Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  20. Samuel L. Gracey, Annals of the Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry (Philadelphia: E. H. Butler, 1868), 190; “Reports of Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick” (August 10, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):994, Wittenberg, One Continuous Fight, 16–18, 53–72, 124–35, 174–88; Brown, Retreat from Gettysburg, 158–61; Bond, “Company A—First Maryland Cavalry,” Confederate Veteran (February 1898), 79–80; Kimble, “Tennesseans at Gettysburg—The Retreat,” 461–62; Papers of Randolph Abbott Shotwell, 2:33; Imboden, “The Confederate Retreat from Gettysburg,” in Battles & Leaders, 3:425; Valuska and Keller, Damn Dutch, 68; Edward G. Longacre, Lincoln’s Cavalrymen: A History of the Mounted Forces of the Army of the Potomac (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000), 208–9.

  21. Frank E. Moran to Daniel E. Sickles (January 24, 1882), in Bachelder Papers, 2:783; Brown, Retreat from Gettysburg, 91–92, 293, 298, 321–22; Lee to Mary Custis Lee (July 12, 1863), in Wartime Papers, 547; Lee to George E. Pickett (July 8, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 3):983; Imboden, “Lee at Gettysburg,” The Galaxy 11 (April 1871), 513; Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, 269; Steve French, “The Rebels at Williamsport,” Gettysburg Magazine 27 (July 2002), 102–8; Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army, 283; Hess, Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 234–35.

  22. Mahood, General Wadsworth, 191; Harry W. Pfanz, “The Gettysburg Campaign After Pickett’s Charge,” Gettysburg Magazine 1 (July 1989), 122; Mulholland, Story of the 116th Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry, 149; SeCheverell, Journal History of the Twenty-ninth Ohio Veteran Volunteers, 75; Blake, Three Years in the Army of the Potomac, 225; Washburn, Military History and Record of the 108th Regiment, N.Y. Vols., 48; Fox, “Slocum and His Men,” 187; Andrew J. Boies, Record of the Thirty-Third Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry: From Aug. 1862 to Aug. 1865 (Fitchburg, MA: Sentinel Publishing, 1880), 34.

  23. Judson, History of the Eighty-Third Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, 143–44; Stevens, Three Years in the Sixth Corps, 262; Avery Harris Civil War Journal, 79; Eddy, History of the 60th Regiment, New York State Volunteers, 266; Meade to Halleck (July 9, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):86; Fighting with the Eighteenth Massachusetts: The Civil War Memoir of Thomas H. Mann, 187–89.

  24. Meade to Margaretta Meade (July 8, 10, and 12, 1863), in George G. Meade Papers [box 1, folder 10], Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Halleck to Meade (July 8, 1863) and Meade to Halleck (July 8, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 3):605–6.

  25. Brown, Retreat from Gettysburg, 320–21, 326; Ranald Mackenzie to G. K. Warren (July 12, 1863) and Lee to Stuart (July 13, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 3):669, 1001; Channing M. Bolton, “With General Lee’s Engineers,” Confederate Veteran 30 (August 1922), 300; Jedediah Hotchkiss, diary entry for July 12, 1863, in Make Me a Map of the Valley, 160; Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, 179–80.

  26. Smith, History of the Nineteenth Regiment of Maine Volunteer Infantry, 90–91; Smith, “Brig. Gen. Alexander Hays and the Third Division, Second Corps,” in The Third Day: The Fate of a Nation, 190; Slocum to Judge Leroy H. Morgan (January 2, 1864), in The Life and Services of Major-General Henry Warner Slocum, 84–85, 134–36; Jordan, Red Diamond Regiment, 83.

  27. Meade to Halleck (July 10, 12, and 13, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):89, 91; “Testimony of General George G. Meade” (March 5, 1864) and “Testimony of Brigadier General James S. Wadsworth” (March 23, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:336, 415; Howard interview with Alexander Kelly (April 15, 1899), in Generals in Bronze, 178; Wainwright, diary entry for July 13, 1863, in A Diary of Battle, 260; Mahood, General Wadsworth, 192–93; Coffin, The Boys of ’61, 255. See also Noah Brooks’ report on July 14th which also identified Pleasonton, Wadsworth, and Howard as dissenters, in Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks, ed. Michael Burlingame (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 58.

