The Commanders of Gettysburg: The Lives and Careers of Robert E. Lee and George G. Meade

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Meade entered the Civil War as a brigadier general and first served during the Peninsula Campaign in He was badly wounded at the Battle of Glendale during the Seven Days Battles, but recovered and went on to perform admirably at the Battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg. Only a few days later Meade achieved a major victory at the Battle of Gettysburg, where his army repelled repeated assaults by General Robert E.

Grant as Union general-in-chief in Meade continued to lead the Army of the Potomac in a subordinate role until the end of the war, serving at the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. He graduated four years later, finishing 19th in a class of Meade initially had little desire for a military career, and he resigned from the army in after briefly serving in Massachusetts and Florida.

For the next several years he pursued a civilian career in civil engineering, working for railroads and the U. In he married Margaretta Sergeant, the daughter of prominent politician John Sergeant, and the two eventually had seven children. In Meade reenlisted in the Army and served as a junior officer in the Mexican-American War He spent the s in the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers building lighthouses and breakwaters on the Atlantic coast, and also helped conduct the first geodetic survey of the Great Lakes.

Although only partially recovered, he returned to action during the Second Battle of Bull Run in August He was given command of a division shortly thereafter, and served with distinction at the Battle of Antietam and the Battle of South Mountain during the Maryland Campaign.

Meade was unexpectedly placed in charge of the Union Army of the Potomac in late June after Hooker resigned his post. As a result they agreed to omit Meade from their dispatches. Meade seemed an unlikely general. His habitual personal appearance is quite careless, and it would be rather difficult to make him look well dressed. His sloppy appearance underscored the fact that Meade was no prima donna. He had not sought command of the Army of the Potomac, nor did he engage in the kind of backstabbing often seen among generals.

He was also a fighter, badly wounded in one battle and with plenty of shot horses and hats to testify to his courage. He took delight in a conversation overheard by an aide during a trip to Washington.

George Meade at his headquarters, June George McClellan lost his nerve and retreated from the gates of Richmond. He performed admirably at Antietam when McClellan, once again in charge, managed to push Lee out of Maryland. Hooker had grand plans to finally defeat Lee, but when he put them to work at Chancellorsville it turned into yet another Union defeat. Meade argued with Hooker about going on the offensive, but Hooker opted to retreat.

Desperate for supplies and eager for a victory on Northern soil, Lee then headed north to Pennsylvania.

George Meade

Hooker began to shadow him, but on June 28 a messenger arrived from Washington to relieve him of command and give the army to Meade. The Army of the Potomac had always been buffeted by political currents. Charles Stone spent six months in prison without learning what the charges were against him. But Meade abruptly found himself commanding the army that Lee had manhandled pretty effectively in the past. By the time Meade was ready to attack, Lee had slipped across the river.

Lincoln never did replace Meade, who remained in command of the Army of the Potomac until it was dissolved after the war. His health broken by war wounds, Meade succumbed to pneumonia in at age By that time his reputation had further eroded. He was not flamboyant. Content to do his duty, he believed his virtue would one day be recognized—and he was wrong about that. Toward the end of the war Meade watched angrily as one-time subordinate Philip H.

George Meade Facts

Sheridan grasped for glory and found it, often to the detriment of the Army of the Potomac. Although Grant and Meade got along well enough in the course of the war, during his presidency Grant passed Meade over for advancement, preferring Sherman and Sheridan. There is a statue to Meade standing on Cemetery Ridge, the middle of the Union lines here.

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Neither family, nor military distinction in the Revolution, nor political success as governor of Virginia — could save Major General Henry Lee from the penalties of financial recklessness, aggravated by broken health. The family moved to Alexandria, Virginia, in For an unknown period, Robert attended a school at Eastern View in Fauquier County that was run by the Carters for their children. By he was a student at Alexandria Academy, where he finished his secondary school education no later than He graduated from the academy in , second in his class. Exercising the privilege of a high-ranking graduate, he chose service in the Corps of Engineers, the most prestigious branch of the army.

He was commissioned second lieutenant of engineers on 1 July The two-month furlough awarded graduates enabled Lee to nurse his widowed mother in the last of many illnesses. They were married on 30 June and had seven children. While in Washington he was promoted to first lieutenant on 21 September Louis in the summer of to superintend works protecting the harbor of the city from shifts in the channel of the Mississippi.

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Except for occasional visits to Virginia, Lee remained at St. Louis until October He found the improvement of the Mississippi intellectually stimulating, and it brought him useful experience in cooperating with civil officials. Meanwhile he rose to captain on 7 July Still, for a soldier, greater distinction could be won most readily in combat. With Captain William D.

