Christmas Eve 1863: An Illinois Colonel's Letter 150 Years Ago

 

41 year old Colonel Luther Bradley of the 51st Illinois wrote a letter home to his sister on December 24, 1863, 150 years ago today. His regiment was a part of the Army of the Cumberland, and had taken part in the grand fight at Missionary Ridge just one month prior. Colonel Bradley had missed out on the Battle of Missionary Ridge, because of wounds received at Chickamauga two months before. Bradley's letter home tells of a soldier's desire to see an end to the bloodshed, and hope of peace on earth and good will toward men. The upcoming year, however, would be far from peaceful, and by next Christmas, Bradley's regiment had suffered many losses in the Atlanta Campaign. A part of Charles Harker's brigade, the 51st Illinois took part in the charge on Confederate lines at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Bradley himself assumed command of his brigade that day, as Brigadier General Charles Harker was mortally wounded during the fight. By Christmas 1864, Bradley was a Brigadier General, and the war was not yet done...

 

 

Col. Luther Bradley

My dear Buel,

This is the most beautiful Christmas Eve I ever saw. Clear bright moonlight and warm enough to sing carols without taking cold. One year ago today we started on the march which ended with the battle of Stones River. I hope we shall have a quieter New Years than the last. I had begn to think there was a leak in the mail bag for until I got your letter of the 13th I had not heard from home but once since leaving Nashville—Just now a band in an adjoining camp is playing “When this cruel war is over”, and I feel like (echoing) it with all my heart. I hope that next Christmas will see us all at home again.

Yesterday General Thomas offered e the command of a column of 3,000 men and a long train of Wagons going to Knoxville. But as it was to be a long trip of 10 or 12 days, which the prospect of fording streams every day and being pretty constantly wet I declined it. The first time I have ever asked to be relieved from any duty in the field. So you see, I am getting prudent.

As my regiment is at Knoxville and little prospect of its returning I shall join it by steam boat in a few days. I quite like the idea of mutering there as there is nothing of interest doing her and we can return in time for the spring campaign.

Chattanooga is simply a huge entrenched camp and for some time will be poorly supplied with rations. My Christmas dinner will be a piece of smoked bacon and hard crackers, with perhaps a potatoe.

Many a man here will not have so liberal a spread as this.

Col. Davis is getting along but slowly. He is suffering terribly from the injury to the bone and nerves of the leg and this keeps him down. He lacks the muscular power to withstand the drain on the system occasioned by wounds. He will get well but I doubt if he has a sound leg in a long time. I shall try and get him off to Nashville before I go as he has friends there who will take excellent care of him and he will be altogether more comfortable there than he can be here. He often speaks of you all and wishes to be kindly remembered. He may call on his way home in a few weeks.

Enclosed I send a letter which I found here on my return and which I think you will like to read. I need not tell you that I have answered the request contained in it. You may keep the letter for me.

So you are glad I was not at “Mission Ridge” that’s mean of you. It was the finest thing that has been done during the war and I’d not have missed it for a hole in my jacket. I have been to see all my wounded boys in the hospital and when they say, “Oh! Col. You ought to have been at Mission Ridge” I feel envious of their pride. You should see their eyes glisten when they tell of it.

A Merry Christmas to you all.
With love and remembrance,
Yours ever,



Col.

 

 

Seven Score and Ten Years Ago

150 years ago today, Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, defining the American Civil War in one of the most important speeches in history. He was there to deliver “a few appropriate remarks” at the dedication of a cemetery for the Union dead from the Battle of Gettysburg, the biggest and bloodiest battle ever fought in North America.

Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg on November 18, just after dusk had settled upon the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Thousands had flocked to the city, crowding the streets of the small southern Pennsylvania town with outsiders for the second time in 1863. Lincoln spent that evening in the David Wills home on the town square, where 36 people stayed that evening. Lincoln spent that night finishing his remarks for the following day. He was asked to speak to a group of well wishers outside the Wills home, but declined, stating only that he preferred not to speak extemporaneously that evening.

