Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  19. Alpheus Williams to J. B. Bachelder (November 10, 1865) in Bachelder Papers, 1:214; J. M. Hubbard, “Wadsworth’s Division on Culp’s Hill,” National Tribune (March 15, 1915); Mahood, General Wadsworth, 184.

  20. Wayne E. Motts, “To Gain a Second Star: The Forgotten George S. Greene,” Gettysburg Magazine 3 (July 1990), 65–68; Howard interview with Alexander Kelly (April 15, 1899), in Generals in Bronze, 176; David W. Palmer, “King of the Hill,” America’s Civil War 20 (July 2007), 48–53.

  21. Charles P. Horton to J. B. Bachelder (January 23, 1867), in Bachelder Papers, 1:292–93; In Memoriam: George Sears Greene, Brevet Major-General, United States Volunteers, 1801–1899 (Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon, 1909), 41–42; Frank C. Wilson, “Blunder in Battle of Gettysburg,” Confederate Veteran (September 1912), 417; Richard Eddy, History of the 60th Regiment, New York State Volunteers (Philadelphia: n.p., 1864), 262–63; Jesse H. Jones, “The Breastworks at Culp’s Hill,” in Battles & Leaders, 3:316; John D. Cox, Culp’s Hill: The Attack and Defense of the Union Flank, July 2, 1863 (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), 61; Hess, Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 226–27.

  22. In Memoriam: George Sears Greene, 41; “Reports of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum” (August 23, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):759; John W. Peck, “78th Regiment Infantry” and Henry M. Maguire, “102nd Infantry Regiment,” New York at Gettysburg, 2:629, 634; M. L. Olmsted, “Recitals and Reminiscences—Stories Eminently Worth Telling of Experiences and Adventures in the Great National Struggle,” National Tribune (December 17, 1908); John Richards Boyle, Soldiers True: The Story of the One Hundred and Eleventh Regiment Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1903), 122–23; John M. Archer, “The Mountain Trembled”: Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg (Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 2000), 23, 52–53.

  23. Washington Hands Civil War Notebook, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Randolph H. McKim, “Steuert’s Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg,” SHSP 5 (June 1978), 293; Early, Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early, C.S.A., 274; Olmsted, “Recitals and Reminiscence,” National Tribune (December 17, 1908); George K. Collins, Memoirs of the 149th Regt. N. Y. Vol. Inft. (1891; Hamilton, NY: Edmonston Pubs., 1996), 138.

  24. Olmsted, “Recitals and Reminiscence,” National Tribune (December 17, 1908); John W. Peck, “78th Regiment Infantry,” New York at Gettysburg, 2:629; McKim, “Steuert’s Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg,” 293; Washington Hands Civil War Notebook, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Charles P. Horton to J. B. Bachelder (January 23, 1867), in Bachelder Papers, 1:294; Wilson, “Blunder in Battle of Gettysburg,” 417.

  25. William P. Zollinger, “General George H. Steuert’s Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg,” SHSP 2 (July 1876), 106; “Report of Lieut.-Col. John C. O. Redington, Sixtieth New York Infantry” (July 6, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):862; Edwin Merritt, “60th Regiment of Infantry” (July 2, 1888), in New York at Gettysburg, 1:451; Olmsted, “Recitals and Reminiscence,” National Tribune (December 17, 1908); Fox, “Slocum and His Men: A History of the Twelfth and Twentieth Army Corps,” 180.

  26. Lash, “Duty Well Done”: The History of Edward Baker’s California Regiment, 334; Gottfried, Stopping Pickett, 165; “Colonel Fowler’s Recollections of Gettysburg,” in The History of the Fighting Fourteenth, 138; Motts, “To Gain a Second Star: The Forgotten George S. Greene,” 73; Charles P. Horton to J. B. Bachelder (January 23, 1867) and Rufus R. Dawes to J. B. Bachelder (March 18, 1868), in Bachelder Papers, 1:294–95, 326–27; Charles F. Morse, “The Twelfth Corps at Gettysburg” (March 6, 1917), in Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts: Civil War and Miscellaneous Papers (Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing, 1990), 14:28; “Report of Brig. Gen. George S. Greene” (July 12, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1): 857.

  27. William Worthington Goldsborough, The Maryland Line in the Confederate Army, 1861–1865 (Baltimore: Guggenhiem, Weil & Co. 1900), 104; Charles P. Horton to J. B. Bachelder (January 23, 1867), in Bachelder Papers, 1:295; Jones, “The Breastworks at Culp’s Hill,” in Battles & Leaders, 3:317; Fox, “Slocum and His Men,” 180.