  28. Halleck to Meade (July 13, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):92; Sorrel, Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer, 175; Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 429–30; Léon, Diary of a Tar Heel Confederate Soldier, 40; Robert T. Hubbard, The Civil War Memoirs of a Virginia Cavalryman, ed. Thomas P. Nanzig (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), 103; Dickert, History of Kershaw’s Brigade, 258; Samuel Pickens, diary entry for July 14, 1863, in Voices from Company D, 186–87; Hess, Lee’s Tar Heels, 161; Brown, Retreat from Gettysburg, 351; Gragg, Covered with Glory, 216–19.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE There is bad faith somewhere

  1. Desjardin, These Honored Dead, 201–2; Terrence V. Murphy, 10th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1989), 80; Robertson, 18th Virginia Infantry, 23; Divine, 8th Virginia Infantry, 24–25, 42; Charles W. Sublett, 57th Virginia Infantry ((Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1985), 29.

  2. J. J. Hoyle to his wife (July 15, 1863), in Deliver Us from This Cruel War: The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Joseph J. Hoyle, 55th North Carolina Infantry, ed. Jeffrey M. Girvan (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 127; George C. Underwood, “Twenty-Sixth Regiment,” in Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861–’65, ed. Clark, 2:366; Richard B. Kleese, 49th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 2002), 40; Dunbar Rowland, The Official and Statistical Register of the State of Mississippi 1908 (Nashville: Brandon Printing, 1908), 2:442.

  3. Fuller, Personal Recollections of the War of 1861, 70; Confederate Veteran 2 (May 1894), 142; Glenn W. LaFantasie, Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 101, 120–21; Michael Dreese, Torn Families: Death and Kinship at the Battle of Gettysburg (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), 22–23; Hess, Lee’s Tar Heels, 157–57; R. M. Tuttle, “Unparalleled Loss—Company F, Twenty-Sixth Regiment, N.C.T., at Gettysburg, 1 July, 1863,” in Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina, in the Great War 1861–’65, ed. Clark, 5:601; Coffman and Graham, To Honor These Men: A History of the Phillips Georgia Legion Infantry Battalion, 301; Wyckoff, History of the Second South Carolina Infantry, 464, 578, 591, and History of the 3rd South Carolina, 420.

  4. Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 2;190–97; Divine, 8th Virginia Infantry, 41–42; James W. Parrish, Wiregrass to Appomattox: The Untold Story of the 50th Georgia Infantry Regiment, C.S.A. (Winchester, VA: Angle Valley Press, 2008), 121; Tagg, The Generals of Gettysburg, 267–68, 338–39; E. N. Morrison, “Fifteenth Virginia Infantry,” SHSP 33 (January–February 1905), 102; Wittenberg, One Continuous Fight, 284–88; Hassler, “Afterword,” in One of Lee’s Best Men, 256–59; Lee to James A. Seddon (July 17, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 3):1016; Kimble, “Tennesseans at Gettysburg—The Retreat,” 462; Robertson, General A. P. Hill, 228; “The Memoirs of Henry Heth, Part II,” Civil War History 8 (September 1962), 307–8.

  5. O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):346; Bates, Battle of Gettysburg, 199; Allen “General Lee’s Strength and Losses at Gettysburg,” SHSP 1 (July 1877), 34; Beecham, Gettysburg, the Pivotal Battle of the Civil War, 250–51; John D. Vautier, “The Loss at Gettysburg,” Southern Bivouac 4 (March 1886), 639; Hartwig, “ ‘We Came Here with the Best Army the Confederacy Ever Carried into the Field’: The Army of Northern Virginia and the Gettysburg Campaign,” 63–66; James Pleasants, in Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 2:168. In 1875, Samuel Penniman Bates, warning that “the two armies represented quantities that were constantly varying,” raised the estimate of Confederate dead to 5,500, and cited reports from subsequent burials and exhumations that ran the figure as high as 7,000 (although no provision was made for identifying whether this included both killed and those wounded who subsequently died); from that, Bates estimated that the conventional ratio of killed to wounded would yield 27,500 wounded, and he accepted without question George Meade’s report of having captured 13,621 prisoners—overall, Confederate losses of over 46,000. Bates’s totals were brought back down to earth in 1877 by William Allan, who believed that the real figure
for total Confederate casualties was 22,728, and by Robert Beecham and John D. Vautier (both of them Gettysburg veterans), who set them at 28,000. Subsequent reckonings have more or less conformed to Allan’s calculations. Robert Krick, in The Gettysburg Death Roster: The Confederate Dead at Gettysburg (2004), favors a number only marginally different from Allan’s (p. 17); Scott Hartwig (in The Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, 2:683) and Joseph Glatthaar, in General Lee’s Army, are closer to Bates in claiming between 4,400 and 4,700 killed, but sharply reduce the number of wounded to between 12,000 and 13,700, and put prisoner and missing at between 5,300 and 5,800; Edwin Coddington, in The Gettysburg Campaign (1968), adopted the 20,451 total in Lee’s report, although added a little evasively that there were “very likely more” (p. 536).