The next morning, Lincoln rose early to tour the Gettysburg battlefield. He wanted to visit where Major General John Reynolds had been killed on July 1, 1863, and thus rode to the Herbst Woods on McPherson Ridge, part of the July 1 battlefield.

Upon returning to the town, Lincoln took part in a procession to the new cemetery. After entering the cemetery from Baltimore Street, Lincoln and other dignitaries made their way to the speaker’s rostrum. Speaking first was Edward Everett, who famously delivered an oration stretching over two hours. Then, it was Lincoln’s turn.

As Lincoln stepped forward, he was speaking amidst a climate of death and destruction. All around the still unfinished cemetery, there were fresh graves, holding the remains of soldiers who had recently given their lives that this nation may live. When Lincoln arrived at the train station the day before, there were coffins stacked nearby, waiting to be used for the remains of brave soldiers who paid the last full measure of devotion. During his tour of the battlefield, he saw graves of soldiers who had not yet been reinterred to the new cemetery, as well as the landscape which still bore the scars of battle. And, when Lincoln stepped forward at the cemetery dedication, around his famed top hat was a black band, signifying that he was still mourning the loss of his son Willie, who died in February 1862. Lincoln was, in many ways, still a grieving father who, although he had not lost a son due to war, was speaking to a nation of grieving parents whose children had perished on farmers fields across the United States in a struggle for the future of the nation. He stepped forward that day to answer a question: was all of the death and suffering that was tearing apart the country ultimately worth it. Lincoln’s answer was yes.

 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

The war would go on. Thousands more would die, including Lincoln himself. And yet, despite these deaths, despite the pain and destruction of the war, the nation and its ideals would continue to live. It continues to live today, a testament to the sacrifices that were made so many years ago. And yet, there is still "the great task remaining before us," a task that has remained and will remain for each generation of Americans, to ensure that the democratic government that Lincoln spoke of 150 years ago today "shall not perish from the earth."

The 54th Massachusetts at Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863

150 years ago today, Union soldiers launched a desperate assault against Fort Wagner on Morris Island outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Leading the way was the 54th Massachusetts, a regiment of free African Americans charging under the American flag, storming a fortress commanded by white southerners, a scenario which was unimaginable just two years earlier at the war’s outset.

July 1863 was in many ways the pivotal month of the American Civil War. September 1862 could lay claim to this as well, with the Union victory at Antietam and the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. However, a trifecta of events in July 1863 forever changed the future of the Civil War and the future of American history.
On July 3, 1863, the Union Army of the Potomac defeated the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on the fields surrounding the farming town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The three day battle there on July 1, 2, and 3 culminated in a Union victory. It also exacted a heavy toll of 50,000 plus casualties, forever staining the fields of Gettysburg with the memory of those lives lost and those that were forever changed, along with the history of the nation. Such heavy bloodshed was the necessary price for "a new birth of freedom" to begin.

On July 4, 1863, Major General Ulysses S. Grant accepted the surrender of Confederate forces in Vicksburg, Mississippi. A 6 month long campaign to seize the crucial river town ended in Union victory. Thousands of lives had been spent to achieve the result. As Lincoln noted, “The Father of waters again goes unvexed to the sea….” The Mississippi was entirely in Federal hands, cutting the Confederacy in two, severely restricting the Confederate ability to wage war. This was, perhaps, the most important strategic victory of the war.



On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry led the Union assault on Fort Wagner, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina, writing the most famous chapter not only in the history of that regiment, but for all African American soldiers in the American Civil War. The bravery of the 54th Massachusetts was but the first of many stories of African Americans fighting for their country and their freedom in the Civil War. The story of the 54th Massachusetts helped to inspire nearly 200,000 other African Americans to join the Union ranks during the war.

