James A. Hessler
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The national press also began to develop the one-legged war hero image that Dan would spend the next fifty years cultivating. Readers of the New York Times awoke on July 6, 1863, to read more news from “the great battlefield of Gettysburgh [sic]” that was “of the most cheering and satisfactory character.” Sickles’ hometown obviously followed news of his wounding with intense interest, and the Times editorialized that the entire country owed Dan a debt of gratitude:
The misfortune of no one whose lot it has been to be smitten in this war has excited a livelier sympathy than the painful injury sustained in the late battle by Gen. Daniel E. Sickles.…
New-York State and City owe a debt of peculiar gratitude to Gen. Sickles. He it is that, in the most signal manner, has proved what militia are capable of, when led by a brave man, even without the advantages of a regular military education.…
General Sickles has literally carved his way to fame with his sword.… When the roll call of heroes is written for this war, one of the highest on the list will be that of Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, and New York will justly claim him as her own.29
While continuing to misspell “Gettysburgh,” the Times provided more details of Sickles’ wounding under a July 14 byline. Prior to being struck, Sickles had supposedly been “riding up and down the field, under a heavy fire of musketry and shell. It seems almost miraculous that he had escaped up to that time, so much had he been previously exposed. He gave his orders in an easy, quiet tone, without any excitement, his eyes constantly scanning his lines to see that no changes should take place without his knowledge.” The paper assured New Yorkers, “His absence from his command is severely felt by the army. How much missed is his clear-sighted direction and his all-pervading energy.” But, it was suggested, the army should “keep in their memory, as a guiding star, his example of bravery and his words of enthusiastic encouragement. Let his name be to them as Napoleon’s to his French soldiers—an impetus to noble deeds.” “He has redeemed his reputation fully since this war commenced,” concluded another paper.30
Dan Sickles’ most admirable quality was perhaps his ability to conquer adversity, and the loss of a leg merely became one more career obstacle to overcome. Working with a pair of government-issued crutches, Sickles ignored his doctor’s advice and departed for New York during the final days of July. The president extended an invitation for Dan to convalesce at the Lincoln’s summer retreat, but Sickles declined, preferring instead to return home. He did pay Lincoln a farewell call at the White House on July 22, and the New York Times reported on the 25th that Sickles “endured his journey from Washington to his home here much better than his friends anticipated. He was yesterday comparatively comfortable, and hopes are long to be again in service on the field.”31
Sickles returned, surprisingly quickly given the circumstances, to his business and social calendar. Having departed New York only two years earlier as a disgraced ex-Congressman, Sickles returned as a genuine war hero. The city Board of Councilmen passed a resolution thanking Dan, “who, leaving his sick bed to take command of his corps, led them to battle and to victory.” As his reward, the council authorized presenting Sickles with a gold medal. The Times updated readers regularly on “The Movements of Maj. Gen. Sickles.” Although Teresa and daughter Laura were noticeably absent from the coverage, his dinner parties once again made news copy. The Gettysburg Compiler reported on August 10: “Gen. Dan Sickles has nearly recovered from his wounds, and on Saturday week [sic] gave a dinner party in New York.” Even old New York enemies, such as diarist George Templeton Strong, were forcibly converted. “I suppose Sickles,” Strong sniffed in his diary, “with his one leg, among our best volunteer officers. His recuperative powers are certainly wonderful. Four years ago he was a ruined man in every sense, a pariah whom to know was discreditable.”32
