James A. Hessler
Page 41
If he had planned to immerse himself in battlefield affairs, then Sickles could not have timed his return to the United States more perfectly. By the 1880s, the country was ready to remember the Civil War again. Membership in thousands of Grand Army of the Republic chapters surged across the north. Monument companies flourished. Publishing offered an outlet for participants to write their highly biased reminiscences. In the summer of 1878, during a GAR encampment at Gettysburg, Philadelphia native John M. Vanderslice was disturbed by the “apparent apathy or inactivity” of the GBMA and engineered a buyout of GBMA stock by veterans. They elected a board of directors dominated by GAR members in the GBMA’s 1880 election. The veterans now controlled the battlefield, and the 1880s began a surge in monuments and improvements that would ultimately lead to Gettysburg as we know it today.34
Major General Dan Sickles and former Third Corps commander Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman. National Archives
Chapter 17
Some Strange Perversion of History
The 61-year-old married Dan Sickles returned to New York and set up his bachelor quarters on Fifth Avenue. (There was an impression in the city that Dan was only 57, based upon an assumed birth date of 1823.) As if looking for something to do, Sickles re-started his law practice, which must have seemed less than exciting after decades on the national stage.
Dan had disowned his daughter Laura, who was by then living with her grandmother (Teresa’s widowed mother) and sliding into alcoholism after a brief and unhappy marriage. The Philip Barton Key murder was still in the public’s subconsciousness. One acquaintance remembered that as late as 1876 children sang, “General Sickles killed a man. Fried him in a frying pan.”
Dan still considered himself a soldier, and was moved by the sight of poverty-stricken war veterans begging along the streets. Perhaps his own Gettysburg wound (his missing leg) stirred up some of his sympathy. He reportedly visited his amputated leg frequently at the Army Medical Museum. On what must have been Sickles’ first visit, Curator George Otis was supposedly giving him a personal tour of the museum when Sickles finally lost patience, “Oh, yes, yes, but let us come to my leg!” When Otis led him to the limb’s exhibit, Sickles questioned Otis harshly: “Where is my foot? What have you done with my foot—that should have been shown too!” When the curator explained that exhibiting the foot really had nothing to do with the wound itself, the former general “became very angry and anathematized [sic] the museum very freely.”1
Having buried the hatchet over his performance in Madrid, Sickles threw himself into campaigning once again for U. S. Grant. The former Union general in chief had left office in early 1877 following his second term, but was making a run for a third term in the 1880 election. Sickles was still in bed with the Republicans, having declined a Republican Congressional nomination in 1876. On June 1, 1880, Sickles was in Chicago as part of the “National Convention of Republican Soldiers.” He was scheduled to make an address, as was his former Gettysburg opponent James Longstreet, who was one of Grant’s close friends. When Grant failed to win the Republican nomination, Sickles dismayed his new party members by throwing his support to Democratic candidate and former Second Corps commander Winfield Scott Hancock. Hancock eventually lost the popular vote to James Garfield by a minuscule margin and lost the Electoral College when he failed to carry Sickles’ own New York state.2
Sickles’ shattered leg on display at the Army Medical Museum. National Museum of Health & Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology
Hancock had managed to briefly attach himself to Gettysburg controversy when, according to artist James Kelly, Hancock told Kelly that Meade “did not care or think it advisable” to remain and fight at Gettysburg on the evening of July 2. (Kelly eventually passed this information on to Abner Doubleday, who used it publicly in his own book.) Hancock was forced to deny these statements during his presidential campaign in order to avoid alienating Meade’s friends. When Hancock died in February 1886, he was justifiably praised by many for his Gettysburg performance, which included helping to save the Union left on July 2. This should have triggered Sickles to criticize Hancock, but there was something about Hancock that Sickles had dared never attack. Instead he remembered Hancock favorably. “I never was more surprised in my life,” exclaimed Sickles upon learning of Hancock’s death. “In all that distinguished array of men on both sides of the great Civil War, none more than Hancock impersonated the best elements of manhood.”3
Having thrown himself into the camps of two presidential losers (Grant and Hancock) Sickles could expect no immediate favors from James Garfield’s White House. Sickles was back in the United States with no official role to channel his considerable energies, still considered himself a soldier, and had the time and financial means to travel. It was natural, then, that when the GAR began leading vast veteran pilgrimages to Gettysburg in the 1880s, Dan Sickles was somehow involved.
