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| Do your job an no one remembers.... |
George Armstrong Custer screw up and gets himself and all of his men killed and everyone remembers him. George Gordon Meade defeats the Confederacy's greatest general and no one remembers his name!
Here is a little tribute to a guy who probably saved the United States of America at Gettysburg
George Gordon Meade is probably
America's most unsung hero. He is best known, when
thought of at all,
for leading the Army of the Potomac to victory at the Battle of
Gettysburg in 1863, besting the Confederacy's best general, Robert E
Lee. He would also serve under the Civil War's other famous general,
Ulysses S Grant. Despite considerable friction between the two,
Grant himself said he could not find much fault with Meade as an
officer.
The future victor
of Gettysburg was born in Cadiz, Spain on the last day of 1815. The
son of a Philadelphia merchant working as a purchasing agent for the
US Navy, he attended West Point, save a brief stay at Mount Union in
Baltimore, graduating in 1835, specializing in military engineering.
Ironically, Meade attended America's premier military academy without
ever intending on making the Army a career.
Meade's first tour
of duty involved fighting the Seminoles in Florida. Then Meade became
a civil engineer, working on railroads throughout Florida, Alabama,
and Georgia. After marrying Margaretta Seargeant, Meade, needing a
more steady income, rejoined the US Army in 1842. He worked on
lighthouses and breakwaters up and down the East Coast. He would
then serve with distinction in the Mexican War. When the Civil War
erupted, Captain Meade was surveying the Great Lakes.
Promoted to
brigadier general, Meade was initially tasked with construing
defenses for Washington, DC. Then he was ordered to lead lead an
infantry division in McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. He was wounded
in the arm, but recovered in time for the Second Battle of Bull Run,
an unmitigated disaster that could have been worse if it had not been
for Meade's heroic stand at Henry Hill's House, allowing the rest of
the Union army to retreat instead of being annihilated. Meade would
then catch a bullet in the thigh at Antietum, but once again, he
recovered in time for another battle.
Fredricksburg would
prove to be another Union fiasco, but Meade led his division in a
charge that punched a hole in Stonewall Jackson's line.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Army of the Potomac was in retreat and
Meade was obliged to join them with the entire Army of Northern
Virginia chasing him.
Lee would invade
Pennsylvania in June 1863 in a effort to win the war and perhaps
secure British intervention. Turning toward the general direction of
Washington, Lee would collide with an Army of the Potomac led by a
commander appointed to the post seventy-two hours earlier at
Gettysburg.
“Fighting Joe”
Hooker had angrily resigned and four other Union generals declined to
take his command. George Meade, at odds with most of Hooker and most
of his staff, thought he was receiving a court martial when the
messenger arrived from Lincoln with the offer to command the Army of
the Potomac.
Meade had a
reputation for a short temper. Working feverishly for three days
with little sleep, with a staff that did not like him, and with
Robert E Lee getting closer by the minute probably did not help what
reporters would say about him. Compounding the problem of his future
reputation was the fact he hated reporters, hence the probable
genesis of the nickname “Old Snapping Turtle”.
Plus he did look a
little bit like a turtle.
Nonetheless, Meade
won the battle that probably saved the Union.
He would retain
command of the Army of the Potomac even though Grant would be
appointed Commander of the Armies of the Eastern Theater. Meade
regarded Grant as a bit too aggressive, willing to absorb thousands
of casualties to achieve objectives. Meade understood the changing
nature of warfare, calling on his soldiers to entrench and approach
the enemy piecemeal rather than engage in blood soaked frontal
assaults. Despite his frequent disagreements with Meade, Grant never
once considered removing Old Snapping Turtle from command, often
saying that he was the best man for the Wilderness Campaign, a
grinding attack towards Richmond that seemed like a preview of the
First World War.
After the war,
Meade served in the occupied Confederacy during Reconstruction,
wisely choosing a policy of reconciliation with his southern
countrymen. He felt that Radical Reconstruction would only lead to
another war later and that it was better to bind the wounds than
reopen them. Meade would retire and spend the rest of his days in
his beloved Philadelphia where there are monuments to this forgotten
goggle-eyed hero who saved his country in its most horrific war.
