The Heroes of Gettysburg

Despite the fact that the Civil War began over 150 years ago, it remains one of the most widely discussed topics in America today, with Americans arguing over its causes, reenacting its famous battles, and debating which general was better than others. Americans continue to be fascinated by the Civil War icons who made the difference between victory and defeat in the war's great battles.

Ironically, one of the generals who often escapes the attention of Civil War fans who compile the lists of best generals is the man who won the war’s most famous battle, George G. Meade (1815–1872). In fact, Meade has become a perfect example of how the generals who did not self-promote themselves and write memoirs after the war had their reputations suffer in the ensuing decades. When people think of Appomattox Court House, they think of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Few remember that the commander of the Army of the Potomac at the end of the Civil War was not Grant but Meade.

Meade exemplified modesty and competence, serving as a career United States Army officer and civil engineer who fought with distinction in the eastern theater of the Civil War. During the first half of the war, Meade rose from command of a brigade to command of a division and finally command of the entire Army of the Potomac just days before the Battle of Gettysburg.

Winfield Scott Hancock was an intimidating figure who impressed friends, foes, and fellow generals alike. Known as Hancock the Superb after McClellan described his performance as such during the Battle of Williamsburg in the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, Hancock eventually rose to become the Army of the Potomac’s greatest corps commander. Though his reputation and legacy gradually faded over time, Hancock was one of the North’s foremost war heroes by the end of the war, and he nearly became president in 1880 when he was just barely defeated by a less decorated Civil War veteran, James Garfield.

After the Battle of Chancellorsville, he fortuitously became the new II Corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, just in time to deliver his greatest performance of all. At Gettysburg, Hancock was the commanding general in the field on Day 1, as Meade and the rest of the Union army arrived later that night. On Day 2, Hancock’s men assisted Sickles’ III Corps when Sickles disobeyed orders and moved it forward, creating a gap in the Union lines. And on Day 3, Hancock’s greatest day of the war, he was seriously injured and nearly bled to death while leading his men in their decisive repulse of Pickett’s Charge.

Chamberlain had a respectable Civil War career and life, but he had been largely forgotten in the decades after the Civil War, with the focus on more influential commanding generals and their principal subordinates. Then a remarkable thing happened with the 1974 publication of Michael Sharaa’s The Killer Angels, a Pulitzer Prize winning historical fiction that focuses on the Battle of Gettysburg and its influential generals and leaders. In one fell swoop, Michael Sharaa breathed life back into the reputations of men like John Buford and Joshua Chamberlain, cast as the Union heroes of Day 1 and Day 2 respectively that made victory at Gettysburg possible. In the novel, Chamberlain’s regiment holds the high ground against a series of desperate Confederate charges, and when they ran out of gunpowder, Chamberlain ordered a brave bayonet charge that drove the Confederates in their front from the fight. With that, the Union’s left flank was saved.