Generals Joseph Carr (left), Dan Sickles (center), and Charles Graham (right) return to Gettysburg and the Trostle farm, circa 1886. GNMP
Veterans of the other Union corps were not so accepting. At a tribute to John Reynolds, speaker Colonel A. Wilson Norris took both Howard and Sickles to task (without acknowledging that Sickles had received conflicting orders from Reynolds and Meade) for not arriving earlier in support of the First Corps on July 1. General Carr took great exception to this claim, and remarked that he was “pained” to hear Norris call Sickles “a coward.…There was no such order as that described by Colonel Norris issued to General Sickles. He had orders from General Meade to remain at Emmitsburg and reconnoiter for a position. He not only did not receive an order to come to Gettysburg, but his corps started for Gettysburg without his knowledge.” Despite such continuing differences of opinion, Sickles enjoyed the activities and renewed limelight. In his closing remarks he “spoke feelingly of the cordial greeting he had received and the many courtesies extended to him since he arrived in Gettysburg.”18
Sickles’ widely publicized 1886 reunion performance triggered an angry response from a former Meade aide named Major James C. Biddle. Writing in the Philadelphia Weekly Press, Biddle claimed that Sickles “through ignorance, or from a worse motive, disobeyed the orders of General Meade, his commander, and by that disobedience imperiled the safety of the army, which was saved from serious disaster by the energy of General Meade in sending and bringing reinforcements from other portions of his line.”19
Sickles’ speech even resulted in a public counterattack from the long-dead George Meade. In 1869, prior to Meade’s death, G. G. Benedict of Vermont had defended Meade’s reputation from Sickles partisans in the Burlington Free Press. Those editorial comments had been passed along to Meade, who then corresponded with Benedict in March 1870. Benedict had not made Meade’s correspondence public, but decided to do so in August 1886 based on “the recent elaborate attack upon General Meade’s military reputation, made by General Sickles in his address at Gettysburg.”20
Benedict had Meade’s correspondence printed in the Philadelphia Weekly Presson August 11, 1886. Meade deferred to his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War as his principal statement “against the charges and insinuations of Generals Sickles and Butterfield.” Meade continued: “I have avoided any controversy with either of these officers though both have allowed no opportunity to pass unimproved which permitted them to circulate their ex parte statements, and…to distort history for their purposes.” In referring to the alleged July 2 retreat order, Meade told Benedict that “both [Sickles and Butterfield] perfectly understand what I meant,” and that “I did not retreat when I could have done so with perfect ease at any moment.”21 Meade also denied that Sickles had actually forced Lee and Longstreet to attack:
As to General Sickles having by his advance brought on the attack, and thus compelled the battle which decided the war…it is a very favorite theory with the partisans of this officer. But these gentlemen ignore the fact that of the 18, 000 men killed and wounded on the field during the whole battle, more than two-thirds were lost on the second day, and but for the timely advance of the Fifth Corps [onto Little Round Top]…where they met the enemy almost on the crest and had a desperate fight to secure the position—I say, but for these circumstances, over which Sickles had neither knowledge nor control, the enemy would have secured Round Top, planted his artillery there, commanding the whole battlefield, and what the result would have been I leave you to judge.22
Meade had not severely criticized Sickles in his Gettysburg report because he “honestly believed General Sickles did not know where I wished him to go, and that his error arose from a misapprehension of my orders.” After publishing the report, Meade later learned from John Geary, whom Sickles was supposed to relieve on Little Round Top during the morning, that Geary had sent a staff officer to Sickles notifying him of the position and its importance. Geary told Meade that he had waited for some time to be relieved by the Third Corps, but when “his patience was exhausted,” he finally withdrew to join the rest of his Twelfth Corps on the Union right flank. Meade considered this “evidence that he [Sickles] knew the position occupied by Geary’s division, or could have known, and yet failed to occupy it.”23