  6. Meade to Halleck (August 3 and October 1, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):113, 118, 187; “General Summary of Casualties in the Union Forces in the Gettysburg Campaign, June 3–August 1, 1863,” in Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, 1;171; Mulholland, The Story of the 116th Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry, 147; Bates, Battle of Gettysburg, 199, and Martial Deeds of Pennsylvania, 345; Thomas Livermore, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861–1865 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 103; Busey and Martin, Regimental Strengths and Losses, 125; “The Opposing Forces at Gettysburg,” in Battles & Leaders, 3:440; “Testimony of Major General George G. Meade” (March 11, 1864), in Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:350; Gottfried, Stopping Pickett, 178–79.

  7. Ambrose Hayward to A. H. Hayward, Sr. (July 17, 1863), in Last to Leave the Field, 159; Geary to Mary Geary (July 17, 1863), in A Politician Goes to War: The Civil War Letters of John White Geary, ed. William A. Blair (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1995), 101; Chase to Samuel S. Chase (July 9, 1863), in Yours for the Union, 257, 258; Grandchamp, “The 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers in the Gettysburg Campaign,” 81; Blake, Three Years in the Army of the Potomac, 226–27, 228–29; Hardin, History of the Twelfth Regiment, Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps, 163; Stevens, Three Years in the Sixth Corps, 264–65; Dunkelman, Brothers One and All, 231; diary entry for July 6, 1863, in Inside the Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Experience of Captain Francis Adams Donaldson, 313.

  8. “The Very Latest,” Washington Sunday Morning Chronicle (July 5, 1863) and “The Situation” (July 12, 1863); Elias Nason, The Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson (Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., 1881), 328–29; John L. Myers, Senator Henry Wilson and the Civil War (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), 112; A. Wilson Greene, “From Gettysburg to Falling Waters: Meade’s Pursuit of Lee,” in Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond, ed. Gary Gallagher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 172; Howard, Autobiography, 1:446; Lincoln, “Announcement of News from Gettysburg” (July 4, 1863), “To Henry W. Halleck” (July 6, 1863) and “To Jesse K. Dubois” (July 11, 1863), in Collected Works, 6:314, 318, and 323; John Hay, diary entries for July 11 and 14, 1863, in Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, eds. J. R. T. Ettlinger and Michael Burlingame (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 61, 62; James B. Fry, “Doubleday’s ‘Chancellorsville and Gettysburg,’ ” in Military Miscellanies (New York: Brentano’s, 1889), 435.

  9. Hay, diary entries for September 26, 1862, and July 12, 14, 15, and 19, 1863, in Inside Lincoln’s White House, 41, 62, 63, 65; Meade to Halleck (July 14, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):92; “Robert Todd Lincoln’s Reminiscences, Given 5 January 1885” and Lincoln to Meade, in An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays, ed. Michael Burlingame (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 88, 153; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 2:512–13.

  10. George H. Thacher, “Lincoln and Meade After Gettysburg,” American Historical Review 32 (January 1927), 282–83; Brooks, Washington in Lincoln’s Time (New York: Century Co., 1895), 95; Haupt, “The Crisis of the Civil War,” 794; Welles, diary entry for July 14, 1863, in Diary of Gideon Welles, 1:370; Michael Burlingame, “Lincoln’s Anger and Cruelty,” in The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 189.

  11. Halleck to Meade (July 14, 1863) and Meade to Halleck (July 14, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):92–93; Lincoln, “To George G. Meade” (July 14, 1863), in Collected Works, 6:327–28.

  12. Meade to Margaretta Meade (July 14, 1863), in George G. Meade Papers [box 1, folder 10], Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General (Norfolk, CT: Carl Stoeckel, 1903), 2:132; McClellan to Meade (July 11, 1863), in Meade, Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, 2:134, 312; Cleaves, Meade of Gettysburg, 172.

  13. Gideon Welles, diary entry for October 16, 1863, in Diary of Gideon Welles, 1:471–72; Jason Emerson, Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), 82–83; Frederick D. Bidwell, History of the Forty-Ninth New York Volunteers (Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon, 1916), 36–37; John Watts de Peyster, “An Ideal Soldier,” National Tribune (July 19, 1889); Valuska and Keller, Damn Dutch, 156–57.

