Public response to the “Sickles Bill” was generally positive, particularly among veterans. The resolution passed through the House and Senate, and on February 11, 1895, the President officially signed the bill establishing Gettysburg National Military Park. It was the most lasting initiative of Sickles’ long career; even if the vast majority of Gettysburg’s modern visitors are completely unaware of his involvement.98
Gettysburg’s population was unsure as to what all this meant for their future, a debate that has not completely abated today. The Compiler pondered the long-term result. “All indications point to the conclusion that the Battlefield of Gettysburg will become a National Park and that land all around our town will be purchased for the purpose,” explained the paper. “There are many different opinions to the effect which this may have on the business and general welfare of Gettysburg, which time only can decide.” The establishment of the park and Federal control of the roads appears to have been treated as two distinct issues and there were concerns in Gettysburg that the park would give the Federal government undue control of the local roads and land.99
Gettysburg National Military Park was not the first such park, but Sickles steered it into creation at the right moment in American history. Time had sufficiently cooled the sectional strife to allow the country to do more than just establish national cemeteries and place monuments. The Philadelphia Record editorialized that, “by securing and preserving those fields intact, as representative examples of the greatest battles of the rebellion, the Government will be able to perpetuate their history in a concrete physical form for all time to come.” Sickles’ historical critics often point out that surely someone else would have eventually established Gettysburg National Military Park if Sickles had not done so himself. Perhaps, but no one else bothered to do so in the four intervening years since the designation at Chickamauga, and it is a matter of history that Sickles got the job done. Not only that, but the park accepted his boundary designation well into the 1970s—all of which serves as proof that no other player in the Gettysburg story had the combined battlefield and postwar influence as did Dan Sickles.100
With Gettysburg’s future attended to, Sickles closed out his final days in Washington. The press acknowledged his long, and sometimes distinguished, service. “The one Democratic Congressman who can look back upon his record in the present House with pride is Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, of New York. He has by his voice and his vote proven that a man may call himself a Democrat and still be a patriotic American in every sense of the word.…After the fourth of March he will retire to private life, and he will carry with him the good wishes of all true patriots.”101
Not surprisingly, he remained busy in “retirement.” In May, he attended the last official meeting of the GBMA at the Springs Hotel in Gettysburg. In October 1894, the GBMA board had voted to transfer nearly 600 acres of GBMA land, along with seventeen miles of avenues giving access to 320 monuments, to the United States government, pending official consent of the association’s stockholders. Now at the final GBMA meeting in May 1895, resolutions were passed instructing the officers to execute the necessary deeds of conveyance to the government. On motion of Sickles, the vice president and secretary were directed to prepare vouchers for claims outstanding against the GBMA. Sickles made another motion to authorize the compilation, publication, and distribution of the organization’s history. Unfortunately many aging contemporaries continued to pass away, and both General Joseph Carr and historian John Bachelder had died since the last GBMA meeting. Sickles and McPherson were appointed to prepare minutes on Carr’s death, as well as on the recently deceased Henry Slocum. When the meeting adjourned, dinner was held in the hotel’s Ladies Parlor. “At the head [of the banquet table] sat Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, of New York,” the Compiler reported, “who in his peculiarly happy manner presided.” The large dinner broke up at midnight with attendees promising that they would continue to gather socially for as long as they were alive.102
The possibility still remained that Sickles would return to his Congressional seat and fill the void created by Andrew Campbell’s death. The special election to replace Campbell wasn’t held until November 1895, and Tammany didn’t convene to nominate their candidate until October. The initial presumption was that Sickles would indeed return, but Charles E. Foote, “said to be Gen. Sickles’ secretary,” told the assemblage “that he was authorized to state that Gen. Sickles was not a candidate.” Foote asked that Sickles’ name be withdrawn, but this was unnecessary since Sickles had not been put before the convention as a potential candidate. Tammany instead unanimously chose Congressional veteran Amos J. Cummings, who beat his Republican opponent in November and took Sickles’ House seat in December. Sickles’ political career was over once again, this time permanently. He was too old to make another comeback in Congress, but he was not finished with public life. In addition to the New York Monuments Commission, Sickles and Butterfield were also members of the Chickamauga Battlefield Committee. Maintaining a vigorous travel schedule of a man half his age, he continued to attend reunions throughout the country.103