Saving his harshest criticism for last, Meade wrote that “Sickles’ movement practically destroyed his own corps, the Third, caused a loss of 50 per cent in the Fifth Corps, and very heavily damaged the Second Corps; as I said before, producing 66 per cent of the loss of the whole battle, and with what result—driving us back to the position he was ordered to hold originally.” Meade claimed these crippling losses prevented him “from having the audacity in the offense that I might otherwise have had,” laying the blame for Meade’s inability to destroy Lee’s army right back into Sickles’ lap. “If this is an advantage—to be so crippled in battle without attaining an object—I must confess I cannot see it.”24
Meade’s arguments were persuasive, proving once again that Meade could hold his own in any verbal battle with Sickles. But by 1886, Sickles held a distinct advantage over Meade: the army commander was dead and unable to repeatedly present his case to the veterans. Still, since Meade’s statement was in the public domain, Sickles was forced to use the New York Times to issue “a strong reply” of his own. Sickles always called upon loyal friends when in trouble, and he invited both Tremain and Charles Graham to participate so “that they might correct him if he made any misstatements.” Apparently forgetting the recent Gettysburg reunion, and the Boston speeches, Sickles again made the incredulous statement that “I have never spoken of his [Meade’s] conduct at Gettysburg except in my own testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War.”25
Sickles called Meade’s accusations “altogether mistaken” and argued that Meade “contradicts his own official report of the battle…and his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War.” Sickles reminded the Times that the Committee’s final report had “justified me and censured Gen. Meade.” He also pointed out that Meade’s own testimony had been quite moderate in his criticism of Sickles, thereby implying that Meade must not have felt that Sickles’ actions were worthy of censure. Since Meade declined Sickles’ offer to pull back from the Peach Orchard and in fact made no “modifications” to the new line, the implication was clear: Meade presumably approved of the new line. These were favorite tactics used by Sickles during the postwar years: he frequently used Meade’s lack of direct criticism as apparent proof that Meade had approved of Sickles’ Gettysburg actions.26
Dan resorted to an outright lie in answering accusations that he was to relieve portions of Geary’s Twelfth Corps division on the Union left: “the Twelfth Corps was never at any time, until the very close of the battle on the 2nd of July, in position on the left. The position of the Twelfth Corps during all the day of the 2nd was on the right flank.” Sickles attacked Meade’s instructions as being “all verbal and extremely vague and indefinite.” Since Meade himself had testified that he had provided Sickles some discretion in posting his troops “within the limits of the general instructions I have given you,” Sickles implied that if anyone was at fault it was Meade for not directing more specific attention to his left flank.27
Saving his favorite accusation for last, Sickles once again credited his advance with preventing Meade from abandoning the field. Again using Meade’s own actions against him, Sickles misread a portion of Meade’s 3:00 p.m. telegram to Henry Halleck as evidence of Meade’s intent to retreat. Sickles claimed that Buford’s cavalry had been sent to Westminster as part of this retreat plan, and he also included Pleasonton’s claim that the cavalry chief had been busy gathering all cavalry and artillery in the rear “to cover the retreat of the army from Gettysburg.” As further evidence, Henry Slocum had also given evidence that Meade considered Gettysburg “no place to fight a battle.” As Sickles told it, Meade had a vendetta against any officer who deserved a share of t
he credit for Gettysburg, and that inaccuracies were standard in Meade’s reports, partly because “General Meade knew nothing of Gettysburg.” Sickles noted with satisfaction that Congress had officially thanked General Howard for selecting “our position on Cemetery Ridge.” Again Sickles claimed that he had advised Meade to concentrate at Gettysburg on the evening of July 1 and that Sickles, too, was a member of this fraternity that had selected the battlefield.28
Overall, Sickles’ latest attacks offered little new information. But they did document the extent to which he would stretch the truth, and proved that time had not subdued his passion for defending his role at Gettysburg. The battle with Meade was now resurfacing in a very public forum since the New York Times had a considerably wider audience than the typical veteran reunion. Twenty-three years after the last shots had been fired at Gettysburg, the Meade-Sickles battle for Cemetery Ridge was opened once again, with the deceased Meade in no position to mount an effective counterattack.