Dan’s role in Gettysburg’s development would evolve over the coming years, but one theme was always constant: he had to address criticism of his July 2 performance. Sickles used this as an opportunity to play offensively, to portray himself as Gettysburg’s ultimate hero. In 1882, during one of his earliest returns, he was asked (as he repeatedly would be), “if there was any serious question as to the position you took that day?” “Some critics who knew nothing of the circumstances or needs of the hour,” Sickles admitted, “have since indulged in some idle talk about my position, [and] about bringing on the battle too soon.” Referring to such talk as “absurdity,” he stuck to his guns and declared that if he had “been in the low ground running from Round Top towards Cemetery Hill” then the Third Corps would have “left Round Top entirely uncovered.” It was the beginning of a long line of half-truths, misstatements, and contradictions that continue to amuse, annoy, and perplex historians to this day.4
When Sickles was asked whether Meade had ever condemned his movements, he replied: “Not that I know of. He certainly never gave me an indication by word or act that he regarded my position at Gettysburg a mistake. Indeed, I do not see how he could have done so for…he looked over my position and declined to interfere with it, when I asked if he would suggest any change.” Recalling the events of July 2 many times during the 1880s and 1890s, he would repeatedly declare, “I see nothing that I would change either in it or in any of the operations of that day.” For better or worse, Dan Sickles would remain forever unrepentant concerning Gettysburg.5
Sickles traveled to Gettysburg in June 1882 to “assist in locating” troop positions. “I haven’t seen you for nigh twenty years,” crowed a one-legged veteran from Maine, “but I love you as well as ever.” Sickles and others traversed the field to locate and mark positions from the July 2 fight. The GBMA also hosted a veteran reception in Gettysburg’s Town Hall. When Sickles ambled down the aisle, “the crowd arose and accorded him a perfect ovation,” remembered one witness. John Bachelder performed as master of ceremonies. There was a call for Sickles to speak, but for once, remembered an eyewitness, he “could not be induced to speak.” The ceremonies lasted until after 10:00 p.m., after which the vets pressed forward to shake his hand. “Almost every other man was minus an arm or a leg,” observed a newspaper.6
Sickles returned to the Trostle farm, the site of his July 2 headquarters and where one of Porter Alexander’s artillery projectiles had changed his life. Former Third Corps artillery chief George Randolph accompanied him, as did one of the ubiquitous newspaper reporters who always seemed within shouting distance. Limping to the knoll where he had been wounded almost twenty years earlier, Sickles “seated himself on a great boulder” and vividly recalled that fateful day. A large crowd began to gather, and one veteran pushed his way through the throng saying, “I want to shake by the hand the man who saved the second day’s fight at Gettysburg.” If Sickles hadn’t fully realized it already, it was starting to occur to him that these were the battlefield votes that could be used to re-build his reputation.7
As in
terest in remembering the Civil War expanded, veterans increasingly began to squabble over who held the greatest claims to battlefield glory. These new battles were fought in the sometimes lucrative world of publishing and public speaking. Although General Meade’s Gettysburg report had not directed any censure at the fighting men of the Third Corps, the veterans still felt that they had been slighted, and began to speak out about it at various gatherings. During an 1883 address, Lt. Colonel Thomas Rafferty, formerly of the 71st New York, admitted “there were none braver, nobler, more conscientious, nor, as he subsequently proved, more capable of that command than Major-General George G. Meade.” Despite this professed admiration, however, Rafferty argued that “it unfortunately falls out that, in attempting to secure justice for my [Third] corps, I am compelled to take issue with him, and endeavor to show that, like all mankind, he was not infallible in his judgment. For General Meade did that corps an injustice, which I doubt not, were he living today, he would be the first to correct.” Sickles had moved forward because he feared an attack on his flank. Therefore, Rafferty argued, “Sickles contributed most essentially to the salvation of the army and the subsequent decisive victory.” Sickles’ actions were ultimately vindicated “in light of the simple fact that his predictions were verified. The enemy’s troops were massed and the battle fought out upon his position.” Rafferty blamed Meade for not adequately supporting Sickles. “[C]ompelled to make the best disposition he could, [Sickles] fell into the mistake which so many generals both of our own and other wars in world’s history committed, viz., in attempting to cover everything he covered nothing.”8