  28. Hutter to J. W. Daniel (no date), in John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia; “Report of Col. Henry A. Morrow, Twenty-fourth Michigan Infantry” (February 22, 1864), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):272; Swallow, “The Second Day at Gettysburg,” Southern Bivouac 4 (January 1886), 498.

  29. De Trobriand, Four Years with the Army of the Potomac, 505.

  CHAPTER TWENTY Let us have no more retreats

  1. Tap, Over Lincoln’s Shoulder, 183; “Army of the Potomac,” Congressional Globe, 38th Congress, first session (March 2, 1864), 898; Meade to Margaretta Meade (March 6 and April 2, 1864), in Life and Letters of George G. Meade, 2:169–73, 177; “Testimony of Major-General George G. Meade” (April 4, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:436; “Gen. Meade and the Battle of Gettysburgh,” New York Times (March 7 and April 4, 1864); Sauers, A Caspian Sea of Ink, 46.

  2. Cleaves, Meade of Gettysburg, 156; Meade, Did General Meade Desire to Retreat at the Battle of Gettysburg?, 23–25; Bache, General George Gordon Meade, 315–16; Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, 451–53; Noah Andre Trudeau, Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 414–15; Stephen W. Sears, Gettysburg (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 343–45; Harry W. Pfanz, Gettysburg: Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 199–200.

  3. John Gibbon, “The Council of War on the Second Day,” in Battles & Leaders, 3:313; Alpheus Williams to H. W. Slocum (December 1863), in Bachelder Papers, 1:69; “Testimony of Major General W. S. Hancock” (March 22, 1864) and “Testimony of Henry J. Hunt” (April 4, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:407, 452.

  4. Meade to Halleck (July 2, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):72; Letters and Despatches of Horatio, Viscount Nelson, K.B., Duke of Bronte, Vice Admiral of the White Squadron, ed. J. K. Laughton (London: Longmans, Green, 1886), 291; Hunt to J. B. Bachelder (July 27, 1880), in Bachelder Papers, 1:675; Eric J. Wittenberg, “The Truth About the Withdrawal of Brig. Gen. John Buford’s Cavalry, July 2, 1863,” Gettysburg Magazine 37 (January 2008), 76–77, 82; Hunt, “The Second Day at Gettysburg,” in Battles & Leaders, 3:297.

  5. Francis A. Walker, “Meade at Gettysburg,” in Battles & Leaders, 3:411–12; Sauers, A Caspian Sea of Ink, 54–55; “Testimony of Major General Daniel Butterfield” (March 25, 1864) and “Testimony of General John Gibbon” (April 1, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:424, 442; Gibbon, Personal Recollections of the Civil War, 139; “Report of Maj. Gen. A. Pleasonton, Late Commander of Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac” (October 15, 1865), in Journal of the United States Cavalry Association 1 (November 1888), 399; Martin McMahon, interview with Alexander Kelly (October 11, 1879), in Generals in Bronze, 84; Hyde, Following the Greek Cross, 150–51.

  6. Gibbon, “The Council of War on the Second Day,” Battles & Leaders, 3:313, and Personal Recollections of the Civil War, 140, 142–44; “Minutes of Council, July 2, 1863,” in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):73; “Testimony of Major General W. S. Hancock” (March 22, 1864) and “Testimony of General John Gibbon” (April 1, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:407, 441–42; Winfield Scott Hancock, interview with Alexander Kelly (September 2, 1880), and Daniel Butterfield, interview with Alexander Kelly (September 18, 1879), in Generals in Bronze, 66, 68, 71; Doubleday, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, 184; Gambone, Hancock at Gettysburg, 106–7; Slocum to L. H. Morgan (January 2, 1864), in Fox, “Life of General Slocum,” in In Memoriam: Henry Warner Slocum, 1826–1894, 84–85.

  7. “Testimony of General Henry J. Hunt” (April 4, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:452.

  8. “Reports of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, C.S. Army” (August 20, 1863), in O.R., series
one, 27 (pt. 2):694–95; Wittenberg and Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around, 44–45; James H. Wilson, “Captain Charles Corbit’s Charge at Westminster with a Squadron of the First Delaware Cavalry, June 29, 1863,” Journal of the United States Cavalry Association 24 (May 1914), 980.

  9. “Report of Maj. Napoleon B. Knight, First Delaware Cavalry” (June 30, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):201; Wittenberg and Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around, 47–52.

  10. George A. Rummel, Cavalry on the Roads to Gettysburg: Kilpatrick at Hanover and Hunterstown (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 2000), 158–59; Eric J. Wittenberg and J. David Petruzzi, “Corbit’s Charge: Jeb Stuart Clashes with the 1st Delaware Cavalry at Westminster, Maryland, June 29, 1863,” Gettysburg Magazine 36 (January 2007), 11, 13, 17; Wilson, “Captain Charles Corbit’s Charge,” 982; Frederic Shriver Klein, “Westminster: Little Skirmish, Big Affair?,” Civil War Times Illustrated 7 (August 1968), 32–38.

