While working on a Gettysburg-related project I came across the letters of William Wheeler (right), who was in command of the 13^th New York Independent Battery at Gettysburg and had a close encounter with General Meade on the morning of July 3. The young lieutenant was waiting with his guns at Cemetery Hill, he had written, when “an elderly Major General with spectacles, looking a good deal like a Yale Professor” rode up and asked him if he had enough ammunition. Wheeler replied he has as much as he could get without an order from Major Thomas Osborne, the 11th Corps’ artillery chief. With some excitement the general replied, “You must have ammunition; the country can’t wait for Major Osborne or any other man.” He told Wheeler to go to the artillery reserve and have a wagonload of ammunition sent up immediately.

Wheeler had just returned from the Artillery Reserve and knew they didn’t have any ammunition to give him but something in the general’s face warned him about answering back. Instead, Wheeler spurred his horse and rode off until he was hidden behind some trees, where he stayed until the general departed. When he returned he found out the “Yale professor” was General Meade himself.

In another letter Wheeler had positive things to say about the Army of the Potomac’s new commander. “I rather like General Meade; he fought the battle of Gettysburg superbly, and I think that he did all that he could in the pursuit of Lee to Williamsport,” he said. “Just think, in spite of all his losses, Lee was fully equal to us in numbers; his excellent position at Gettysburg enabled him to get a day’s start of us on his retreat, and thus to reach Williamsport first, where again his position was such as to prevent a successful reconnoissance, and it was impossible for Meade to know that the whole Rebel Army was not lying behind those rifle pits. It would have been the height of rashness for him to have attacked an army of equal strength in a strong position, and thereby to have lost all the advantages of the success at Gettysburg. I think that his course was just such a one as Washington would have pursued; subsequent events have showed, and will show still more plainly, his capacity as a General.”

Wheeler, William. In Memoriam: Letters of William Wheeler of the Class of 1855, Y.C. Cambridge, H.O. Houghton, privately printed, 1875. Available via Google Books.

Major General George Gordon Meade (1815-1872). Library of Congress photo.

History has pretty much given George Gordon Meade a bum deal. He helped save the Union as the commanding general at Gettysburg, but no one has written a major biography of him in years. Sure, he has a statue atGettysburg, but the memorial to the man he whipped, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, stands atop a pedestal that looks to be twice as high as Meade’s. In fact, history has been pretty good about putting Lee atop pedestals, despite the facts that he fought against a country to which he had sworn loyalty, to sustain a government that considered human slavery as its cornerstone. For many, Lee will always be the greatest general of them all. Except Meade beat Lee at Gettysburg.

Meade, it seems, is the Rodney Dangerfield of Civil War generals. He gets no respect. Ulysses S. Grant became president and occupies the $50 bill. Civil War soldiers Hayes, Garfield and McKinley also reached the White House. As for Meade: after the battle of Gettysburg President Abraham Lincoln wrote him a letter to chide him about not immediately counterattacking Lee’s army.

Adding insult to injury, later in the war Meade had to testify about his generalship at Gettysburg before a Congressional Committee, mainly because the man who had almost cost him the battle—General Daniel Sickles—was busy spreading rumors that Meade had intended to retreat from the battlefield.

In the last year or so of the war Meade also had Grant, now the general-in-chief of the Union armies, looking over his shoulder. And he had to deal with a conspiracy among newspaper reporters, who banded together and agreed not to mention Meade in their dispatches.

Meade didn’t get a statute in Washington, D.C., until 1927. It was one of the last Civil War memorials erected in the nation’s capital, and it got there only after years of bureaucratic wrangling.

There just ain’t no justice.

In Searching for Meade, I will combine travel and history into an engaging mix that will inform and entertain as I investigate the life and times of George Gordon Meade. Stackpole Books will publish it in February 2013, just in time for the 150^th anniversary of Meade’s greatest triumph, the Battle of Gettysburg.

On this blog I’ll share a few of the things I learn as we build up to the book’s publication.

You can also find a preview of the book in this article from the June 2011 issue of Civil War Times magazine.

To find the blog posts from June 2012, go here.