Cronies such as Henry Tremain also traveled in support of the Third Corps cause. In September 1897, Tremain spoke at the dedication of the Excelsiors’ 73rd New York monument (the “Second Fire Zouaves”) at Gettysburg. The monument was placed east of the Emmitsburg Road, opposite the Sherfy barnyard, where Tremain had personally led the 73rd into action on July 2, 1863. Tremain returned to his own long-time favorite theme: that the protection of the Emmitsburg Road had led to Sickles’ decision to move forward, and “it became essential to decide if the Emmitsburg Road, by which we had marched was to be held or abandoned.…In the absence of explicit orders to abandon it, military necessity and good discipline required it should be held.” With this statement, the pro-Sickles camp perhaps reached its peak of illogic. Tremain’s argument boiled down to this: the absence of Meade’s orders actually permitted the Third Corps advance.104
Sickles was presented with a Congressional Medal of Honor on October 30, 1897. Critics have scoffed that it took decades for the medal to be awarded, but this was not necessarily an uncommon practice (Joshua Chamberlain of the 20th Maine, for example, waited until 1893 for his medal), particularly in cases where political favors were needed to buttress claims of battlefield gallantry. More difficult to explain was the fact that Sickles became the only corps commander to receive a medal for Gettysburg, and he did so amid accusations that he and Tremain had abused the system to recommend each other. (Accusations of abuse in the award process, it must be pointed out, became increasingly common as the years progressed and were not limited to Sickles by any means.) His decades of portraying himself as the hero of Gettysburg’s second day resulted in a citation that read: “Displayed most conspicuous gallantry on the field, vigorously contesting the advance of the enemy and continuing to encourage his troops after being himself severely wounded.”105
Many survivors were unimpressed with Sickles’ attempts to control history. General Alexander Webb was a commissioner on Sickles’ New York Monuments Commission. Webb never fell into the Sickles camp, having once told John Bachelder, “I would stop bogus monuments at once. Just [as] I would stop the bogus claims of Sickles, Butterfield & such.” On another occasion, Webb told sculptor James Kelly, “I dispute his [Sickles’] claims; have all along. He knows I did. He could fight, yes; as a tactician, no.” Kelly once asked Webb, “Why do the officers let Sickles run things?” Webb replied: “They [other officers] have no moral courage. He [Sickles] is a bad man and they are afraid of him, and the reporters like his whiskey and cigars and they all stick to him.”106
In 1895, New York had allocated $6, 000 for Sickles’ Monuments Commission to publish a report of its actions, including a “brief history of each New York regiment and battery” that participated in the battle. In November 1898, about a year before the report (authored by Lt. Col. William Fox) appeared, General Webb sent Fox a memo stating that he refused to sign the report
as long as a passage existed resurrecting the old allegation that Meade intended to retreat. “I would be condemned by every officer of the Army of the Potomac who knew General Meade, if I were to sign a report stating that he issued an order for the army to leave Gettysburg.” Webb’s tactic worked and the final report did not include the damaging passage.107
Despite this, the commission’s final report as published in 1899 was extremely favorable to Sickles’ Gettysburg performance.108 His stamp of influence on the content was everywhere. Regarding Sickles’ advanced position:
It was a strong tactical position. In its rear lay a wheatfield and other large areas of open ground which, in connection with the roads near by, furnished the necessary ground for maneuvering troops. On the front and south, its elevation, crowned with artillery, commanded the long approaches and open fields over which the enemy must move in attacking either the Round Tops or the position itself.109