Other veterans were now free to join in. Not all of the Third Corps survivors were as loyal as Tremain or Graham. The Pioneer Pressin St. Paul, Minnesota published a rebuttal from the “Chief of Staff for General Humphreys,” most probably Captain Carswell McClellan. The writer ridiculed Sickles’ claims that he had, on the evening of July 1, possessed sufficient knowledge of the battlefield to make any recommendations whatsoever to Meade. It was based on Sickles’ marching orders that Humphreys’ division had nearly tramped into Longstreet’s camps near the Black Horse Tavern that same evening. “[S]tripped of all mystery, special pleading, and attempted recrimination,” McClellan explained, “the story of [July 2] is simply told.” Meade’s orders to cover Little Round Top were “known at division headquarters” and Sickles had instead chosen to advance into a new position at nearly a “90 degree” angle and with “both flanks in the air.” “It requires no abstruse [sic] technical learning to discover the absurd weakness of the disposition.” The writer argued that future historians would have no trouble dispelling Sickles’ and other malcontents’ true motives, and that no damage would be done to “the wreath so honestly won and modestly worn by George G. Meade.”29
Former Confederate opponents also took up the cudgel against Sickles. Lafayette McLaws, who led a division against the Third Corps line on July 2, rejected Sickles’ arguments: “if the public are not satisfied…that General Sickles’ command was driven back from the position it held on that 2nd of July, and that the Confederates held them until ordered to retire therefrom [sic] on the 3rd…[then] the word ‘victory’ must mean something in the more modern vernacular which is not given to it in the dictionaries.” McLaws sarcastically added that the public should remember the true facts surrounding the defense of Little Round Top “before the crown of victory can be accorded to him [Sickles].” McLaws would never share James Longstreet’s desire to fall into line with Sickles’ arguments.30
Although he didn’t have a monument of his own at Gettysburg, the year 1887 saw Sickles achieve a certain permanence at the battlefield. In November, the names of Union generals were selected for roads running through the battlefield. The lane stretching from Devil’s Den through the Wheatfield was dubbed “Sickles Avenue.” It was certainly an appropriate choice, since the July 2 battle may never have occurred there had it not been for Sickles’ advance. One wonders about Sickles’ reaction to the naming of the road running over Little Round Top in honor of George Sykes, signifying the Fifth Corps’ role in defending what the Third Corps had abandoned.31
Sickles returned again to Gettysburg for the twenty-fifth anniversary in July 1888. Although overall Confederate turnout was below expectations, the star attraction was not Sickles or any other Union veteran, but “the man of all others who is never permitted to spend a moment alone is a tall soldierly-looking man with white hair and flowing gray whiskers.” Whatever damage the battle had done to his reputation in the South, former Confederate corps commander James Longstreet was the town’s biggest celebrity during the summer of 1888. “When it was rumored that Longstreet had arrived at the Springs Hotel hundreds at once began a pilgrimage in that direction.” Longstreet attended ceremonies on McPherson’s Ridge near John Reynolds’ kill site and at one point during the festivities, so many Union veterans swarmed Longstreet that the viewing platform collapsed, sending him tumbling into the arms of his former opponents. Reporters noticed that his health seemed to be failing. Twenty-five years had mellowed Longstreet’s views. He accepted the battle’s outcome as fate: “there is evidence in its plan and conduct that the hand of God was with the cause of the Federal and against that of the Confederate army.”32
Postwar image of James Longstreet, circa 1870s. National Archives
Sickles and Longstreet met for lunch on June 30. A curious crowd gathered “to see how these old opponents on the battlefield would greet each other.” Sickles, after all, “still carried a lively recollection of the unceremonious manner in which he had been handled” by Longstreet on that afternoon so long ago. Anyone expecting a renewal of hostilities was quickly disappointed. “As Sickles entered the dining room Longstreet caught sight of him. Pushing his chair to the rear, the Southerner reached out his right hand. It was quickly grasped by Sickles, around whose shoulder Longstreet threw his disengaged arm. They were friends in a moment, and there was very little eaten at that particular table for 30 minutes as they talked about events a quarter of a century old.”33