  14. Barthel, Abner Doubleday, 171; Hessler, Sickles at Gettysburg, 251–52; Cleaves, Meade of Gettysburg, 231; “General Orders No. 10” (March 24, 1864), in O.R., series one, 30 (pt. 1):722–23; John J. Hennessy, “I Dread the Spring: The Army of the Potomac Prepares for the Overland Campaign,” in The Wilderness Campaign, ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 81; Sherman Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, ed. Royster (New York: Library of America, 1990), 559; Steven E. Woodworth, Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 576.

  15. Sears, Controversies and Commanders, 216–17; Taafe, Commanding the Army of the Potomac, 135–36; Welles, diary entry for October 20, 1863, in Diary of Gideon Welles, 1:473.

  16. Slocum to L. H. Morgan (January 2, 1864), in Life and Services of Major-General Henry Warner Slocum, 134–36; “Address by Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, U.S.A.” (September 19, 1903), in In Memoriam: Henry Warner Slocum, 32; Crawford to Sickles (September 7, 1886), in Daniel E. Sickles Papers, New-York Historical Society; Henry Wilson, “Bills Introduced” (December 14, 1863), “Generals Hooker, Meade and Howard” (January 18, 1864), in Congressional Globe, 38th Congress, first session, 17, 257; Gary G. Lash, “The Congressional Resolution of Thanks for the Federal Victory at Gettysburg,” Gettysburg Magazine 12 (January 1995), 85, 93; Tap, Over Lincoln’s Shoulder, 178–87; “Testimony of Major General Daniel Sickles” (February 26, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:301.

  17. Desjardins, These Honored Dead, 65–66; “The Battle of Gettysburg—Important Communication from an Eye Witness,” New York Herald (March 12, 1864); Meade to Halleck (March 15, 1864), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):128; Sauers, A Caspian Sea of Ink, 49–58.

  18. Elihu Washburne, “Grade of General” (December 4, 1863), in Congressional Globe, 38th Congress, first session, 6; Meade to Margaretta Meade (February 29, 1864), in Meade, Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, 2:168, 187; John Y. Simon, “From Galena to Appomattox: Grant and Washburne,” in The Union Forever: Lincoln, Grant, and the Civil War, ed. Glenn W. LaFantasie (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 162.

  19. Meade to Margaretta Meade (June 9, 1864), in Meade, Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, 2:168, 187; Grant to Stanton (May 13, 1864), in The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume 10: January 1–May 31, 1864, ed. John Y. Simon (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 434; Gibbon, Personal Recollections of the Civil War, 239; Gordon C. Rhea, The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7–12, 1864 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 8; Young, Around the World with General Grant, 2:300; Meade to “Mr. Walker” (August 1, 1863) and to Margaretta Meade (September 3, 1863, and January 20, 1865), in George G. Meade Papers [box 2, folder 10 and box 1, folder 4], Historical So
ciety of Pennsylvania.

  20. “Great Battle in Pennsylvania—Our Forces Victorious,” Charleston Mercury (July 8, 1863); Lee to Davis (July 4, 7, 12, and 15, 1863), in Wartime Papers, 539, 540, 547, 551; Jeremiah Tate to Mary Tate (July 19, 1863), in Gilder-Lehrman Collection, New-York Historical Society; Alexander, “The Great Battle of Gettysburg” (July 4, 1863), “Further Details of the Great Battle of Gettysburg” (July 7, 1863) and “P.W.A. in Virginia” (July 14, 1863), in Writing and Fighting the Confederate War: Letters of Peter Wellington Alexander, Confederate War Correspondent, ed. William B. Styple (Kearny, NJ: Belle Grove Publishing, 2002), 161, 166, 171, and “The Pennsylvania Campaign—A Review of Its Movements and Results,” Charleston Mercury (July 29, 1863); James A. Graham to “Dear Mother” (July 7, 1863), “The James A. Graham Papers,” 150; “The Great Battle,” Macon Daily Telegraph (July 8, 1863).

  21. McKim, A Soldier’s Recollections: Leaves from the Diary of a Young Confederate (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1910), 182; Wilkinson and Woodworth, A Scythe of Fire, 261; Daniel Sheetz, in Dennis E. Frye, 2nd Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1984), 55; Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army, 283–84; William D. Henderson, 12th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1984), 57; John C. Timberlake, in Hess, Pickett’s Charge, 330; Collins, Major General Robert E. Rodes of the Army of Northern Virginia, 296.