Chaplain Twichell visited Dan at the Sickles’ fashionable house on Bloomingdale Road in New York. Having apparently overcome his early war aversion, Twichell chatted with both Teresa and her mother. He found Dan “pale and languid, and seemed yet to be suffering, but wonderfully well under the circumstances.” Sickles announced that he had been out in a carriage several times and intended to be back in a saddle very soon. On August 11, Dan traveled to Saratoga to continue his recuperation, drawing a large crowd and a brass band serenade. When the crowd called for remarks, Sickles spoke briefly, telling them “that the only way to bring about a peace was to prosecute the war with vigor and send forward reinforcements, and support the Government.” While in Saratoga, he immediately began to use his political connections to stimulate his business interests. Apparently overestimating his goodwill at the White House, he asked Lincoln to intercede in the case of a California land grant in which Dan had an interest. Lincoln, the ex-lawyer, curtly rebuffed him: “My Dear Sir, The question presented is a property question, with which I do not think I should meddle as a volunteer. It will save me labor, therefore, if you will first point me to the law which assigns any duty to the President in the case.” War Democrats such as Sickles were important to the Administration, but Lincoln still knew where to draw the line.33
Sickles was eager to return to command. While in Saratoga, he practiced on a hobby horse in preparation for a return to the saddle.34 On August 13, the Times obtained a letter Sickles had sent to “an officer in the army”:
I shall join the corps the very first day my strength will permit. My stump at present is very painful when a storm approaches, or during its progress. This will not last long. It has not yet shrunk to its natural size, so that I can be measured for an artificial leg; nor has it acquired sufficient hardness to enable me to ride in a carriage faster than a walk over any but a park road. In two weeks all these impediments will be removed, unless some hindrance occurs not now to be foreseen. I expect to be with you, for a trial at least, between the 15th and 20th of August.
You cannot exaggerate my eagerness to be among the noble men who have done so much for the cause, and to whom I am indebted for so much of the military repute and flattering honors I enjoy. I wish to live and die with them; their fate and mine must always be inseparable; their honor, welfare, pride and pleasures, are part and parcel of my existence.35
Sickles missed his self-imposed August deadline to return to the Army of the Potomac. George Templeton Strong was fed “confidential intelligence” that Sickles and Federal troops were instead to be sent to Texas to lead an invasion of Mexico. In fact, Sickles was pestering Secretary of War Stanton for just such an assignment. “It will not be long before I shall be ready to work again—Can you not then give me a command? If you send a column to operate in Texas that is a service I would like very much—Make it a Department & let me take my old Corps with me.” His desire to serve in Texas may have also been partially motivated by the now unfriendly confines of the Army of the Potomac’s command structure. “Meanwhile please do not permit Gen. Meade to break up my corps—which I hear he contemplates.”36
Sickles’ invasion of Mexico never materialized, but his spirits were boosted in September by news that Charles Graham’s release had been arranged via a prisoner exchange. When Graham finally returned to New York, his friends threw a lavish party at Delmonico’s. Graham recuperated for several months, but as a Sickles partisan his time with the Army of the Potomac was at an end. He was assigned to command the Naval Brigade with the Army of the James. In November 1864, he was put in charge of the defenses at Bermuda Hundred, and in March 1865 brevetted major general of volunteers.37
By late September, Sickles was preparing to finally leave New York and venture toward the army in Virginia. He traveled first to Washington, but stopped en route in Philadelphia to visit an old friend, Daniel Dougherty. It was another opportunity to practice his newest incarnation as wounded war hero. Dougherty arranged a welcome ceremony complete with a band and the requisite speeches. After receiving some praise from Dougherty, Sickles struggled with his new crutches as he rose to speak to the crowd. To “deafening cheers,” Sickles thanked t
he many Pennsylvanians who had fought at Gettysburg, especially his friend David Birney. Missing from his praise was, of course, Philadelphia native George Meade. But what Sickles really focused on was that one theme he would rely on for the rest of his life: he had sacrificed his body and health to save Pennsylvania and the Northern cause. From this time forward, losing a leg became his greatest career move. “Although I am now suffering some little inconvenience, owing to a casualty that occurred in a recent battle, let me tell you and the world that I am proud of that sacrifice.”38