The story of the 54th itself, however, began several months before Fort Wagner, when in January 1863, the War Department and Massachusetts Governor John Andrew requested Captain Robert Gould Shaw to leave his position in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry to accept the colonelcy for the new 54th Massachusetts, a regiment composed of free blacks. The officers in the regiment would be white, but the soldiers would be African Americans fighting for their freedom. Writing to Shaw’s father Francis, Andrew passed the following message to the young officer:

Captain,

I am about to organize in Massachusetts a Colored Regiment as part of the volunteer quota of this State—the commissioned officers to be white men. I have today written your father expressing to him my sense of the importance of this undertaking, and requesting him to forward to you this letter, in which I offer to you the Commission of Colonel over it. The Lieutenant Colonelcy I have offered to Captain Hallowell of the Twentieth Massachusetts Regiment. It is important to the organization of this regiment that I should receive your reply to this offer at the earliest day consistent with your ability to arrive at a deliberate conclusion on the subject.

Respectfully and very truly yours,

John A. Andrew

Despite initially declining, Shaw did accept the post, and in February 1863, went to work of creating the regiment. In February and March of 1863, the regiment was recruited from across the North. Despite being a Massachusetts regiment, there were companies in the 54th from New York, Philadelphia, Providence, Elmira, and Nantucket. By April 30, when the regiment was training, it numbered 950 men armed with Enfield rifles. On May 18, the regiment was presented with its colors. One flag featured a blue field beset with a white cross and the words, “In Hoc Signo Vinces,” latin for “By this sign you shall conquer”, alluding back to the victorious of Constantine during the Roman Empire. That day, Governor Andrew spoke to the men, framing the importance of their work in the context of history:

“These men, sir, have now, in the Providence of God, given to them an opportunity which, while it is personal to themselves, is still an opportunity for a whole race of men. With arms possessed of might to strike a blow, they have found breathed into their hearts an inspiration of devoted patriotism and regard for their bretheren of their own color, which has inspired them with a purpose to nerve that arm, that it may strike a blow which, while it shall help to raise aloft their country’s flag—their country’s flag, now, as well as ours—by striking down the foes which oppose it, strikes also the last shackle which binds the limbs of the bondmen in the Rebel States.

“I know not… when, in all human history, to any given thousand men in arms there has been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory as the work committed to you….

“Whatever fortune may betide you, we know from the past that all will be done for the honor of the cause, for the protection of the flag, for the defence of the right, for the glory of your country…”

Two weeks later, the 54th departed for the South and for war.

For several weeks, the 54th was used for manual labor projects. After that, they participated in a few foraging expeditions, including one which infamously led to the burning of Darien, Georgia, under the orders of Colonel James Montgomery. After Colonel Shaw wrote to Brigadier General George Strong on July 6 to ask permission to fight, the regiment was brought to Morris Island. On July 16, during an expedition on nearby James Island, the 54th had its first taste of combat. On July 18, the 54th, along with the rest of Brigadier General George Strong’s brigade, was to be used as an assault force against Fort Wagner.

For several hours that day, the U.S. navy bombarded the fort with a heavy cannonade. Contrary to the depiction in the popular 1989 movie Glory, the 54th was selected to lead the column that day. According to General Truman Seymour, commanding the assault, “It was believed that the Fifty-fourth was in every respect as efficient as anybody of men… It was one of the strongest and best officered, there seemed to be no good reason why it should not be selected for this advance. This point was decided by General Strong and myself.”

Once the bombardment ended at 7 pm that evening, Shaw stepped forward and told the men, “I shall go in advance with the National flag. You will keep the State flag with you; it will give the men something to rally around. We shall take the fort or die there! Good Bye!” A few hours earlier, when the regiment was in transport from James Island to Morris Island to take part in the assault, Shaw remarked to one of his lieutenants that he had a premonition concerning his death: “If I could only live a few weeks longer with my wife, and be at home a little while, I might die happy, but it cannot be. I do not believe I will live through our next fight.”

