Gettysburg (112 page)

H
ENRY
H
ETH:
A. P. Hill’s division commander retained that position through the war’s end in a career marked by an absence of dash or brilliance. His postwar life was a string of small failures that ended with his death from Bright’s disease in 1899. He finished his memoirs shortly before succumbing, forever enshrining the shoe myth as the cause for the Battle of Gettysburg.

A. P. H
ILL:
Lee’s uneven corps commander remained in unpredictable control of the Third Corps through the siege of Petersburg. He was killed in action on April 2, 1865, trying to rally his forces after a decisive Union breakthrough.

J
OHN
B. H
OOD:
Despite the paralysis of his left hand from his Gettysburg wound, Hood returned to action in time to fight at Chickamauga, where he lost his right leg. He recovered to take part in the Atlanta campaign, during which he assumed command of the Army of Tennessee. He fought this army to pieces and was relieved in December 1864. Hood married in 1868, had several children, and made his living selling insurance. He fell in a Yellow Fever outbreak in 1879.

J
OSEPH
H
OOKER:
Returned to active service to command a corps under Sherman, Hooker resigned in late 1864 after a subordinate was promoted over him. A series of strokes disabled him after the war, though he remained in uniform until his death in 1878.

O
LIVER
O
TIS
H
OWARD:
After commanding a corps and then an army under Sherman, Howard put his abolitionist feelings to use as the first commissioner of the
Freedman’s Bureau. He helped establish Howard University in Washington and ineptly directed a brutal campaign against the Nez Perce in 1877. After retiring from the army, Howard lectured and wrote about his experiences, projecting an image that was often at variance with the facts. He died in 1909.

A
MOS
H
UMISTON:
This otherwise unnoticed Gettysburg fatality would have rested in a grave of unknowns save for the ambrotype of his children found clutched in his hand. Newspapers around the country carried a facsimile of the picture over the caption “Whose Father Was He?” Once identified, his family became wards of the nation and were resettled in the Homestead, a short-lived Gettysburg establishment for war orphans. Like many simple people thrust into notoriety, Humiston’s kin struggled for normalcy, some succeeding, some failing.

H
ENRY
H
UNT:
Meade’s artillery chief never ceased pressing his case for a stronger artillery role in military strategy and hierarchy, straining several friendships in the process. He spent his last years governing the Soldiers’ Home in Washington, where he died in 1889.

D
AVID
I
RELAND:
This unsung Union hero of Culp’s Hill succeeded George Greene after the senior warrior fell wounded in 1863. Ireland led his brigade in the Atlanta campaign until he himself was wounded in combat on May 15, 1864. A microscopic enemy accomplished what the Confederates could not: Ireland died of dysentery on September 10, 1864.

A
LFRED
I
VERSON:
Robert Rodes’ unlucky brigade commander left Lee’s army under a cloud and returned to his native Georgia, where he redeemed himself in a brilliant action against raiding Union cavalry in 1864. After the war, he tended orange groves in Florida until his death, in 1911.

H
ENRY
J
ACOBS:
A teenager during the battle, Jacobs followed in his father’s footsteps to become a reverend and dean of the Lutheran Theological Seminary.

E
DWARD
J
OHNSON:
The commander of the forces that vainly attacked Culp’s Hill directed a division in Lee’s army until his capture at Spotsylvania in 1864. He was imprisoned through the war’s end and died in 1873.

J
OHN
B
EAUCHAMP
J
ONES:
The observant Confederate War Department clerk lived just long enough after the war to publish his diary: its publication and his death both came in 1866.

J
AMES
K
EMPER:
Pickett’s only surviving brigade commander was left behind in the retreat and spent three months imprisoned in Fort Delaware before being exchanged for the Union Commander at the Peach Orchard, Charles Graham. Kemper served the Confederacy in an administrative capacity through the war’s end, entered politics, and became the governor of virginia in 1874. He retired to farming and died in 1895, an invalid due to his Gettysburg wound.