While Webb had successfully prevented Sickles and Fox from resurfacing the charge that Sickles’ move had prevented Meade from retreating, they still accused Meade’s “instructions” of being “somewhat indefinite and allowed some latitude, owing to his purpose to attack elsewhere.” Sickles thus had to make a decision upon which “the fate of the battle might depend. His corps comprised the only troops on that part of the field, and the enemy was massing on his immediate front and flank. If he occupied the Round Tops he could not hold the ground between him and Hancock. If he remained where he was, the Round Tops would be occupied by the enemy, and his position become immediately untenable.”110
Fox’s contention that Sickles lacked sufficient manpower to hold Meade’s line failed to explain, of course, why Sickles then moved into a longer line. Fox explained it this way: Sickles “knew the fighting quality of his corps well enough to feel assured that he could hold such position until the general commanding could bring up the necessary reserves to secure the position and achieve a victory.” The new position would be “impregnable [if] held by a proper number of troops, properly supported.” In other words, Sickles supposedly moved into his longer line under the presumption that Meade would give him enough support from the other corps.111
As has often been noted in the Gettysburg literature, Sickles’ decision was strongly influenced by the debacle at Chancellorsville: “Was it to be Chancellorsville again?” The Emmitsburg Road ridge was important, Sickles and Fox argued, because Confederate control would cause Meade’s army to “lose communication with the strategic position at Emmitsburg.” Rather than blame Sickles’ Gettysburg movement on his Chancellorsville withdrawal from Hazel Grove, as Gettysburg authors frequently assume, Sickles and Fox argued that the similarities actually lie in the massing of enemy troops on his flank.112 Sickles had witnessed firsthand what happened when Stonewall Jackson massed on General Howard’s Eleventh Corps flank at Chancellorsville, and was determined (so he wrote) to prevent the same thing from happening again at Gettysburg:
The movement of the Third Corps is often described as an advance to the Emmitsburg Road, creating thereby an erroneous impression. The real movement was consisted in the left wheel of Birney’s Division to the south.…Two-thirds of the corps faced southward to meet a flank attack which soon came from that direction. Chancellorsville was lost through a failure to make just such a move in just such a contingency.113
Of course, such a “left wheel” by Birney would have been unnecessary had they remained on Cemetery Ridge. Still, when reading Sickles’ many and varied excuses for his actions at Gettysburg, it becomes apparent that he was equally (or more) influenced by memories of Jackson’s infantry pouncing onto Howard’s flank, rather than his forced withdrawal from Hazel Grove. Perhaps had Jackson’s flank attack never occurred, Sickles would have spent July 2, 1863 securely in position on Cemetery Ridge.
Sickles, Longstreet, and Dan Butterfield were scheduled to return to Gettysburg once again for a Memorial Day parade and speeches in 1899. The local Star and Sentinelcommented that the “presence of Sickles and Longstreet is particularly interesting because of the fact that the two Generals were arrayed on opposite sides in the great battle.” The paper attempted to summarize the battle “briefly and happily” by noting that “the weakness of [Sickles’ advance] position was in the fact that Little Round Top was left unoccupied…[But] it should be added that the exhaustion of the Confederates in driving back Sickles from the position which he had assumed had much to do in rendering [the Confederates] unable to drive the Union from its final position.” The Philadelphia Times’coverage contained a perceptive analysis of the postwar controversies that had entwined both Generals. The “two subordinates who confronted each other on Meade’s left and Lee’s right were diametrically opposed to those of their respective chiefs.” The July 2 battle had put both generals “on the defensive historically, and the Gettysburg battlefield has always had a keener interest than it possesses today for any of the survivors.”114
Poor health prevented Longstreet from attending in 1899, and he was instead represented by his son, Lieutenant James Longstreet, of the U.S. Army. The younger Longstreet had recently returned from service in Cuba. Sickles attended and spoke of the “good feelings” that now existed between both sides. “I am getting a little mixed with these Memorial Day exercises. Formerly it was the custom to hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree; tear the Rebels to pieces and wave the bloody shirt. Now Longstreet is invited to Gettysburg…and so many of the boys in gray are now boys in blue we should reverse the exercises on the programme in justice to the new order of things.” Sickles admitted, “I get tired of the old story and like the new story better.”115