The origins of the Second Battle of Gettysburg began with a series of events in the fall of 1863. The opening salvo was fired when Meade filed his official report that October. Concerning Sickles’ July 2 position, Meade wrote that he had wanted the Third Corps to extend the Second Corps line along Cemetery Ridge, but that Sickles, “not fully apprehending the instructions in regard to the position to be occupied, had advanced, or rather was in the act of advancing, his corps some half a mile or three-quarters of a mile in front of the line of the Second Corps.” Meade directed no slights at the Third Corps itself, stressing that they “sustained the shock most heroically.” But Meade also made a seemingly innocent statement that later added to Sickles’ wrath. “Notwithstanding the stubborn resistance of the Third Corps, under Major-General Birney (Major-General Sickles having been wounded early in the action) [emphasis added] the superiority of numbers of the enemy enabling him to outflank the corps in its advanced position, General Birney was compelled to fall back and reform behind the line originally designed to be held.” Meade, perhaps unintentionally, implied that the man being toasted as the battle’s victor had been wounded early in the action and thus played little part in the outcome. All things considered, Meade’s “censure” was fairly moderate. Other generals may have let the matter rest. Sickles, though, was by now too immersed in his new incarnation as one-legged war hero to let accusations of “misapprehension” pass unchallenged.39
Sickles’ old corps, meanwhile, waited eagerly for his return. His replacement, William H. French, was immensely unpopular with the now battle-hardened veterans. While Third Corps headquarters had gained a reputation earlier that spring for hospitality, the casualties of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg had created a bond that naturally excluded outsiders such as French (who, in any event, did nothing to win over his new corps.) During a meeting of corps officers at Birney’s headquarters on September 2, “The Third Army Corps Union” was officially formed to secure funds for embalming and sending home the bodies of officers killed in battle or dying in field hospitals. The organization, the first veteran society formed within the Army of the Potomac, also required corps officers to secure fellow officers’ release in the event that they were taken prisoner. The group’s most lasting impact was that it doggedly promoted the corps’ history, held reunions, and maintained Third Corps pride in the decades after the battle when their Gettysburg record was often under attack. Sickles was elected its first president.40
Regis de Trobriand, still hoping for a promotion, noted as early as August that “Sickles will be here before the end of the month and between him and Birney, they will do me justice, I hope, against the officer Gen. French supports—he is a stranger to our corps and is fond of his favorite ‘pets’.” When Sickles still had not arrived by late August, de Trobriand wrote, “We are waiting for Gen. Sickles to return next week. The 3rd Corps (the famous 3rd!!!) will offer him a beautiful campaign carriage with a bed and a desk for writing, a superb team, harness etc., etc., to comfort him during the fatigues of war and to express him our feelings for his bravery and his high military capacity.” By late September, word finally arrived that Sickles had traveled as far south as Washington.41
The wounded war hero departed Washington for the front on October 15. The press thought that Lee and Meade were poised to fight a major battle near the old Manassas field, and that Sickles’ return to the army signaled something more significant than it actually was. In New York, the Times reported: “The command of the Army of the Potomac is fatal. Gen. Meade in his turn has been compelled to give place to some other man. His removal from command seems to have been determined on. His successor is said to be Major-General Daniel E. Sickles.” Another dispatch from Washington that same day was also wide of the mark: “Gen. Sickles and staff left here for the front at 2 o’clock this p.m. In case of a general engagement, he will take command of his old corps.” Not everyone was convinced that Sickles was physically ready to return. “General Sickles arrived in the front last night, prepared to take the field if a fight ensue,” announced the New York Tribune on October 19. “His friends there, however, think his valor carries him too far in his present physical condition.”42