  11. “Reports of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, C.S. Army” (August 20, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):696; Wilson, “Captain Charles Corbit’s Charge,” 982; Wittenberg and Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around, 60; 209; Longacre, Lee’s Cavalrymen, 209.

  12. J. M. Wright, “West Point Before the War,” Southern Bivouac 4 (June 1885), 17; Samuel J. Martin, Kill-Cavalry: The Life of Hugh Judson Kilpatrick (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000), 57, 62, 103; Wittenberg and Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around, 65.

  13. Anthony’s History of the Battle of Hanover (York County, Pennsylvania) Tuesday, June 30, 1863 (Hanover, PA: Anthony, 1945), 40–43; Samuel L. Gillespie, A History of Co. A., First Ohio Cavalry, 1861–1865. A Memorial Volume, Compiled from Personal Records and Living Witnesses (Washington, OH: Press of Ohio State Register, 1898), 148; Henry C. Parsons, “Gettysburg: The Campaign Was a Chapter of Accidents,” National Tribune (August 7, 1890); Wittenberg and Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around, 89; Louis Napoleon Boudrye, Historic Records of the Fifth New York Cavalry, First Ira Harris Guard (Albany, NY: S. R. Gray, 1865), 65.

  14. Thomas J. Ryan, “Kilpatrick Bars Stuart’s Route to Gettysburg,” Gettysburg Magazine 27 (July 2002), 22–23; “Report of Maj. John Hammond, Fifth New York Cavalry,” in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):1008; Rummel, Cavalry on the Roads to Gettysburg, 221–300; William Willis Blackford, War Years with Jeb Stuart (1945; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 226.

  15. Wittenberg and Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around, 89–105; “Address of General James H. Kidd, at the Dedication of Michigan Monuments upon the Battle Field of Gettysburg, June 12, 1889,” in At Custer’s Side: The Civil War Writings of James Harvey Kidd, ed. E. J. Wittenberg (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001), 9; John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes and Adventures of the War (New York: E. B. Treat, 1867), 250–53; Edward G. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier: A Biography of Wade Hampton III (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 2003), 144; John Krepps, “Before and After Hanover: Tracing Stuart’s Cavalry Movements of June 30, 1863,” Blue & Gray Magazine 21 (Holiday 2003), 22–23; McClellan, Life and Campaigns of Major-General J.E.B. Stuart, 329; “Our Special Army Correspondence—Gen. Kilpatrick’s First Fight with His New Command,” New York Times (July 4, 1863).

  16. George R. Prowell, History of York County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: J. H. Beers, 1907), 1:414; Scott L. Mingus, “J.E.B. Stuart Rides Through Dover, Pennsylvania,” Gettysburg Magazine 38 (January 2008), 7; Swallow, “From Fredericksburg to Gettysburg,” Southern Bivouac 4 (November 1885), 365; McClellan, Life and Campaigns of Major-General J.E.B. Stuart, 330; Edward G. Longacre, Fitz Lee: A Military Biography of Major General Fitzhugh Lee, C.S.A. (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005), 118, and The Cavalry at Gettysburg: A Tactical Study of Mounted Operations During the Civil War’s Pivotal Campaign, 9 June–14 July, 1863 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986), 193; George W. Beale, A Lieutenant of Cavalry in Lee’s Army (Boston: Gorham Press, 1918), 114; Memoirs of the Stuart Horse Artillery Battalion: Breathed’s and McGregor’s Batteries, ed. Roger Trout (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010), 95–96.

  17. “Report of Brig. Gen. William F. Smith” (July 18, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):221; Memoirs of the Stuart Horse Artillery Battalion, 96; Wittenberg and Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around, 137; Wert, Cavalryman of the Lost Cause, 286.

  18. Mosby, Stuart’s Cavalry in the Gettysburg Campaign, 183–84; Cooke, Wearing of the Gray, 254–55; Mingus, “J.E.B. Stuart Rides Through Dover, Pennsylvania,” 14; Rummel, Cavalry on the Roads to Gettysburg, 303; McClellan, Life and Campaigns of Major-General J.E.B. Stuart, 330; “Reports of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, C.S. Army” (August 20, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2): 709; Autobiography of Major General William F. Smith, 1861–1864, ed. H. N. Schiller (Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1990), 67–68; Tom Huntington, Pennsylvania Civil War Trails: The Guide to Battle Sites, Monuments, Museums and Towns (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2007), 44; Wittenberg and Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around, 153; Longacre, Fitz Lee, 119.