Longstreet later toured Little Round Top with Dan Butterfield. While Butterfield showed Longstreet the site of the proposed 44th New York regimental monument, they were joined by Sickles, Slocum, and Carr, who all arrived from town. The 146th New York’s monument was being dedicated nearby, “but as soon as word passed that Longstreet was on the hill one-half of the spectators left their places and scampered to the spot where the famous group was. They found Sickles sitting on a rock at the base of a tree, his leg stump resting on the ground. Gen. Longstreet stood at his right. The crowd rushed forward eagerly to catch Longstreet by the hand” and provided an enthusiastic reception.34
While riding down Hancock Avenue, Sickles turned to Longstreet and said, “General, there has been a great deal of controversy about the position I took; its precipitating your attack and causing a great loss of life to the Union army.” In view of the fact that Meade had disapproved of the advanced position, Sickles asked Longstreet in “which position would you have preferred to attack me in?” Longstreet took the cue without missing a beat, “Why, on the continuation of Hancock’s lines, by all means. It would have enabled me to obtain a much better view of your line and give me more open field in which to work. I was thoroughly acquainted with Hancock’s position, but had to go at you in the Peach Orchard without exactly knowing what I was meeting.” When the party returned to town, Sickles invited Longstreet to dinner at the Springs Hotel. The carriage was “loudly cheered by Union veterans on the Chambersburg Street, Generals Sickles and Longstreet acknowledging the compliment by lifting their hats.”35
Even when Sickles did not speak, monument dedications were still a useful tool in promoting his Third Corps agenda. Fortunately for him, there never seemed to be a shortage of contemporaries who admired his military skills. The veterans of his Excelsior Brigade gathered on July 2 for the laying of their monument’s cornerstone. Chaplain Joe Twichell gave the oration and credited Sickles with winning the battle. “He was destined to be the master spirit” of the second day “by which we cannot doubt it will be the settled verdict of time, the Battle of Gettysburg was won.” Meanwhile, at the dedication of the 86th New York’s (Ward’s brigade) monument near Devil’s Den, another speaker also praised Sickles. When Longstreet launched his July 2 attack squarely on the Third Corps’ front, the audience was told that “at such a time, commanded by an inefficient officer, the corps would have been easily destroyed. But General Sickles was equal to the emergency. A braver man never graced a saddle.”36
Off the field, in a scene that would become increasingly common in the
coming decade, April 1889 saw the passing of another old comrade. Charles Graham, who had been with Dan since the old days in New York, and had followed him into Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard, died of pneumonia on April 15. Graham had returned to civil engineering projects in New York following the war, and was appointed by President Hayes in 1878 as Surveyor of the Port of New York. Graham had served on the GBMA during the 1870s and in 1886 was appointed engineer of the New York Monuments Commission, a post he held until his death. Both Sickles and Henry Tremain were among the pallbearers at the funeral, which was largely attended by army officers.37
As Union monuments began to increase in quantity, so did the squabbles between parties disputing regimental and battery positions. Given his increasing prominence at the battlefield, and his official position with New York’s Monument Commission, it was also only natural that Sickles was frequently requested to intervene. At the twenty-fifth anniversary, Henry Hunt chided Sickles over the inaccurate placement of Captain James Smith’s New York battery monument at Devil’s Den. Major John L. Beveridge asked Sickles to assist in moving the 8th New York Cavalry’s monument, which was in the position occupied by Beveridge’s 8th Illinois cavalrymen. Captain James Hall asked Sickles for help in placing his 2nd Maine battery’s monument. Sickles also asked the GBMA to comply with the veterans’ wishes in properly placing the 111th New York’s monument. In 1891, when John Bachelder was trying to enlist the New York legislature’s help in honoring George Greene’s brigade, he learned just how powerful Sickles had become when a veteran admonished, “With General Sickles against you your bill would be likely to fail unless General Slocum aids you,” and “if Sickles does not fight it, it will go through.”38
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