Much of Doubleday’s testimony defended his own July 1 performance at the expense of Howard’s Eleventh Corps. He could barely conceal his anger toward Meade. Doubleday compared the Pipe Creek Circular to giving “us orders after the battle was fought.” Meade, he continued, spent July 1 at Taneytown: “It is inexplicable to me that he could hear the thunder of that battle all day without riding up to see something in relation to it.” In comparison, “General Sickles did start for that purpose without orders, though too late [on July 1] to be of service.” If in fact there was any coordination between the testimony of Sickles and Doubleday, Doubleday did not exaggerate the value of Sickles’ arrival on the field.33
Meade’s only plan, argued Doubleday, was to fight on the “long, feeble line of battle on Pipe Creek” which seemed “to be chosen for defensive purposes, to cover Washington and Baltimore.” He contested that if Meade had been allowed to pursue this plan then the Army of Northern Virginia would have “gone on ad infinitum plundering the state of Pennsylvania.” However, despite several attempts, the committee was unable to get Doubleday to characterize the Pipe Creek Circular as a retreat order. This contradicted Sickles’ central premise, and further suggests that Sickles and Doubleday did not coordinate their stories.34
Doubleday hit a home run when he told the committee that Meade had superseded Howard and himself because Meade “thought a couple of scapegoats were necessary.…General Meade is in the habit of violating the organic law of the army to place his personal friends in power. There has always been a great deal of favoritism in the Army of the Potomac. No man who is an anti-slavery man or an anti-McClellan man can expect decent treatment in that army as at present constituted.” While not mentioning Meade by name, Doubleday railed against the “pro-slavery cliques controlling that army, composed of men who, in my opinion, would not have been unwilling to make a compromise in favor of slavery.” This sort of damning testimony was exactly what the anti-West Point senators and representatives were digging for. The charge painted Meade as another McClellan Democrat who was soft on slavery—a perfect reason to remove him from command. Although Doubleday had not explicitly supported Sickles’ most serious charge that Meade planned to retreat, he did provide plenty of anti-Meade ammunition for Wade’s committee. Years later Doubleday recanted most of his accusations against Meade. They were based on a belief that Meade was scheming to promote pro-McClellan men, explained Doubleday: “I afterward ascertained that I was mistaken in this respect.” But unfortunately for Meade, Doubleday’s explanation was well into the future, and did not help the commanding general’s status before the committee.35
The next witness was a relatively minor figure in Gettysburg’s history. Brigadier General Albion Howe commanded the Second Division in Sixth Corps. A West Pointer and career army officer, Howe’s pre-Gettysburg resume was most notable for his membership in Robert E. Lee’s posse that captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry. In 1865, Howe would serve as part of the honor guard at Lincoln’s funeral and as one of nine military officers on the commission that tried the assassination conspirators. Although the presence of the large Sixth Corps provided comforting reassurance for Meade and the rest of the army at Gettysburg, the majority of the corps—including Howe’s command—saw little combat. His 3,600 odd-man division suffered fewer than twenty casualties, and his Gettysburg report barely fills three paragraphs. Given the predilections of the committee, Howe’s West Point background, minor battle role, and one not directly privy to Meade’s strategy makes him an odd choice as a witness. He was primarily called because he was yet another officer disgruntled with Meade. Howe was transferred out of field command to an administrative post on February 29, only two days prior to his testimony. While there is debate as to whether Meade was actually responsible for the transfer, he did not oppose Howe’s ouster.36
Howe testified that on the evening of July 2, Sixth Corps leader John Sedgwick told him that the army’s brain trust was “discussing whether we shall stay here, or move back to Westminster.” Howe diminished the impact generalship may have had in bringing about the victory, telling the committee, “Our position mainly did the work for us… as a military operation on our side, no particular credit can attach to it. There was no great generalship displayed; there was no maneuvering, no combinations.” Following the committee’s lead, he added, “I can see no reason why we did not follow them more vigorously” after the battle. When asked if the Williamsport council of war, which delayed Meade’s planned assault, “was calculated to weaken the confidence of the army,” he replied that he was “decidedly of the opinion that it was.”37
Following Howe’s first day of testimony, Senators Wade and Chandler went to see Lincoln and Edwin Stanton. Due to the “incompetency of the general in command of the army,” they demanded Meade’s removal. While claiming to not be “advocates of any particular general” the senators “for themselves would be content with General Hooker, believing him to be competent.” Although only three witnesses had thus far been called, Wade and Chandler’s haste might have been caused by the administration’s revival of the rank of lieutenant general on February 26, and Ulysses S. Grant’s confirmation on March 2. They may have believed that Grant’s pending arrival would reduce their ability to oust Meade in favor of Hooker. Alternatively, Lincoln might have argued that Grant would soon be on the scene to supersede, replace, or prod Meade. Whatever both sides’ motives, Lincoln declined their demands.38
Undeterred by Lincoln’s snub, the committee continued with Howe on March 4. Most of the army’s officers, Howe claimed, did not “have full confidence in the ability or state of mind of George Meade” to strike an offensive blow. This may have been fair criticism, but Howe took his testimony one step further. The committee had been tap dancing around the subject of Meade’s loyalty, and Howe obliged them much more directly than even Sickles had been willing to state.39 When questioned on Meade and the corps commanders’ inability to “strike an offensive blow,” Howe answered:
