What began as a fierce spelling-bee battle ended on a different battlefield -- Gettysburg.

My ancestral relative Clinton Burns captured the story of both battles and his heroic teacher in a letter written years later to his daughter Ruth. The story starts in a one-room schoolhouse in Western Pennsylvania -- northern Greene County, to be exact. It ends with the Medal of Honor, a Fourth of July amputation and a famous speech by Abraham Lincoln.

"Winter, 1862. My next teacher was James Jackson Purman, familiarly known as Jack Purman ... He was a man of city bred manners; his linen immaculate, his shoes polished, and his clothing tailor made. ... Under great provocation he would lose his temper, his cheeks would flush, and the mental turmoil going on within was easily apparent.

"I was now a lad of 11 or 12 years of age and able to make a respectable showing in the numerous spelling matches which were being held. ... I remember on one such occasion of being the innocent cause of a quarrel between Mr. Purman and Mr. Langdon, the teacher of the Cummins school. ...

"Mr. Langdon pronounced the word 'feef' to me, and I spelled it f-e-i-f. He should have called the word 'fef', and I should have spelled it f-e-o-f-f, as it is an old English word pertaining to land tenure. ...

"Mr. Purman was on his feet in a moment. He was angry, his face was flushed, and his words came thick and fast. The word had been mispronounced intentionally, he said -- the contest had been won unfairly, the action was high-handed robbery and other accusations of like motive.

"I thought the men would come to blows, but the sensible men in the audience preserved the peace. Mr. Langdon was not a scholarly man and evidently did not know the true pronunciation of the word..."

And then my uncle described the next phase of Jack Purman's life:

"In response to Mr. Lincoln's call for 300,000 troops issued July 1, 1862, Mr. Purman enlisted in the Army, became First Lt. of Company A, 140th Pennsylvania Volunteers.

"He was in the wheat field at the battle of Gettysburg. When his line was falling back under awful fire, he stopped to carry a wounded comrade under the cover of a great rock that he might be sheltered from the minnie balls whistling about. Dearly did he pay for his act of gallant generosity.

"As he turned to leave, a ball shattered his right limb, but no one was there to carry him to a place of shelter. Presently another ball struck the other limb, inflicting a bad wound. He lay on the battlefield in anguish 36 hours without care. The following night he was carried off and one limb [leg] amputated. He recovered and is today a prominent physician in Washington, D.C. The Congress of the United States awarded him a medal of honor for his gallant conduct on this memorable day."

Jack Purman -- the clean-cut teacher with city-bred manners but a testy temper -- was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism at Gettysburg.

His leg was amputated, ironically, on the Fourth of July. The fallen comrade he stopped to help subsequently died.

And a second irony is that Purman himself, lying helpless on the field for a day and a half, was finally rescued by a Confederate soldier. "I was carried [off] by Lt. Oliver of the 24th Georgia and given a canteen of water and placed under the shade of a tree."

Purman survived, serving his nation as teacher, soldier and physician. He had well schooled Clinton Burns to read, write, spell and compete. But he also showed great compassion for a fallen comrade -- only to be saved himself by a Southern soldier, emblematic of the healing, humanity and unity of purpose which binds together our once-divided nation.

Purman, Lt. Oliver and all who fought and fell at Gettysburg should be remembered and commemorated on the 146th anniversary of that bloody battle, fought July 1-3, 1863.

But better remembered is President Lincoln's own reference a few months later at Gettysburg to that other early-July anniversary, the birth of our nation on July 4, 1776, wrapped in his opening and iconic phrase, "Four score and seven years ago."

But who recalls the final words of his Gettysburg Address that day in 1863?

Thinking about the birth of the nation whose unity these men sacrificed their lives to preserve, Lincoln spoke of "the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ... that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that governments of the people, and for the people, and by the people, shall not perish from the earth."

May we indeed always remember.

First Published: July 1, 2009, 8:00 a.m.