J
UDSON
K
ILPATRICK:
The headstrong cavalry commander ended the war under Sherman, who had specifically requested that the “damned fool” (Sherman’s words) be
assigned to him. After the war, Kilpatrick played politics unsuccessfully and eventually accepted a ministerial appointment to Chile, where he passed away in 1881.

R
OBERT
E. L
EE:
The South’s premier general remained in command of the Army of Northern Virginia until he surrendered it to U. S. Grant at Appomattox in 1865. Grant’s admiration prevented Lee from being tried for treason, though the vengeful U.S. government never restored his citizenship while he lived. Lee became the underpaid president of Washington College in Virginia until death claimed him in 1870. He gathered materials for a projected war history but never found time to begin the book.

J
AMES
L
ONGSTREET:
Lee’s outspoken subordinate retained command of the First Corps, led it brilliantly at Chicamauga and abysmally at Knoxville in late 1863, was badly wounded in the Wilderness (1864), and rejoined the army a few months before Appomattox. His criticism of Lee’s generalship in numerous postwar print articles angered many Southerners and accounts for the scarcity of Longstreet statues. He died in 1904.

G
EORGE
G. M
EADE:
The unwilling commander of the Army of the Potomac remained, increasingly dissatisfied, in that position through Appomattox. After the war, he went where duty called him, though always noting with bitterness the promotion of better-regarded subordinates subordinates over him. He died, still unhappy, in 1872.

J
OHN
S. M
OSBY:
The officer whose advice launched Jeb Stuart on his ride around the Union army continued to direct guerrilla operations in the portion of northern Virginia that became known as Mosby’s Confederacy. After the war, Mosby was a relentless defender of Stuart’s honor and the author of an extensive body of writing on Gettysburg, which obscured as much as it illuminated. Mosby died in 1916.

W
ILLIAM
O
ATES:
Chamberlain’s opposite number on July 2 continued to fight for the Confederacy until a battle wound in 1864 cost him an arm and took him out of active service. He served Alabama after the war, first as a congressman and then as governor, and donned an army uniform once more for the Spanish-American War. One of his few public failures was his inability to convince Gettysburg park commissioners to erect a marker for the 15th Alabama on Little Round Top. Oates died in 1910.

M
ARSENA
P
ATRICK:
Meade’s crusty provost marshal retained his post through the war’s end, though his lenient treatment of Richmond’s citizens led to his being relieved from duty in that city. Fed up with radical Republicans, Patrick turned Democrat and was governing the Soldiers’ Home in Dayton, ohio, when he passed away in 1888.

W
ILLIAM
P
EEL:
A slight wound Peel received at the time of his capture worsened and he died, a prisoner, in late 1863.

W
ILLIAM
N. P
ENDLETON:
Having remained in generally ineffective command of Lee’s artillery through Appomattox, Pendleton after the war returned to his true vocation and ministered to the congregation at Lexington’s Grace Church. His earthly service ended in 1883.

G
EORGE
E. P
ICKETT:
Embittered by the repulse of his division, Pickett submitted a battle report so incendiary in its condemnation of supporting commands that Lee suppressed it. Pickett’s post-Gettysburg career was wobbly, punctuated by his hanging of twenty-four Confederate deserters and by critical defeats at Five Forks and Sailor’s Creek. After the war, he fled to Canada for a while before returning to the States to sell insurance. He died in 1875. His fame as a cavalier of the South was established when his child bride posthumously published his wartime letters, most of which she had either heavily doctored or created out of whole cloth.

T
ILLIE
P
IERCE:
This Gettysburg girl returned to the Weikert farm after the fighting ended and continued to help nurse Union wounded. She married a Harrisburg man in 1871, had three children (two girls and a boy), and died in 1914.

A
LFRED
P
LEASONTON:
His limpid leadership of Meade’s cavalry led to his reassignment to the Department of Missouri, where he performed more credibly. He left the army in 1888, angered by the promotion of some subordinates at his expense. He was plagued by illness until his death in 1897.