When the men stepped off that day, the 54th Massachusetts was leading the way across a narrow stretch of beach leading up to the fort. After 200 yards, the batteries from Wagner began pelting the 54th with shot and shell; at this point Shaw ordered the regiment into a “double quick” advance. As Sergeant Lewis Douglass, son of Frederick Douglass, later recalled: “…not a man flinched although it was a trying time. Men fell all around me. A shell would explode and clear a space of twenty feet, our men would close up again.” Lt. Richard Jewett remembered the Confederate fire pouring into the Federal ranks as well, noting, “such a murderous fire I hope never to see again. It mowed down the ranks like grass before a scythe.”

Once the regiment approached the fort, they plunged through pools of water and embankments around the fort and began clambering up the walls. Once through the moat around the fort, Shaw surged forward, leading his men onward. The 25 year old colonel, who was married just 2 months earlier on May 2, with the eyes of the nation upon him, leading free African Americans into the heart of slavery and secession, proclaimed, “Come on, men! Follow me!” Shaw was shot directly in the chest, and fell dead in front of his regiment.

Corporal Gooding of the 54th Massachusetts later remembered the moment: “When the men saw their gallant leader fall, they made a desperate effort to get him out, but they were either shot down, or reeled in the ditch below.”

The soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts struggled to seize the fort and follow upon the example of their gallant leader, but the task proved to be too much. The white regiments which followed them along failed in the task as well, taking heavy losses in the assault. When the 54th fell from the fort, men regathered near the regimental flag, which had been saved by Sergeant William Carney. Despite being wounded in the hip, Carney grabbed the American flag to prevent it from falling into Confederate hands. Carney exhorted his superiors for permission to make the charge again, but was ordered to stay put along with the other survivors from the regiment. One of the surviving regimental officers told Carney, “Sergeant, you have done enough; you are badly wounded, you had better keep quiet.” Carney responded as any true American soldier would: “I have only done my duty, the old flag never touched the ground.” Sergeant Carney became the first African American soldier to win the Medal of Honor for his actions.

The assault of the 54th Massachusetts had failed. When the tide began coming in the following morning, many of those lying wounded on the beach were drowned in the Ocean water. Of 600 men present, the 54th Massachusetts had lost 272, nearly 50% casualties. Overall Union losses numbered 1,515 total casualties for the assault of the 18th. The Confederates defending Wagner lost only 174 men.

Soon, newspapers throughout the North carried the story of the 54th Massachusetts. All across the northern states, people read of the bravery of free black men fighting for their freedom where the war that would eventually deliver freedom for over 4 million slaves had begun just two years before. As the Atlantic Monthly wrote, “Through the cannon smoke of that dark night the manhood of the colored race shines before many eyes that would not see.”

In October 1865, the New York Times published another fitting tribute to the men of the 54th Massachusetts who made the daring assault on Fort Wagner 150 years ago:

“It is not too much to say that if this Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth had faltered when its trial came, two hundred thousand colored troops for whom it was a pioneer would never have been put into the field, or would not have been put in for another year, which would have been equivalent to protracting the war to 1866. But it did not falter. It made Fort Wagner such a name to the colored race as Bunker Hill has been for ninety years to white Yankees.”

Pickett's Charge Commemorative Walk: Reflections on July 3, 2013 at Gettysburg National Military Park

Today was an amazing day.


There will be pictures to follow and stories to tell, but for now, I just wanted to note what occurred today at Gettysburg National Military Park.


Park Rangers led thousands of visitors across the fields between Seminary and Cemetery Ridge this afternoon in a Pickett's Charge commemorative walk. I had the honor of being with Richard Garnett's brigade of Pickett's Division, along with friend and colleague Chris Gwinn. We had roughly the same number of folks with us today that Garnett did 150 years to that very moment. When we stepped off, Chris had the idea to have the brigade shout "Virginians!" several times, which they did. It gave me chills. I was in tears when we stepped off because of the emotions of the moment and the number of people who were present. I have never experienced anything quite like it before.

