George Meade

• 1. Introduction

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  George Gordon Meade woke in the early morning hours of the 28th of June 1863, to a messenger at his tent. He assumed he was being arrested. Army politics had dogged him for years, and at that moment in the middle of a war, a midnight visit from a presidential envoy seemed like the end of his career. Instead, it was the beginning of the most consequential three days of his life. He had just been handed command of the entire Army of the Potomac, three days before the largest battle ever fought on American soil.

  Meade is one of the most underestimated figures of the Civil War. He won the battle that turned the tide at Gettysburg, yet spent the rest of the war watching a superior officer take the credit. He built lighthouses on the Florida reef, charted the Great Lakes, and designed a hydraulic lamp still used in American lighthouses long after his death. He served under generals who were celebrated while he was overlooked, and he earned a nickname, Old Snapping Turtle, that captured both his ferocity and the way his colleagues saw him. What drove a reluctant West Point graduate and meticulous engineer to become the man who stopped Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg? And why did history so quickly move on?

• 2. An Unlikely Soldier

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  Meade was born on the 31st of December 1815, in Cadiz, Spain, the eighth of ten children, in a family whose fortunes were already beginning to unravel. His father, Richard Worsam Meade, had prospered through Spanish-American trade and served as a U.S. naval agent, but he backed Spain during the Peninsular War and was financially ruined. The family returned to Philadelphia in 1817 in precarious straits.

  When his father died in 1828, twelve-year-old George was moved from school to school, including one run briefly by Salmon P. Chase in Washington, D.C., before Chase's other obligations shut it down. He ended up at the Mount Hope Institution in Baltimore. West Point was not a dream; it was a practical option for a family without money.

  He entered the academy on the 1st of July 1831, and made no secret of preferring law school. He graduated 19th in his class of 56 in 1835, accumulating 168 demerits along the way, only 32 short of the threshold for mandatory dismissal. His indifference to military dress and drill was evident from the start. After the minimum required year of service, he resigned from the army in the fall of 1836 and went to work as a private surveyor for his brother-in-law on a railroad project in Florida. He rejoined the army in 1842 only because Congress passed a measure barring civilians from the Corps of Topographical Engineers, the work he actually wanted to do.

• 3. Lighthouses and Surveys

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  In November 1843, Meade was assigned to lighthouse construction under Major Hartman Bache, and the work suited him. His first project was the Brandywine Shoal lighthouse in Delaware Bay. By 1851, he was leading construction of the Carysfort Reef Light in Key Largo.

  Over the following years, he built or directed the construction of the Sand Key Light in Key West, Jupiter Inlet Light in Jupiter, Florida, and Sombrero Key Light in the Florida Keys. When Bache was reassigned to the West Coast, Meade took over the Fourth District covering New Jersey and Delaware and added the Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island, Absecon Light in Atlantic City, and Cape May Light in Cape May to his resume. He also designed a hydraulic lamp adopted in several American lighthouses.

  In 1857, he was given command of the Lakes Survey mission of the Great Lakes, completing the survey of Lake Huron and extending survey work on Lake Michigan down to Grand and Little Traverse Bays. Before Meade's command, water level readings across the Great Lakes were taken locally with temporary gauges, with no uniform plane of reference. In 1858, acting on his recommendation, instrumentation was installed to tabulate consistent records across the entire basin. He stayed with the survey until the outbreak of war in 1861. His war record would eventually overshadow this engineering career, but the lighthouses he built still stand.

• 4. Baptism by Fire

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  Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin's strong recommendation secured Meade's appointment as brigadier general of volunteers on the 31st of August 1861. He was given command of the 2nd Brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserves, initially assigned to building defenses around Washington, D.C.

  Real combat came quickly. At Glendale on the 30th of June 1862, in the middle of the Seven Days Battles, his brigade was in the thick of it. The brigade lost 1,400 men that day. Meade himself was shot in the right arm and through the back and was sent home to Philadelphia to recover. He was back in the field in time for the Second Battle of Bull Run, where his brigade made a stand on Henry House Hill to cover the retreat of the Union Army.

  At the Battle of South Mountain, filling in for division commander John F. Reynolds, Meade's men attacked and captured a strategic position near Turner's Gap held by Robert E. Rodes' troops, forcing the withdrawal of other Confederate forces. Corps commander Joseph Hooker, watching the assault, reportedly declared, "Look at Meade! Why, with troops like those, led in that way, I can win anything!" At Antietam on the 17th of September 1862, Meade assumed temporary command of the I Corps after Hooker was wounded and requested Meade replace him.

  At Fredericksburg, Meade's division made the only genuine breakthrough of the Confederate lines, driving through a gap in Stonewall Jackson's corps at the southern end of the battlefield. No reinforcements came. Much of his division was lost. After the battle, Meade wrote to his wife that Hooker "has disappointed all his friends by failing to show his fighting qualities in a pinch."

• 5. Three Days at Gettysburg

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  When Hooker resigned in protest over a dispute about troops at Harper's Ferry, Meade was not Lincoln's first choice to replace him. John F. Reynolds had turned down the president's suggestion. Three corps commanders, John Sedgwick, Henry Slocum, and Darius N. Couch, recommended Meade and agreed to serve under him despite outranking him. Meade himself wrote to his wife that command of the Army of the Potomac was "more likely to destroy one's reputation then to add to it."

  He arrived at Gettysburg on the night of the 1st of July 1863, after the first day's fighting was already over, with no time to survey the ground. He organized his forces on favorable terrain, issued a contingency plan for retreat to Pipe Creek in Maryland in case the battle turned against him, and made clear to his corps commanders that he expected both quick obedience and sound counsel.