W
HITELAW
R
EID:
Active as a reporter to the war’s end, Reid joined the
New York Tribune
in 1868, improved its international coverage, and eventually became editor in chief. He received several government appointments, including the U.S. ambassadorship to England, and helped negotiate America’s peace treaty with Spain. He died in 1912.

G
EORGE
H. S
HARPE:
The founding chief of the Bureau of Military Information remained active in intelligence operations through the war’s end. Afterward he practiced law in Kingston, New York, and served as a U.S. marshal and surveyor of customs. He barely outlived the nineteenth century.

D
ANIEL
E. S
ICKLES:
Gettysburg’s most determined revisionist outlasted most of his notable peers, assuring that his weighted perspective on the battle would gain widest circulation. He stirred up trouble as the U.S. minister to Spain just prior to the war of 1898, returned to Congress for a term, and participated in numerous memorial associations. He died in 1914, more certain than ever that he had won the Battle of Gettysburg.

D
ANIEL
S
KELLY:
A teenager at the time of the battle, Skelly lived well into the twentieth century, finally penning his memoirs of those three July days in 1932.

H
ENRY
W. S
LOCUM:
The stolid, steady officer later commanded a corps and a wing of Sherman’s army, where he took part in the March to the Sea. Defeated by Francis Barlow in an election for the position of New York’s secretary of state, Slocum entered Congress instead and served on the board of the Gettysburg Monument Commissioners. He died in 1894.

J. E. B. S
TUART:
Although Lee never rebuked Stuart for his much-delayed link-up with his army, he neglected to promote the cavalry officer when the opportunity presented itself. Stuart remained in command of Lee’s cavalry corps and was leading his men when he was mortally wounded in action outside Richmond in May 1864.

I
SAAC
T
RIMBLE:
His Gettysburg wound cost him a leg and resulted in his imprisonment until March 1865, when he was exchanged. Trimble was doggedly returning to Lee’s army when he learned of its surrender. He settled in Baltimore, wrote about the Gettysburg campaign, and died in 1888.

G
OUVERNEUR
K. W
ARREN:
Promoted to corps command after Gettysburg, Warren exercised a cautious leadership that smacked of timidity to more aggressive superiors. Relieved of command after Five Forks in 1865, Warren remained in the army and campaigned tirelessly to reclaim his reputation. He did not survive the review of a court of inquiry that essentially exonerated him in 1882.

G
ULIAN
V. W
EIR:
The unlucky battery commander remained in the army and in the 1880s had to contradict the flawed memory of Winfield Hancock regarding the panicked artillery unit he had encountered on July 2. Plagued by a painful skin cancer, Weir committed suicide in 1886.

C
ADMUS
W
ILCOX:
Hill’s brigade commander got a division after Gettysburg and commanded it through Appomattox. He lived after the war in Washington with his widowed sister-in-law. Wilcox died in 1890.

A
MBROSE
W
RIGHT:
The officer who briefly conquered Cemetery Ridge entered the Georgia legislature in late 1863 but returned to the army in time to surrender with Johnston in North Carolina. After the war, he practiced law, edited a newspaper, and was elected to Congress in 1872. He died before he could take office.

KEY: These augmented rosters, in addition to listing the units and commanders engaged at Gettysburg, provide several other types of data. The bracketed numbers following each unit designation represent, first, estimated strength on the battlefield, and second, estimated losses, a combined total of men killed, wounded, missing, and captured. (Losses to command field and staff are not cited separately but are included in corps/division/brigade totals.) The figures are based on the best information available, but where they are especially speculative, they appear in italics. (The principal reference source used for the casualty figures was the 1994 edition of
Regimental Strengths and bosses at Gettysburg
, by John W. Busey and David G. Martin.) The designations in parentheses following officers’ names indicate that an individual was killed (k), wounded (w), or mortally wounded (mw) in the action. Finally, the first name listed is always that of the officer in charge at the beginning of the unit’s combat action. A cross following a name (when there are multiples listed) denotes the officer who was in command when the fighting ended. In a few cases I was unable to determine who ended in charge of the unit and so have not designated anyone.