Rafferty also resurrected the old feud with the Fifth Corps, claiming that Sykes had refused to support Sickles because “his [Sykes’] men had just come off a very long march and were tired, and were then making coffee, but that he would be up in time…I submit that, under the circumstances, this would seem to have been an unfortunate time and place to be making coffee.” Of course, veterans such as Rafferty would have better served themselves by simply admitting that there was plenty of credit from multiple corps to share for the defense of Cemetery Ridge. Instead speeches like his that credited one corps at the expense of another simply led to further rebuttals and reopened old wounds better left closed (if not fully healed). Rafferty’s words demonstrated the loyalty that existed between Sickles and many of his men. For whatever his strategic and tactical faults, Sickles was at least the kind of leader whose men would fight for him twenty years later. Not every Civil War general could make such a claim.9
On a more constructive note, while earlier visits had provided opportunity for nostalgia and newspaper coverage, the year 1886 officially changed the nature of Sickles’ involvement with the Gettysburg battlefield. His lobbying efforts resulted in the New York State Legislature’s passing of an act to establish the New York Monuments Commission for the Battlefield of Gettysburg. Sickles was appointed honorary chairman of the commission, which also eventually included Gettysburg veterans Dan Butterfield, Henry Slocum, and Joseph Carr. For nearly the remainder of his life, Sickles would be consumed by a mission to appropriate and correctly place monuments to all New York regiments, batteries, and ranking commanders on the battlefield. Undertaking much more than the title “honorary chairman” would suggest, he threw himself into the role, despite his advancing age and ever-present wound, with the customary “zeal” he had exhibited in New York politics thirty years earlier. His responsibilities included securing appropriations, charting a battlefield map, overseeing the creation of a detailed history of the battle, and selecting and supervising the creation of new monuments. These new monuments would require dedication speeches, typically in front of enthusiastic veterans. Sickles’ new role ensured that he would become a welcome staple at battlefield reunions, re-fighting the action to a wide assortment of aging veterans and an increasing number of attendees who had not been born when he made his controversial move to the Peach Orchard.10
The makeup of the monument commission ensured that New York’s “history” of the battle would be favorable to the Third Corps. The mission was to “determine such positions and movements” by any means necessary and report to the state legislature “such recommendations as they shall judge proper to secure the permanent marking of the movements and positions of such troops.” Funds were appropriated to defray the commissioners’ expenses and publish a report of their actions. As chairman, the commission’s actions and history were clearly influenced by Sickles himself. He ensured that the New York history and monuments—and as a result a significant portion of Gettysburg’s monuments—would have to meet with his approval and tell the story he wanted told.11
In addition to his new role with the New York Monuments Commission, or probably because of it, the year 1886 witnessed what historian Richard Sauers labeled “a rapid escalation of the controversy” between Meade and Sickles. Dan’s increasing popularity as a speaker allowed him to return repeatedly to that favorite topic: that his move to the Peach Orchard had prevented George Meade from retreating at Gettysburg. These speeches frequently received national newspaper coverage, assuring that his message would be spread across the country. Prior to his next Gettysburg visit, he gave two speeches in April 1886 in Boston to a Third Corps reunion that also received wide press coverage. The Boston speeches showcased his unique ability to distort various aspects of the historical record. In addition to the old charge that Meade had wanted to retreat, other favorite themes included an alleged lack of direction from Meade on July 2, that the prominent advance ridge along the Emmitsburg Road actually commanded Little Round Top, an aggressive Sickles had held Longstreet in check, and a valiant defense had been made by an overwhelmed Third Corps until supported by tardy reinforcements.12