  19. Wittenberg and Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around, 145–48; “Reports of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, C.S. Army” (August 20, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):697; Beale, A Lieutenant of Cavalry in Lee’s Army, 115; Longacre, The Cavalry at Gettysburg, 198.

  20. Blackford, War Years with Jeb Stuart, 228; “The Union Cavalry Service” (July 15, 1863), in Rebellion Record (1864), 7:185–86; Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier, 147–50; J. David Petruzzi, “The Battle of Hunterstown,” in The Complete Gettysburg Guide (New York: Savas Beatie, 2009), 156–65; Paul M. Shevchuk, “The Battle of Hunterstown, Pennsylvania, July 2, 1863,” Gettysburg Magazine 1 (July 1989), 99–102; Kidd, At Custer’s Side, 10–11; Campbell Brown’s Civil War, 206.

  21. Wert, Cavalryman of the Lost Cause, 282; Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography, 298, and Bold Dragoon: The Life of J.E.B. Stuart, 246; Mark Nesbitt, Saber and Scapegoat: J.E.B. Stuart and the Gettysburg Controversy (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994), 89–91; Thomason, Jeb Stuart, 440. Two accounts of an icy confrontation between Lee and Stuart eventually surfaced, one describing Lee “austerely” greeting Stuart with a phlegmatic “Well, General Stuart, you are here at last,” and the other a more “painful” meeting in which an angered Lee querulously demanded, “General Stuart, where have you been?” Both of these accounts contain serious anomalies. Neither Stuart nor Lee ever referred to this meeting in their official reports or in any letters. Nor did Stuart give any hint of a dressing-down by Lee in his letters in the week after Gettysburg (to the contrary, he insisted that “my cavalry has nobly sustained its reputation, and done better and harder fighting than it ever has since the war”). Moreover, the first version, with Lee “austerely” declaring, “Well, General Stuart, you are here at last,” appears for the first time only in 1929, in John W. Thomason’s biography of Stuart. Thomason was a career Marine officer who could be presumed to know something about military affairs, but he was not born until forty years after the battle, and cited no sources (even though he was the grandson of Longstreet’s aide Thomas Goree, and interviewed members of the Stuart family for the book). The other account, which appears in numerous battle narratives (from Glenn Tucker’s High Tide at Gettysburg to Scott Bowden and Bill Ward’s Last Chance for Victory), is usually traced to a letter written by Thomas Munford in 1915 to Mrs. Ann Bachman Hyde, claiming to have had the whole story from Stuart’s chief aide, Henry B. McClellan. But did Munford actually get this from McClellan? In 1913, Walter Kempster (who had been a lieutenant in the 10th New York Cavalry at Gettysburg) put exactly the same words into Lee’s mouth, based on seeing “a letter” when Kempster had been “in Gettysburg recently” which Kempster claimed “was written by one of Stuart’s brigadiers, who was present with Stuart when he reported his arrival to Gen. Lee.” (Recently could mean almost anything, but it is significant that the 50th anniversary reunion of the armies had just taken place in Gettysburg that summer.) Even more
curious, Thomas Nelson Page records the same words and the same meeting in his 1911 biography, Robert E. Lee, Man and Soldier, and adds some additional dialogue: “When Stuart explained, and mentioned his capture of over two hundred wagons … Lee exclaimed: ‘Two hundred wagons! General Stuart, what are two hundred wagons to this army!’ ” See Campbell Brown’s Civil War, 205; Henry B. McClellan, “Address of Major H. B. McClellan, of Lexington, Ky., on the Life, Campaigns, and Character of Gen’l J.E.B. Stuart,” SHSP 8 (October–December 1880), 455, and McClellan, Life and Campaigns of Major-General J.E.B. Stuart, 332; Campbell Brown’s Civil War, 219; Life After J.E.B. Stuart: The Memoirs of His Granddaughter, Marrow Stuart Smith, ed. Sean M. Heuvel (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 142; Tucker, High Tide at Gettysburg, 316–17; Bowden and Ward, Last Chance for Victory, 422; Walter Kempster, “The Cavalry at Gettysburg” (October 1, 1913), in War Papers Read Before the Commandery of the State of Wisconsin, 420; Thomas Nelson Page, Robert E. Lee, Man and Soldier (New York: Charles Scribners, 1911), 339; Paul Shevchuk, “The Lost Hours of ‘Jeb’ Stuart,” Gettysburg Magazine 4 (January 1991), 70; Robinson, Jeb Stuart and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg, 112–13; Thomas Munford to Mrs. Charles H. Hyde (July 24, 1915), Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.