When we reached the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge, visitors were caught up in emotion, and so were the rangers. There were pictures, hand shakes, cheers, and then silence, as the solemn notes of taps floated over the massive crowds (early unofficial estimates are that over 10,000 people were there on Union lines and in the Confederate groups).

Standing at that wall saluting the American flag, surrounding by the throngs of people in silence, I could only think of one thing:


The men who fought here 150 years ago would be immensely proud to know that 150 years later to the moment, they had not been forgotten.

The takeaway message of today, and of the Gettysburg 150th, is this: Americans still care, and Americans still remember the sacrifices that were made for us many, many years ago.


Today was one of the best days I can remember, and the Pickett's Charge Commemorative Walk was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I did not hear a single visitor complaint from the crowd of thousands.


More to come on this and the Gettysburg 150th. For now, sleep, rest, and vitamins, because tomorrow, on July 4th, I will be in the Soldier's National Cemetery at Gettysburg to talk to visitors about the Gettysburg Address and the meaning of the battle.


God Bless America. Happy Fourth of July.

July 3, 1863

July 3, 1863, was the final and climactic day of the battle of Gettysburg. It was the day on which Robert E. Lee lost the battle, and George Gordon Meade won it. It was a day which forever changed the future of this nation. Today, and all days, we remember the sacrifices made 150 years ago so that this nation may live. In the words of Abraham Lincoln:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

July 2, 1863

We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

July 1, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

Gettysburg 150: The words of Dr. Joseph L. Harsh

Today, Gettysburg National Military Park and the Gettysburg Foundation officially begin our commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. This evening, the park is hosting a ceremony to begin the commemoration. Afterwards, there will be an illumination with candles in the Soldier's National Cemetery. Over the next several days, Gettysburg will host hundreds of media members, hundreds of thousands of the general public, and the eyes of the United States and those of the world, as we remember those "who here gave their lives that that nation might live."


What follows is an article which I posted on here last year for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. It was written by Dr. Joseph L. Harsh for the Hallowed Ground magazine in 2002. Dr. Harsh's work has had a tremendous impact on me as a young historian, and I find his words here to be particularly appropriate as we begin our commemorations of what occurred at Gettysburg 150 years ago. His words remind us all why we have gathered at Gettysburg once again.

They are all gone now.

The dewy cheeked boys, who left home before their first shave; their older brothers, who marched away from young wives clutching infants in their arms; and their grizzled fathers, whose gray streaked hair and beards belied arms as stout as their hearts.

They are all gone.

The men who discovered at Bull Run that war was not a lark, but a vulture; who crept through the Bloody Cornfield and knelt in the Bloody Lane; who crawled through the snows on Marye’s Heights; who would not yield on Little Round Top and who climbed the post and rail fence on the Emmittsburg Pike amidst a hail of bullets; they who lay among the burning trees of the Wilderness; and who endured the dank, stinking trenches of Petersburg.

They who surrendered at Appomattox, and they who did not jeer the vanquished there.

They are all gone.

The men who lost a leg, an arm, an eye, a career, a farm, a fortune. Also gone are their women, who gave up a husband, a son, a brother, a father, a sweetheart.

They are all gone.

They who learned that life is passionate, precarious, and precious. They, who generation was touched with fire.

They are all gone.

And so are their children, for whom they fought. Even their grandchildren are few and very old.

We who are their great, and great-great, and great-great-great grandchildren can never know them now. We can never see them, or hear them, or touch them.

We can know them only through the ancient photographs of faded brown and white, where they stand mute, unmoving, mysterious to our gaze.

Or, through their music, which seems romantic, naïve, and sometimes sickly sentimental to our ears.

Or, through their relics, the torn flags, the moth-eaten uniforms, the dented swords and the rusted buttons, resting on silken pillows, behind glass panes in climate controlled museums, beyond our touch.

Or, through their words, in their diaries and letters and reminiscences, which sometimes approach but never quite convey to our understanding the true meaning of why they fought and what they experienced.

