Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (137 page)

Major General George Gordon Meade (1815–1872). Put hastily and unexpectedly in command of the Army of the Potomac, Meade preferred to conduct a cautious, defensive campaign against the 1863 Confederate invasion. He was “cownservative and cautious to the last degree, good qualities in a defensive battle, but liable to degenerate into timidity when an aggressive or bold offensive becomes imperative.”
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General Robert Edward Lee (1807–1870) was convinced that only by risking an invasion of the North in 1863 could he save the Confederacy from the defeat he was certain would otherwise occur. “He is a strongly built man, about five-feet-eleven in height, and apparently not more than fifty years of age,” wrote a British admirer. “His hair and beard are nearly white; but his dark brown eyes still shine with all the brightness of youth, and beam with a most pleasing expression. Indeed, his whole face is kindly and benevolent in the highest degree.”
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James Longstreet (1821–1904) was the senior corps commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee regarded him as his “warhorse,” even though Longstreet questioned the wisdom of a Pennsylvania invasion in general and fighting an offensive battle at Gettysburg in particular. In the years after the war, he would be mercilessly (and unjustly) pilloried by Lee’s partisans as the principal bearer of blame for Confederate defeat.
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Major General John Fulton Reynolds (1820–1863), commander of the 1st Corps of the Army of the Potomac. His determination not to leave Pennsylvania open to Lee’s invasion helped trigger the battle at Gettysburg.
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Andrew Gregg Curtin (1817–1894). Republican governor of Pennsylvania, Curtin struggled to rouse the surprisingly sluggish response of his state to the Confederate invasion. “Five counties of our State are invaded and in the hands of rebels, five counties are overrun, and the soil of Pennsylvania is poisoned by the tread of rebel hordes. My God! Can Pennsylvanians sleep when Pennsylvanians are driven from their homes?” After the battle, Curtin authorized David Wills to take oversight of the creation of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg.
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Major General Oliver Otis Howard (1830–1909), commander of the 11th Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Together with Reynolds, Howard was responsible for forcing a fight at Gettysburg, instead of waiting passively at Pipe Creek. “He is the only religious man of high rank that I know of in the army,” wrote Charles Wainwright in his diary, “and, in the little intercourse I have had with him, shewed himself the most polished gentleman I have met.”
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Major General James S. Wadsworth (1807–1864). A wealthy lawyer and committed abolitionist from upstate New York, Wadsworth commanded the first of the Army of the Potomac’s infantry divisions to reach Gettysburg on July 1, 1863.
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Lieutenant General Richard Stoddert Ewell (1817–1872), who inherited command of “Stonewall” Jackson’s corps in the Army of Northern Virginia after Jackson’s death. He won accolades for his perfectly executed capture of Winchester in the first stages of the Gettysburg campaign, but was widely blamed for not pushing his corps to finish the rout of the Union forces on July 1, 1863. After the war, Ewell was supposed to have admitted that it took many mistakes to cause the Confederate loss at Gettysburg, “and I made most of them.”
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Major General Winfield Scott Hancock (1824–1886), commander of the 2nd Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Colorful, profane, and combative, Hancock played the lead role in holding off Confederate attackers on both July 2nd and 3rd.
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Major General Daniel Edgar Sickles (1819–1914) was the prime example of everything that was wrong with the practice of putting politicians in command of troops in the Civil War. Commander of the 3rd Corps, he nearly lost the battle singlehandedly for the Army of the Potomac on July 2nd. “He is, perhaps, loved more sincerely, and hated more heartily, than any man of his day. To serve his friends he will do anything which is tolerated by the license of modern politics: when he resolves upon the overthrow of a political enemy the strongest man finds him formidable.”
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