I do not know as it would be proper for me to state here the terms we use in the army. However, we say there is too much copperheadism [emphasis added] in it… with some there is a desire to raise up General McClellan; with others there is a dislike to some of the measures of the government; they do not like the way the Negro question is handled… the impression is made upon my mind that there are some who have no faith in this war, who have no heart in it; they will not do anything to commit themselves… there is copperheadism at the root of the matter.”40
Meade and the corps commanders who had won the victory at Gettysburg less than a year earlier were now being characterized as Northern Democrats who opposed the war effort. Lest there be any doubt as to his meaning, Howe added to and clarified his remarks in further questioning, concluding that “there is too much sympathy with men and measures in opposition to the principle measures of the government, and those who are in control of the government.” Ironically, one of the reasons Meade had been placed in command of the army was due to a supposed lack of political impulses. Now, due to his alleged politics, he was coming dangerously close to being called a traitor to the Union cause. Sickles had (commendably) not made Howe’s outlandish accusations, nor did he suggest that he agreed with the charges during the long years that would follow the close of the committee. Sickles’ primary goal had been to convince the committee that Meade was hell-bent upon retreat. He cooperated with the committee, but he did not set its agenda.41
On March 3, Sickles’ accusations reached the floor of the Senate. Minnesota’s Radical Republican Senator Morton Wilkinson, one of Chandler’s close friends, told the Senate, “I am told… that before the fight commenced at Gettysburg… the order went forth from the commander of that army to retreat; and but for the single fact that one of the corps commanders had got into a fight before the dispatch reached him, the whole army would undoubtedly have been retreating.” A grim discovery awaited George Meade when he arrived in Washington the following day to conduct business
related to the army’s reorganization. “When I reached Washington,” he later wrote, “I was greatly surprised to find the whole town talking of certain grave charges of Generals Sickles and Doubleday, that had been made against me in their testimony.”42
The army commander was summoned by the committee, but when he arrived on March 5 he was met by Wade alone, who attempted to hide the committee’s real objectives from Meade. “He was very civil,” Meade recalled, and “denied there were any charges against me.” Wade assured Meade that the committee was only preparing a history of the war. Meade was at a distinct disadvantage because, unlike his opponents, he had had no time (and was probably unaware of the need) to prepare a well-crafted or competently researched defense. His lack of preparation led to some minor errors of details, and in a few instances Meade’s testimony distorted truth. For example, Meade testified that when he replaced Hooker on June 28, “I received from him [Hooker] no intimation of any plan, or any views that he may have had up to that moment.” Meade was trying to position himself as having received command of the army under the worst possible constraints. In fact he, Hardie, Hooker, and Butterfield met after Meade assumed army command and discussed a variety of matters before Hooker’s departure.43
Meade assured Wade that it had been his “firm determination, never for an instant deviated from, to give battle wherever and as soon as I could possibly find the enemy, modified, of course, by such general considerations as govern every general officer.” Meade dwelled “particularly” upon his decision to concentrate at Gettysburg “in consequence of its having been reported on the floor of the Senate that an order to retreat had been given by me.” The Pipe Creek line “I think, was selected; and a preliminary order, notifying the corps commanders that such line might possibly be adopted,” but the order was issued “certainly before any positive information” had reached Meade regarding the enemy’s location and concentration. Reports from Hancock and others convinced him that the enemy was near Gettysburg. Therefore, the Army of the Potomac was ordered to concentrate there “entirely ignoring the preliminary order, which was a mere contingent one, and intended only to be executed under certain circumstances which had not occurred.”44
In a rather glaring omission, Meade neglected to mention July 2’s aborted 3:00 p.m. meeting with the corps commanders. Meade had already been criticized heavily for Williamsport’s council of war and was probably aware that informing the committee of the mid-afternoon council could potentially confirm the accusations that he was an indecisive commander who wanted to retreat. Rather than confronting Sickles at army headquarters, Meade testified, he learned Sickles was out of position when it was “reported to me about two o’clock that the 6th corps had arrived—I proceeded from my headquarters… to the extreme left, in order to see as to the posting of the 5th corps, and also to inspect the position of the 3d corps, about which I was in doubt.”45
Meade told Wade that it was only upon arriving on Sickles’ front, shortly before 4:00 p.m., that he “found that General Sickles had taken up a position very much in advance of what it had been my intention that he should take,” and too far from support of the rest of the army. Meade told Wade that it was Sykes’ Fifth Corps, not Sickles’ Third Corps that had successfully manned and saved “Round Top mountain, which was the key-point of my whole position. If they [the enemy] had succeeded in occupying that, it would have prevented me from holding any of the ground which I subsequently held to the last.” Although the testimony of previous witnesses had ranged from calling Meade incompetent to an outright traitor, he did not direct any similar charges against Sickles. “It is not my intention in these remarks to cast any censure upon General Sickles. I am of the opinion that General Sickles did what he thought was for the best; but I differed with him in judgment. And I maintain that subsequent events proved that my judgment was correct, and his judgment was wrong.”46