“I am sorry that Longstreet is not here,” Dan said. “I would have been glad to say something about his assault and the impression he made upon me; things that he would have been glad to hear.” Was Sickles willing to admit some regret at his “famous move” toward the Peach Orchard? “I can’t come without asking: ‘Sickles, suppose the battle of Gettysburg were to be fought tomorrow under circumstances and conditions that existed on July 2, 1863, what would you do?’…I would do tomorrow under the conditions and circumstances that then existed exactly what I did on July 2.” Reflecting upon almost thirty-six years of controversy, he added, “I have heard all the criticisms and read all the histories and after hearing and reading all I would say to them I would do what I did and accept the verdict of history on my acts. It was a mighty good fight both made and I am satisfied with my part in it.”116
Chapter 18
The Civil War is Only a Memory
As the twentieth century dawned, Dan Sickles must have reflected on the momentous changes he had witnessed (and had frequently participated in) within American society. “In my time I have seen the birth of railways, steam-ships, telegraphs, telephones, and the applications of steam and electricity to all forms of industries and transportation,” he told a rapt Fredericksburg audience in May 1900. The reconciliation of North and South was another frequent theme in his speeches. “It is astonishing how much I like a man after I have fought him,” he answered in reference to a question on how he felt about former enemies like James Longstreet. The men who once wore gray were now the “new South, the great South which has risen from the ashes of ‘61-’65; the progressive South which was born again.…Today the South and North know each other better than ever before.”1
He also continued to use his public platform to lobby for preservation of battlefields besides Gettysburg. “Within a small area near the spot where we are seated, are the great battlefields of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, and the Wilderness, where more men fought and fell than upon any space of equal dimensions on the face of the earth. These famous battlegrounds should be made a National Military Park. Our battlefield parks are an American institution.…They hand down our military traditions to succeeding generations. They keep alive the martial character of our people. They teach the American boy that he belongs to his country and that his country belongs to him.”2
/> Although no longer active on a national level, Sickles remained involved in New York politics, running for Alderman in New York’s Fifth District and denouncing the current Tammany administration. “There have been times when Tammany Hall was a respectable organization, and I remember such occasions very well, but unfortunately they are long since past.” He also served as President of the Board for the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Bath, New York. In an ominous preview of what was to come, the state launched an investigation over allegations of financial misuse by board trustees. The state decided that there was “no supervision” over disposition of funds and the trustees were “lacking in the proper appreciation of the responsibility cast upon them.” Sickles and two other board members resigned. The affair was more proof that, despite his many organizational talents, it was not wise to trust Sickles with large sums of money.3
Sickles and Dan Butterfield remained closely identified for the remainder of their lives, if not as close in their friendship as they had once been. For his part, Butterfield remained hated by many of his old military comrades. Whatever contempt Alexander Webb felt for Sickles, it seems to have paled against his disgust for the Army of the Potomac’s former chief of staff. Webb told James Kelly in 1899 that he considered Butterfield a “lying little knave. He [Butterfield] is one of the most corrupt, scheming, lying scoundrels.…He pretends that he was wounded at Gettysburg. And Sickles and I who were writing the official history for the State cross off his claim. He was hit in the throat with the branch of a tree. He tied a handkerchief around it with the bloody side out. Gen. Meade showed him up.…Col. Nicholson had to hold me in the streets of Philadelphia to keep me from caning him.” Webb also told Kelly that Sickles and Butterfield had some sort of falling out and were “not so much [friends] as they used to be. Sickles does not seem to like having his name coupled with Butterfield so much.” Butterfield remained active in the postwar years, and received a Medal of Honor in 1892 for his role at Gaines’ Mill. In April 1901, the sixty-nine year old suffered a stroke at his Fifth Avenue home in New York and died on July 17. The business executive turned amateur soldier was buried with full military honors at West Point, an institution he never attended. Sickles memorialized Butterfield as contributing “largely to our success at Gettysburg” due to his “rapid concentration of our widely separated columns.” Of the infamous Hooker-Sickles-Butterfield trio, only one remained. And as the last survivor, Dan would lose many more friends during the coming years.4
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