Even more than through any of these, we can come nearer to them when we stand on the ground where they fought, where they sweated in the summer and shivered in the winter, where their blood seeped into the soil, where they risked their lives and many lost the risk, where they faced the ultimate test of loyalty to an idea and a cause.

But, perhaps, we come closest of all to them, when we simply value the legacy they left being. For, WE ARE the future for whom they fought.

Said one of them, who was not a soldier but who also forfeited his life in the war, while standing among the freshly dug graves of Gettysburg, the world “can never forget what they did here.”

But he was wrong. We can forget. We have too often forgotten. We forgot when we built cookie cutter town houses on the fields of Chantilly, and pricey, pseudo-chateaux on Longstreet’s Wilderness, and motels and t-shirt shops on Cemetery Ridge. And, it cannot be that we were remembering, when we contemplated building a racing track at Brandy Station.

Yes, they are all gone now.

And the least that we can do—and, sadly, the most that we can do—to reach back through fast receding years and thank them for the pain, the suffering, the sacrifice, to thank them for our United States, is to preserve, to protect, and to defend the ground they hallowed.

But our obligation is much greater than to thank them. Our most sacred duty, our ultimate loyalty, is to remember, to keep alive, and to pass on their willingness to sacrifice, their love of country, their devotion to freedom.

We are the future now, but ultimately we are only a link between the past and the future. This generation may never be called upon to make huge, soul-wrenching sacrifices of life and fortune.

But someday—and it is as inevitable as the rising of the sun—a future generation will again be touched with fire and will be summoned to defend our country and our freedom.

If our children, or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, when that call comes, are too soft, too lazy, too uncaring to meet the challenge, not only will they fail, but we fail also, and so will fail every generation which has preceded us.

Antietam, Gettysburg, and Appomattox will have been in vain.

Yes, they are all gone now.

And soon—in a blink of the cosmic eye of time—we also will all be gone. But we are all connected.

The Civil War is not a closed book.

It is a continuing story that never ends.

June 28, 1863: "No one ever received a more important command"

150 years ago today, major changes were being implemented for the Army of the Potomac.


Major General Joseph Hooker, a man who turned the defeated and demoralized army around following the disastrous tenure of Ambrose Burnside, only to lead the army to another failure at Chancellorsville, submitted his resignation as commander of that force to President Abraham Lincoln and General-in-Chief Henry Halleck on June 27. With Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on the doorstep of Harrisburg that very day, Hooker wanted complete control over all the Union soldiers in his vicinity to deal with the Confederate invasion. Specifically, Hooker was requesting the authority over some 10,000 Union soldiers stationed at Harpers Ferry. Halleck had denied Hooker this authority, leading to his resignation. Lincoln and Halleck, wanting someone new to take the reins of the army, accepted the resignation. They had already tried offering command of the Army of the Potomac to John F. Reynolds, who had decline the responsiblity. Now, news was being sent to the next possible choice, another man who called Pennsylvania his home. That man was George Gordon Meade.


At roughly 3:00 am on June 28, 1863, George Meade's life changed forever. No doubt, that morning Meade would have preferred to simply remain asleep. Yet, when a messenger came into camp with news for him, Meade awoke to meet Captain James Hardie, sent directly by Halleck himself. The message that was handed to Meade during those early, predawn hours on June 28, 1863, changed the course of American history. It read, in part:

General: You will receive with this the order of the President placing you in command of the Army of the Potomac. Considering the circumstances, no one ever received a more important command; and I cannot doubt that you will fully justify the confidence which the Government has reposed in you (OR, Vol. 27, pt 3, 369).

In his orders, Halleck told Meade he was free to act as he saw fit. The only specification was a reminder that the Army of the Potomac was to defend Washington D.C. and Baltimore, both major cities threatened by Lee's invasion. Meade was also given the authority to remove any officer from command and appoint any officer to any post as necessary. This last classification would become extremely important as the fight at Gettysburg began on July 1, just a few days later. It gave Meade the authority to send Winfield Scott Hancock to Gettysburg as his deputy to assess the situation, despite Hancock being outranked by Oliver O. Howard, who was already on the field that day.


