliness, but before my first year was up, I had earned their respect. And in time, I did nearly the same work as the doctors. We frequently used barns as field hospitals, and with every battle, I dreaded not only the casualties, but the possibility of seeing a Baldwin on an operating table.

Then one day, a familiar but hoarse voice reached my ears.

“Just a few more steps, Hawkins,” he said.

I looked up from cleaning my tools (not as well as I would have wished we could sanitize them). David’s eyes met mine from across the barn, and I thought I saw looks of confusion and fear flash across this face before he settled on determination to get his injured friend over to where I stood. He helped Hawkins up on the table in front of me.

“Where’s the wound?” I asked.

There was no time for greetings or pleasantries. Before the words left my lips, I found an oozing bullet hole and began helping the young man undress.

“You sure you can do this?” David asked.

“Have you been boiling your water?”

I was already working on cleaning the wound. I had learned early to work quickly; the adrenaline helped.

David stood quietly by, watching me work. Hawkins grimaced and shouted in pain.

“Is there nothing you can do for the pain?” David asked.

“In this century? There seems to be only alcohol.”

Eventually, as I was extracting the bullet from the young man’s leg, the pain got the better of him, and he passed out. I did my best to irrigate the wound and sew him up. David and another soldier carried him over to an empty spot.

When he came back to thank me, I noticed David had a wound on his upper arm. He said it was just a scratch, but I demanded he let me clean it and suture it.

“Should that become infected and kill you, David Baldwin, I would not be able to face your parents.”

With each battle came a seemingly endless parade of injured men, some old, some young enough to be in high school if this were the 21st century. Many were grateful for my lifesaving skills, and yet they rarely listened to me when I told them to rest.

I started getting letters from David, each friendlier and/or more personal than the last. The years of mockery and cruelty from him were being healed by his kind words and support. It seemed as though he was making amends and reaching out to someone who understood the war and its frights. I grew more anxious for him as the war raged on.

Three years into the war, I found myself heading for one of the bloodiest (if not the bloodiest) battles of the war. I was terrified, not only of the violence, but of whether I would be able to handle it. But before I could prepare myself, sounds of war could be heard from the barn we were setting up in.

I was surprised when I saw William on the first day. He was helping some of his men seek care. I quickly cleaned and bandaged a graze on his hand.

I was even more surprised when I later saw Joseph helping a fellow soldier into the barn. He was unwounded and lacking any bit of that youthful, innocent cheer we al loved in him. He only nodded at me before returning to the fight.

I worked around the clock, relying on adrenaline and horrible coffee to keep me going. I no longer have the time or the will to look at the faces of the men before me. Until I hear a Baldwin.

“Take me to the beauty,” David was telling his men.

An amputee patient was just being carried off when two soldiers helped David onto the table.

“I have not the time for a prank,” I told him as I began cleaning my tools.

“It’s not a prank, miss,” one of them men said.

I turned back around as David lost strength and nearly fell off the table. His men helped turn him onto his back, and without his jacket on, I could finally see the wound. Blood spilled from a hole in his abdomen, staining his shirt, and he passed out.

I worked as carefully as I could, worrying about the blood loss. I had had patients die from less severe injuries. But I did my best to push the fear aside. I did not want to have to tell to Henry and Rachel that their son died.

At the end of the battle, David was still unconscious. William got leave to stay beside his brother until he woke, and I did my best to continually provide care, cleaning and otherwise tending to his wound. One of the nurses had approached me with news I didn’t dare do anything with just yet. We had put David’s coat back on him to keep him warm. William had found his personal bag, and among everything inside it were all the letters I had written back to him and a small book filled with sketches, many of them of me.

When he finally awoke, we had to struggle to keep him resting.

But William had to catch up with his unit. So before he left, I sat the two of them down to share what news I had heard from one of the other nurses.

Joseph was among the fallen. I told them that I was going to go back to New York after I was done treating the wounded at that site and that I would share the news directly with Henry and Rachel so they would not have to read about it in a letter from a stranger.

Then I had the honor and privilege of witnessing a great moment in history when President Lincoln visited the battlefield. He even stopped to talk to William and David and to thank me and the other nurses and doctors.

After William had left, I continued to worry about David’s strength and urged him to recover more before heading to catch up with his own unit.

I told him everything I remembered of the end of the war and how this had been a major turning point. I even asked him to return home with me.

“I would love to go home with you,” he said, his voice low and tender. “But I cannot forsake my men.”