Historians have wondered why Meade did not criticize Sickles more heavily, particularly in light of the slanderous accusations that were being fired at him. (Meade, rather curiously, told his wife after the session, “I did not spare Genl. S. or D.”) One possible scenario is that Meade was simply doing his best to avoid brawling with disgruntled exiles such as Sickles, Doubleday, and Howe. There was, after all, a war still to be fought and won. On the other hand, at face value, the simplest explanation is that Meade’s testimony probably reflected his true opinion. Meade simply believed that Sickles’ intentions had been for the best, and if he was guilty of anything, it was simply bad judgment. The professional and the amateur military men would never agree on what defined “best judgment.” In closing the session, Wade asked, “Is there anything further that you desire to say?” Meade’s reply was a fair one: “I would probably have a great deal to say if I knew what other people have said.”47
When Meade visited Secretary of War Edwin Stanton afterwards, he learned there was “much pressure from a certain party to get Hooker back in command.” Apparently the plan included using Sickles and others to bring the matter to a head through the committee. Although Stanton was an old friend of Sickles and had been disappointed by Meade’s failure to finish off Lee, the secretary believed Meade’s battlefield performance merited his support. Stanton assured a skeptical Meade that the scheme would not work.48
Despite Stanton’s assurances, Meade left Washington worried about the damage that these “mysterious whisperings” could do to his reputation. He labeled Sickles’ charge “absurd, that I had ordered a retreat at Gettysburg, and that the battle was fought in spite of all my efforts to prevent it. It is a melancholy state of affairs, however when persons like Sickles and Doubleday can, by distorting and twisting facts, and giving false coloring… take away the character of a man who up to that time had stood high in [public] estimation.” Meade hoped that a patient course of action would allow time for the truth to make itself known.49
The ambitious cavalry commander Alfred Pleasonton testified on March 7. Pleasonton was outwardly friendly with Sickles, having gushed after Chancellorsville, “[Y]ou will pardon me for expressing to you the admiration excited by the resources with which you met every difficulty on that trying occasion, and I can frankly assure you the courteous politeness and easy composure so conspicuous in all your actions inspired confidence in all around you.” But when Pleasonton was once asked privately what he thought of Sickles, he responded: “He is a Tammany Hall politician. If you like that sort of man, you will like Sickles.” Pleasonton’s cooperation with the committee has puzzled some, including Meade, who thought he had done Pleasonton some favors. However, one of Pleasonton’s staff officers was a Lieutenant James Wade—the son of Senator Ben Wade. By Pleasonton’s own admission, he became friendly with the elder Wade. Pleasonton continued the testimony against Meade while desperately attempting to inflate his own role. He testified that he had told Meade several times, “there was but one position in which for us to have a fight, and that was at Gettysburg.” It seemed that there was no shortage of officers seeking credit for selecting Gettysburg as a battlefield.50
David Birney testified that same day. In addition to being a Sickles partisan, Birney’s dislike of Meade dated at least as far back as Fredericksburg. Birney’s surviving correspondence leaves little doubt that he detested Meade. He wrote that as a brigade and later a division commander, Meade was “always badly beaten, troops flying in disorder.” While citizen-soldiers such as Birney and Sickles were (and still are) viewed disparagingly by most professional soldiers, the ridicule appears to have been mutual. In Birney’s view, despite the professionals’ vaunted education, Meade and his engineer friends were better suited to dig ditches than to exert “power over troops in command.” Meade’s “only salvation is that he is occasionally led by Warren, otherwise he is a vacillating clever man, who has good defensive qualities but is not aggressive and his campaigns will be voted a failure.”51
Birney also longed to see Hooker back in command, and so was presumably following the committee’s age
nda. “We must have Hooker back to this army and I believe he will be sent to us… God save us from Engineers.” Finally, Birney was proud of the Third Corps record, and told historian John Bachelder as much: “Gettysburg has glory enough for all, and the Third Corps is proud that its ‘misapprehension of orders’ carried it into and brought on the battle instead of taking its rest.” Birney was aware that Meade was contemplating the break-up of the Third Corps, something he considered a “diabolical scheme.”52
Birney admitted in his testimony that on “the 2d of July I was ordered to relieve Geary’s division of the 12th corps, that during the night had bivouacked on my left. I took position with my left at and on Round Top about 9 o’clock in the morning.” This contradicted Sickles’ claim that Geary had occupied no particular position. Birney also claimed that, after moving forward, Sickles had promised him support from both Sykes and Hancock, but Sykes had responded to Birney’s urgent requests by stating that “his men were making coffee and were tired, but that he would come up in time.” Although his testimony was not overtly hostile toward Meade (Birney saved that for his private correspondence), he reiterated the committee’s view that Meade was hesitant to “hazard a battle” at Gettysburg, and that a Williamsport attack would have resulted in the “utter defeat of the rebel army, I think.”53
James A. Hessler Page 35