  On July 2, he discovered that Daniel Sickles had moved his entire corps one mile forward without permission, leaving a gap in the Union line. Meade sent chief engineer Gouverneur Warren to assess Little Round Top and, finding it unoccupied, immediately ordered the V Corps to hold it. Holding that hill cost him the near destruction of thirteen brigades. His headquarters at the Leister House came under a 150-gun cannonade on July 3; a Confederate shell wounded Butterfield and killed sixteen horses tied up outside. Meade refused to leave until the situation became untenable.

  His reliance on capable subordinates, including Winfield S. Hancock and Reynolds, proved decisive. Lee's assault on the center on July 3, known as Pickett's Charge, failed against a line Meade had carefully managed. By evening of July 3, the Army of the Potomac's 60,000 troops and 30,000 horses had not eaten in three days.

• 6. Pursuit and Its Absence

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  Lee's retreat produced one of the war's enduring controversies. By the 5th of July 1863, it was clear the Confederate Army was pulling back, and Meade's critics, starting with Lincoln, believed he squandered a chance to destroy it.

  Meade's caution had three sources. The Army of the Potomac had fought for a week under forced marches and sustained enormous casualties. Heavy losses among general officers disrupted effective command and control. And Meade was wary of throwing away a hard-won victory on an attack that could reverse everything. When the Confederate Army found itself with its back to a rain-swollen Potomac River, it used the pause to build strong defensive positions. Lee hoped Meade would attack; Union losses from a failed assault would erase the moral weight of Gettysburg. By July 14, Lee's troops had built a temporary bridge and crossed into Virginia.

  Halleck conveyed Lincoln's dissatisfaction to Meade, who was furious that politicians were second-guessing a field commander. He offered to resign his command. Halleck declined and clarified that his message was meant as encouragement, not a rebuke. The Thanks of Congress followed on July 7, commending Meade and the Army of the Potomac for skill and valor that had "repulsed, defeated, and drove back, broken and dispirited, beyond the Rappahannock, the veteran army of the rebellion." Meade was also promoted to brigadier general in the regular army on that same date.

  In a letter to his wife after meeting Lincoln, Meade reported that the president "found no fault with my operations, although it was very evident he was disappointed that I had not got a battle out of Lee." That conversation captures the fundamental tension that would define the rest of Meade's command.

• 7. Under Grant's Shadow

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  Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was appointed commander of all Union armies in March 1864. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton told Grant that Meade was "a very weak, irresolute man" and recommended replacing him immediately. Meade preempted this by offering his own resignation and stating that a matter of such importance required the right man, not loyalty to his own position. Grant later wrote that this act gave him a higher opinion of Meade than the victory at Gettysburg had.

  Grant's orders before the Overland Campaign were blunt: "Lee's army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." The Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River on the 4th of May 1864. After three days of brutal fighting in the dense woods of the Wilderness and a loss of 17,000 men, Grant and Meade moved south toward Spotsylvania Court House.

  On the road there, Meade clashed with Philip Sheridan over the use of cavalry. Sheridan told Meade he could whip Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart if given the freedom to do so. Meade reported this to Grant expecting a reprimand; Grant said, "Well, he generally knows what he is talking about. Let him start right out and do it." Meade issued the orders. Sheridan's subsequent raid broke up Confederate supply lines, liberated prisoners, and mortally wounded Stuart, but left the Union Army without cavalry intelligence.

  A newspaper described the Army of the Potomac as "directed by Grant, commanded by Meade, and led by Hancock, Sedgwick and Warren." After Meade disciplined a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer for an unfavorable article in June 1864, the press assigned to his army agreed privately to mention Meade only in conjunction with setbacks. Meade reportedly knew nothing of this arrangement. Grant praised Meade in a telegram to Stanton on the 13th of May 1864, stating that he and Sherman were "the fittest officers for large commands I have come in contact with," but the promotion that followed was processed after those of Sherman and Sheridan.

• 8. Old Snapping Turtle

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  Meade's enemies within the Army were numerous and determined. Daniel Sickles developed a personal vendetta after Gettysburg, where his unauthorized movement of the III Corps nearly destroyed it and threatened the entire Union line. Sickles testified before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War that Meade had wanted to retreat before the battle began. The committee did not succeed in removing Meade from command, but the accusation followed him.

  Radical Republicans on the committee, some of them hostile to Irish Catholics like Meade's family, suspected him of being a Copperhead, a Northern opponent of the war. Meade was in fact a Douglas Democrat who saw the war as a struggle to preserve the Union and opposed slavery chiefly because it threatened to tear the country apart. He supported McClellan, the removed commander, and was politically aligned with other officers who advocated a more moderate prosecution of the war.

  His temper was a constant liability. In calm circumstances, colleagues described him as sociable, intellectual, and courteous. Under stress, he became prickly and abrasive. The nickname Old Snapping Turtle captured both qualities. He was respected and trusted but did not inspire.

  After the war, Meade oversaw Reconstruction in the South, commanding the Third Military District and supervising the formation of state governments in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina for reentry into the Union. When Georgia's governor refused to accept the Reconstruction Acts, Meade replaced him with General Thomas H. Ruger. After the Camilla massacre in September 1868, Meade investigated but left punishment to civil authorities. He returned to command of the Military Division of the Atlantic in Philadelphia, where he served in effective semi-retirement until his death on the 6th of November 1872, from pneumonia, at the house at 1836 Delancey Place, his wounds from Glendale still a long-term factor in his health. He was buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery, and members of the General Meade Society still gather there on December 31 each year to mark his birthday.