He pulled me aside and walked me around the back of the barn where no one could hear.

“I will return to you,” he said.

“You mean home.”

“No, I don’t.”

He took my hands in his.

“I did not always treat you kindly, and for that I cannot apologize enough. But through the years, especially the last few, I have come to see you as the most compassionate, intelligent, and beautiful woman in the world. I admit I do not know how it happened or when, but my heart has become entirely yours, Emma.”

I was speechless. I truly hadn’t seen this coming. But my heart began throbbing.

Could I feel the same?

“I must complete my role in this fight. And when I return to you, I intend to take your hand and never let go. If you will allow me to do so, of course.”

“General Sherman will do fine without you, but–”

He shook his head, cutting me off.

“I will see you when this is over. I promise you, it is not easy to leave your side.”

He raised my left hand to his lips and left a gentle kiss on my ring finger knuckle. My heart and stomach both dropped as he climbed onto a horse and rode off in the direction of his unit.

A Brief Update on the Baldwins and Emma

So we’ve seen how the story has progressed, but how have our characters grown?

For one, Emma is not a little girl anymore!

We’ve seen her grown up and learn the piano and chess. She became a teacher at the girls’ school Mr. Baldwin sent her to. She still knows a lot more than her contemporaries, considering she grew up in a different century. At least her health and hygiene are better than a lot of people’s! She’s also a bit of a romantic, frequently fantasizing about being in love, which she had never had the opportunity to do in her past life. She worries about a future life of idle gossip and domesticity, quietly hoping she can become a writer.

What about everyone else? Well, Lizzy moved on to another family, since Joey – ahem – Joseph is no longer in need of a governess. Maggie is still with the family, though! And you can read more about the Baldwins below the cut!

Henry hasn’t changed much. He’s still the kind, generous, warm-hearted father Emma has wanted for over 30 years. He is getting a little gray, though. He has come to see Emma truly as a daughter and can’t imagine life without her in his family. He wishes there were a way she could truly be a Baldwin, though he knows William is too serious and not gentle enough for her and that David is too aloof and carefree.

Rachel has upped her style game, if you ask me! I think it’s the influence of Emma and her distaste for a lot of 1850s fashion and preference for more tailored looks. She volunteers for a couple charities and has even secretly been attending meetings on women’s suffrage. Emma’s open opinions must have sparked her own curiosities on current affairs!

William is as much like his father as he isn’t. He is rather ambitious, desiring to grown the family fortune, but he isn’t as generous and prefers to save money. He’s highly intelligent and is always reading up on new research. And he’s still as serious as ever, refusing to give anything but his all and demanding perfection of himself. His intense focus on studies and work, however, lead his loved ones to wonder if he will be able to soften enough to find love.

David is proof you cannot judge a book by its cover. His devil-may-care attitude is evident by his more youthful and frivolous style. But under the surface, he is far more intelligent than he appears. He keeps his true self rather hidden, though, and even his family is unaware of how he yearns for love and family. They don’t know about his secret passion for creating art, either. He often acts indifferent, but deep down, he cares about an awful lot.

Last, but not least, we have Joseph. He is like the family’s angel, always kind, always trying to find the good in every situation and person he meets. He’d rather rescue animals than hunt them, not that any of the family is fond of hunting. His compassion lets him see when others are hurting, and he often tries to comfort them. He wishes he were smarter so he could be a doctor, but he doesn’t dwell on even his own shortcomings. He may be the only one who can tell when David is upset. Because of all this, his family cherishes him and often seeks to shield him from not only danger, but also hard decisions and upsetting conversations.

How will the upcoming war affect Emma and the Baldwins?

I stayed in Philadelphia teaching for one more year, returning to New York to visit the Baldwins at Christmas again. After that, in April of 1860, I went to New York to stay.

Mrs. and Mr. Baldwin were thrilled to have me around. William was indifferent, though I could sense I was growing on him. Joey was less shy and had grown into a very sweet, cheerful almost-teenager. There was always so much fuss over the holidays that I had hardly gotten a chance to get to know them better.

David was only slightly less aloof. He could tolerate being in the same room, but if I tried to have more than a two sentence conversation with him, he would quietly get up and leave.

My decision to move to the Baldwin house was not sudden. Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin had invited me to live there with them as soon as it became clear that I couldn’t learn more at the school and started teaching. However, when I returned to Philadelphia in January of 1860, I realized we were on the precipice of civil war.