Sickles arrived that evening at Third Corps headquarters. Joe Twichell met him en route and found him “looking magnificently and showed no signs, save the missing leg, of his misfortune.” Sickles entered camp “like an emperor” followed by a cortege of officers. Once his arrival became known to the men, there occurred what Regis de Trobriand described as “grand rejoicing.… All the division was lined up on both sides of the road, and when the car where our glorious invalid was, arrived, a storm of hurrahs exploded and continued on all along the journey with an enthusiasm that I never saw in my life.” Birney was waiting to meet Sickles in a wagon drawn by four horses. “Their appearance was the signal for a thunder of acclamations, such as I have seldom heard. The wagon passed at a walk, from one end to the other of the line; explosions of hurrahs burst forth on the passage of the carriage, and were kept up long after it was at a distance. Caps were thrown into the air; and the welcome was most enthusiastic.” When Sickles climbed out of the carriage at Birney’s headquarters and “advanced on his crutch with his leg almost healed, but very healthy and smiling, the din was deafening.” Some thought they even saw a tear on Sickles’ cheek. After Sickles and the brigade commanders entered Birney’s tent, “the men assembled around in throngs, for a long time giving expression to their joy.”43
De Trobriand “acknowledged that this reception was not only a manifestation in honor of the old corps commander, but also a protest against the successor given to us.” General French, a heavy drinker (“addicted to some vulgar vice forbidden amongst themselves”), had done nothing to win the Third Corps’ loyalty, “by making of his authority an instrument of intrigues.”44 Sickles’ later admission that he believed a battle was imminent helps explain the timing of his return:
I was convalescent in October—my general health re-established; my wound not yet entirely healed; but anticipating, from the movements of the army, that there would be another engagement—General Lee maneuvering on the right flank of General Meade, and General Meade falling back towards Washington—I came to Washington, en route to the army. Ascertaining from official sources that a battle was expected to be fought by our forces, I went down to the front and reported for duty. I found the headquarters established at Centreville, our army having fallen back and taken position on the Occoquan on the left, and towards Chantilly on the right, resting substantially in the defenses of Washington.… I did not expect to meet the army quite as near Washington as that.45
Meade admitted to his wife that his “back [was] to Washington,” but that he had succeeded in preventing Lee from getting into his rear and was “ready for his [Lee’s] attack, if he had chosen to make it.” Such was the state of affairs when Sickles finally met with Meade near Fairfax Station on October 18. Sickles must have been uncomfortable asking Meade, of all people, for his corps back. Despite their long and acrimonious history together, Sickles was being hailed throughout the Northeast as a war hero, and the continuation of his new heroic status was now dependent upon Meade.46
Sickles described their meeting this way:
I reported for duty, wishing, as I expressed myself to General Meade, to resume the command of my corps for the coming battle, although not able to report for duty permanently, feeling great doubts as to my ability to hold out for perm
anent command and active campaigning; but I had a conviction that my presence with my corps would perhaps be of some advantage to the service, as it would certainly be most gratifying to my own feelings. I therefore solicited leave to take command of my corps, under the existing circumstances, notwithstanding my apparent disability. But General Meade expressed his disinclination, on account of his doubts as to my physical ability to meet the exigencies of the position of a corps commander. He instanced the case of General Ewell, of the rebel army, who had also lost a leg, and who did not resume command for eight or nine months. I very reluctantly yielded assent to this intimation of General Meade, and after reviewing my corps, I left the army.47
Since Sickles could not yet support an artificial leg, Regis de Trobriand thought Meade’s rejection was “not without reason, that he was not yet able to endure the hardships of service.” Still, the “welcome given him by his two old divisions went far to console him for his disappointment.” David Birney wrote privately, “Sickles came to take command. Meade preferred that he should not, and kindly resisted that he was not able. We have great faith here in him. His conduct at Gettysburg in firing on the enemy as he was massing in our front was disapproved by Meade’s do nothing wait until you can’t help it policy but was approved by all of this Corps. Sickles will I think command this army and in time be President. I have great confidence in him and his management.”48
Within two days of Meade’s refusal, Sickles was back in front of Lincoln and Stanton in Washington. As Sickles later admitted, “I could but express my sense of reluctance in again presenting myself to headquarters for assignment to duty without an order from the general-in-chief, which would relieve me from the embarrassment of again tendering my services and exposing myself to the disappointment of having them again declined or again deferred.”49