Upon seeing Captain Hardie that morning, Meade initially thought he was being placed under arrest. His initial reaction to the news speaks to this, as he stated, "Well, I've been tried and condemned without a hearing, and I suppose I shall have to go to execution". Meade's official response to Halleck was considerably more measured, telegraphing the General-in-Chief that he would accept his new task: "As a soldier, I obey it, and to the utmost of my ability will execute it." (OR, Vol 27, pt 1, 61)


Meade would soon issue General Orders Number 67, proclaiming to the army that he was in command, and informing them of the gravity of the hour. At that moment, the fate of the nation hung in the balance. The fighting to the west around Vicksburg has slowed to a siege, and Union forces were on the verge of taking the crucial Mississippi River town. It had been over half a year since Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Union armies occupied vast portions of the South. Yet, Southern victory was still possible. Confederate soldiers were on Pennsylvania soil, looking for a dashing military victory. Should Lee and his army crush the Army of the Potomac, on Pennsylvania soil no less, Lee would have the North at his mercy, and could move against a major Northern city. This would give the Northern peace movement overwhelming support, and it could potentially cripple and destroy the Lincoln administration and, along with it, the United States itself. At this crucial hour, Meade rose to the task at hand, recognizing the historic importance of the moment:

The country looks to this army to relieve it from the devastation and disgrace of a foreign invasion. Whatever fatigues and sacrifices we may be called upon to undergo, let us have in view, constantly, the magnitude of the interests involved, and let each man determine to do his duty, leaving to an all-controlling Providence the decision of the contest.

At the time of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee had been in command of the Army of Northern Virginia for over one full year. He had led that army in numerous battles, and achieved numerous victories. Lee believed, as he wrote to John Bell Hood that May, that the Confederate army was "invincible" if it was properly led. Lee was, in seemingly every way, the hands on favorite to win the campaign in Pennsylvania. He had only been stopped once before by George McClellan at Antietam. Now, Lee was trying his bold offensive strategy once again. This time, Lee would be met in battle not by the "Young Napoleon," but by a man who had only been in command of the Union army for three days before the engagement began. 150 years ago today, George Meade had lots of work to do, and very little time to do it.

A Beautiful Day at Chickamauga

If you're in Georgia doing research for a book, and you suddenly have a day with no plans, and if you are a Civil War historian, the answer is easy.

You drive to Chickamauga. 

When I left Kennesaw this morning, it was cool, cloudy, and a bit rainy. When I arrived at Chickamauga, just south of the Tennessee-Georgia border, it was in the 60s, sunny, and a beautiful day. I drove around the park, took pictures, hiked a bit, and just thought about how fortunate I am to live in a country that preserves historic sites like Chickamauga, and how fortunate we all are that God created the sun (after a very harsh winter in Cleveland, this Georgia sun was a much welcome respite).

The Florida Monument

 Monument marking the spot where Brigadier General Benjamin Helm, the brother-in-law of Abraham Lincoln, was mortally wounded

The Brotherton Cabin

 Wilder's Lightning Brigade Monument

 Monument marking the HQ site for James Longstreet's force following the Confederate breakthrough on the afternoon of September 20, 1863

 2nd Minnesota Monument on Snodgrass Hill

 I met "Nick" the volunteer dog today

I didn't get the name of Nick's fellow human volunteer, but she was very helpful in answering my questions and making sure I had all the maps I needed to properly tour the battlefield. 

Union artillery position on Snodgrass Hill

Snodgrass Hill HQ site for Major General George Thomas, "the Rock of Chickamauga"

 Snodgrass Cabin, used as a field hospital after the battle

One final shot of the Florida Monument

All in all, it was a great day. I managed to get in a little hiking at Kennesaw Mountain when I got back to Kennesaw later in the day. 

Tomorrow's forecast for Kennesaw is mid 60s and sunny. I am planning on spending the entire day hiking the battlefield.