It was not even a month after I had moved in that I sat down to breakfast with all of the Baldwins but Joey – sorry, no, Joseph (he had demanded we stop using the childish nickname the day he turned 13).

(Unfortunately, you cannot see Mr. Baldwin in this picture, but he is at the head of the table between his wife and William.)

I anxiously made the decision to tell them something they could never believe. Mr. Baldwin and his sons were discussing the voting at the convention in Chicago in which Republicans would select their presidential nominee. I knew what would happen, of course.

“I would like to tell you all about where I came from,” I started, my voice shaking.

They all fell quiet and closed their attention in on me; I had never before spoken of my past, and they were no doubt very curious.

“However, I am afraid you will not believe me.”

With some reassurances, I continued. I told them about how I came from the future and how I knew what would be happening in the coming years, though I kept that vague. They all, David especially, looked at me like I was insane.

“Perhaps we should fetch the doctor, father?” he mused.

“You do not have to believe me today,” I answer, “but I will tell you that the representative from Illinois, Mr. Abraham Lincoln, will win his party’s nomination.”

“You really should not concern yourself with matters you do not understand,” William said. “Politics is a man’s past time.”

I contained myself and did not throw my plate at him.

“Indeed, father. You ought to fetch the doctor. Emma needs to be sent away.”

I did my best to ignore David’s remarks, too.

“Watch. Read the papers. When the result is in, it will be Lincoln. Part of their platform is to prohibit slavery in the territories. If I am wrong, send me away.”

I shot a sharp glare at David as I rose and left the room.

A few days later, I came across David while I was out on a stroll. He was painting something on an easel. I tried to get a closer look, but he sensed my presence and hid the painting.

“I did not expect to see you out here,” I told him. “I did not know you knew how to paint, either.”

“You hardly know anything,” he grumbled, not meeting my eye.

“I trust you saw the newspaper this morning?”

He muttered something too quietly for me to hear.

“You can acknowledge that I was right. It would not improve my opinion of you.”

“You got lucky,” he sneered. “That means nothing. What do you get out of being so ridiculous anyway?”

I sighed.

“I did not get lucky. I had an interest in this time period in American history before I ended up in this century.”

“More of this nonsense?”

“You can believe it or not; I am not making this up.”

“Oh? Then what will happen next week?”

“I do not know the minutia of everything that led up to–”

I stopped myself; I had yet to tell anyone about what was to come, and I had wanted to tell Mr. Baldwin first.

“That led up to what?”

I tried to distract him.

“Oh, so now you believe me!”

“Do not be so pathetic, Emma. Such behaviors do not suit you.”

Rather than stand firm, I used the put-down as an opportunity and pretended to be insulted. I huffed and stomped away.

Back at the house, I found Mr. Baldwin in his study.

“Mr. Baldwin, may I enter?”

“Only if you start calling me Henry, my dear,” he answered, smiling gently.

He was sitting before the fireplace, though it was not lit, and reading the newspaper. He folded it neatly and invited me to join him for a game of chess. I agreed, but somewhere in the middle, I could scarcely contain my anxiety.

I told Henry what I knew: that Lincoln would become president and that the southern states would secede one by one, leading to civil war.

He was silent, contemplative for a long moment.

“You were correct about Mr. Lincoln becoming the party’s nominee,” he began, “but what makes you think there will be war?”

“It is common historical knowledge in the 21st century,” I told him. “Every child learns about it in school.”

“Every child goes to school?”

“Focus, please, Mr. – Henry. This is going to happen.”

“So you say. Ah, check!”

I sighed and removed his knight from the board, announcing check mate.

“Even if you don’t believe me,” I sighed, “consider investing in railroads, particularly the northern lines, and the telegraph.”

With that, I left the room.

I was thankful that no one sent me to an asylum. Those places were dreadful. Perhaps they thought I was creating a story that I would write down.

Weeks turned into months, and as November rolled around, I reminded them that President Lincoln would be president. They would just smile and nod.

Then he was elected.

“Oh, but the southern states would never truly secede,” they would argue.

“South Carolina was first, I believe.”

I had written down everything I could remember about the Civil War as soon as I had paper and a writing instrument in this century. I knew it would be something I would not want to forget.

Before Christmas, I was proven right. Five more joined before they finally believed me. At the end of January, Henry called us all to sit down so I could share everything I knew.

“But we win?” David asked.

“No one wins in war,” I said. “But yes, the Union succeeds, and the southern states return.”

Feeling like uzi