Sickles admitted that Little Round Top was the “key” to Cemetery Ridge: “You know it was the key of the position. I know it was,” he explained before arguing that the Peach Orchard was actually more important tactically because it was the objective that Lee and Longstreet had specifically wanted. “If you discover a piece of commanding ground that the enemy evidently wants, and intends to make effective use of against you…don’t you think it is pretty good tactics not to let him keep it, but to take it yourself? Now, I do not profess to be a great tactician, but I think there is not a soldier here that is not tactician enough to know that.”13
To many survivors of the Third Corps, the implication that their chief had nearly lost the battle was a stain on their own record—an implication that they also had nearly lost the battle. Sickles knew this hurt his men’s pride, and he used his speeches to paint himself as an aggressive fighter, leading a corps of aggressive fighters. “Now, I know it is said…that General Sickles was imprudent in engaging General Longstreet in battle when he had but one corps at his disposal,” he exclaimed. “That is true. I acknowledge the truth of that criticism. It may have been imprudent to advance and hold Longstreet at whatever sacrifice but was it not a sacrifice to save the key of the position?…I simply advanced out on to the battlefield and seized Longstreet by the throat and held him there. That is to say, you did it.” They had been abandoned, he continued, by a commanding general who hadn’t given him sufficient support, and then by the other corps who delayed in coming to his aid. “I rode along the lines that afternoon, hour after hour, witnessing the falling, the wounded, and the dying: witnessing the sacrifices—the ghastly sacrifices—you made until supports could come to aid you.”14
Later that summer Sickles used the battle’s twenty-third anniversary to return to Gettysburg; his men couldn’t wait to see him. Private Charles Foster, whose 2nd New Hampshire had fought near the Peach Orchard, told John Bachelder:
I intend if alive to be present at my old 3d Corps reunion to be held at Gettysburg July 2, 1886 under the auspices of the old one legged hero of that battle Daniel E. Sickles and he was the savior of that battle if anyone was not Gen. Hancock, as they wish us to believe at this late day after the old ones are all dead[.] They make the
next generation believe Hancock was the Hero but we don’t take any stock now, not but Hancock was a good General, but I believe in giving credit where it was due.…Everyone knows that the 2nd day was the main battle as nearly all the army was engaged.… ”15
Sickles joined many of his old friends at Gettysburg, including Henry Tremain, Charles Graham, George Randolph, and Joseph Carr for a battlefield reunion that was described as the largest held up until that time. Colonel Rafferty brought cheers and laughter from the assembled crowd as he introduced Sickles. “As I suppose that none of you know that man that made the victory of Gettysburg possible, I will have to introduce him to you.” Sickles frequently manipulated his unavoidably missing leg and set off his own round of cheers by responding, “You will excuse me if I remain seated.” When a voice in the crowd shouted, “Where’s Longstreet?,” Sickles answered with a grim smile, “You ought to have had enough of him on the 2nd of July, 1863.”16
Ignoring the recent Boston reunion and his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Sickles told his audience, “This is the first occasion I have ever taken to make a statement of facts concerning the part borne by the Third Army Corps in the battle of Gettysburg.” After reminding the audience of his missing leg for a second time, Sickles stated that he felt “keenly of the injustice” done by Halleck and Meade and told one of his favorite anecdotes. He repeated how he had requested a court of inquiry from Lincoln “for the purpose of correcting the serious errors contained” in Meade and Halleck’s reports. He drew loud cheers when he related that Lincoln had replied, “I am afraid what they say is true and God Bless you for it.…History will set you all right and give everybody his just place.” After lamenting his “twenty three years in unbroken silence,” Sickles directed his attention to Longstreet’s July 3 assault: “Public attention has always been directed toward Pickett’s attack…[but] The battle of the second was the battle of Gettysburg, long, stubborn, for hours doubtful, and from the beginning to the end terrible in the losses suffered by both sides.” To Sickles, July 2 alone would always be considered the Battle of Gettysburg.17