George G. Meade - HISTORY

Army, as chief engineer of the main army of invasion. Scott, who had first come to know Lee well on the West Point board in , trusted him completely and accorded him the maximum opportunity to display initiative, allowing him to make decisions just short of the key operational ones of an army commander. Lee responded in a way that virtually assured him of later gaining independent command of a field army. The enemy held a strong mountainous defensive position around Jalapa, but Lee discovered a feasible route through high hills around the Mexican left; he persuaded Scott to use it and led the vanguard along the route, providing U.

For this Lee won the brevet rank of major. When the enemy fell back on another strong position in front of Churubusco, Lee again found a feasible route skirting a lava bed known as the Pedregal, to permit another turning of the Mexican defenses. Smith and John Cadwalader in deciding to proceed with the turning attack against the Mexican main body in spite of the arrival of enemy reinforcements that threatened the flank of such a move.

Then he recrossed the dangerous, mazelike Pedregal with a few men by night to secure from Scott enough additional troops to counter the Mexican reinforcements. Again the outcome was swift American victory, at Contreras across the Pedregal and then at the main enemy position of Churubusco, both on 20 August.

In reward, Lee received a brevet as lieutenant colonel. All in all, Lee emerged from the Mexican War a proven combat leader who enjoyed the special confidence of the ranking officer of the U. Arriving back in Washington on 29 June , Lee resumed duties at corps headquarters and on the coast defense board, whose business took him from Boston to Florida and Mobile. His next assignment demonstrated again that the army regarded Lee as an officer above the ordinary; on 27 May he was named superintendent of West Point.

He held this post from 1 September to 31 March , restoring cadet discipline, which he found disturbingly lax, but leaving little permanent mark on the academy. Up to this point, Lee had had little direct contact with the army on the western frontier. While he was superintendent at West Point, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis sought to increase the size of the force patrolling the vast new territories acquired from Mexico.

In response Congress authorized the formation of two new cavalry regiments to accompany the existing two of dragoons and one of mounted riflemen. Lee served with the Second at St. Louis, in the Kansas Territory, and at several posts in Texas before reporting to San Antonio to replace Johnston in command.

Lee did, however, learn at firsthand about commanding troops in the field—in small numbers, to be sure, but with difficult logistics. Stuart of the First Cavalry delivered a message ordering him to report immediately to the War Department. The result was that he hastened with Stuart to Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where the abolitionist John Brown — and his followers were holding off Virginia militia and Maryland volunteers after seizing the fire-engine house of the United States Arsenal. The assault succeeded, and Brown was captured. Lee returned to Texas early the next year, but he was never to escape the shadow that the Harpers Ferry raid had cast over his state.

He was commissioned full colonel and commander of the First Cavalry on 16 March By that time, however, seven southern states had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Lee probably warned Scott, in turn, that if Virginia seceded, he would feel obliged to follow his state and resign his commission.

He opposed secession, disliked slavery, and never himself owned more than about a half dozen slaves whom he emancipated before the Civil War , but he believed he must be loyal to Virginia and could not take up arms against the Commonwealth. But Lee reiterated what he had said to Scott. On 20 April, having learned that Virginia had seceded two days earlier, Lee submitted his resignation. It was a painful decision but one that in its expression of loyalty to home and kindred has commanded sympathy even from those who cannot admire it.

On 21 April Governor John Letcher of Virginia dispatched a messenger offering Lee command of the military and naval forces of the state, with the rank of major general, but the messenger evidently passed Lee while the latter was en route from Arlington to Richmond in response to an earlier invitation from the governor.

On 10 May the Confederate War Department gave Lee command of its forces in Virginia, though it proceeded to send troops and other officers there apparently without regard to him. He also became a confidential military adviser to President Jefferson Davis, who dispatched him to western Virginia in late July to coordinate efforts to recapture the considerable parts of that mountainous region, with its population largely disaffected by secession, that had already been overrun by the Federals.

Supervising rather than commanding, displaying a gentlemanly reluctance to offend independent-minded officers of lower rank, Lee saw his first campaign for the Confederacy end in defeat at the battle of Cheat Mountain or Elkwater on 10—15 September, when Confederate columns failed to cooperate enough to drive the Federals from the mountain. On 31 August Lee had been confirmed as a full general of the Confederate regular army, a rank he had held without formal confirmation since its authorization by the Confederate Congress on 16 May.

Unluckily, Lee arrived at Charleston to command the South Atlantic coast defenses on 7 November, the very day that the U. Following this success, the Federal navy had access to the sheltered waters inside the sea islands and could shift vessels and troops up and down the South Carolina and Georgia coasts more rapidly than Lee could respond.

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