In July 1863, the fate of the United States was decided over three brutal days at Gettysburg. The generals who fought there met wildly different fates in the years that followed. One lost his leg and kept the bones in a box. Two close friends faced each other in a bloody assault.
Another was cast out for striking a fellow officer with a plate. These are the true stories of the men who commanded at Gettysburg and the strange, tragic destinies that awaited them after the guns fell silent. The morning of July 1 began with a loss that nearly crippled the Union army. Major General John F.
Reynolds was one of the most respected officers in the Union command. Weeks earlier, he had been offered command of the entire army, but he declined, preferring to fight at the front. When his infantry arrived to relieve Union cavalry under severe pressure, Reynolds advanced to rally his men near Herbst Woods. A Confederate sharpshooter’s bullet struck him directly in the back of the neck.
Reynolds died instantly, the highest-ranking officer killed at Gettysburg, having been on the field for less than an hour. The Union lines did not collapse that morning because of Brigadier General John Buford, a hard-bitten cavalry officer with no patience for pretense. Recognizing that the high ground on Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill held the key to the battle, Buford dismounted his troopers and fought a desperate defensive action against overwhelming Confederate numbers. His tactical brilliance saved the Union army on the first day, but he did not live to see the war’s end.
Only five months after the battle, exhausted and stricken with typhoid fever, Buford died in Washington, D. C. , at the age of thirty-seven. When Reynolds fell, command on the field passed to Major General Abner Doubleday.
Contrary to popular myth, Doubleday did not invent baseball. He did, however, fight a brilliant defensive battle on July 1, buying precious time for the rest of the Union army to arrive. Instead of praise, Doubleday was made a scapegoat by his superiors and replaced the very next day. Bitter over the slight, he spent the rest of his life writing his memoirs, defending his actions, and dabbling in spiritualism.
He died in 1893, still carrying the bitterness of Gettysburg with him. For the Confederates, the first day ended with a haunting question: what if? Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell had just taken command of the legendary Stonewall Jackson’s corps.
On the evening of July 1, Robert E. Lee ordered Ewell to seize the Union-held Cemetery Hill if possible. Ewell hesitated, judged the attack impractical, and chose not to press forward. Many historians believe this moment cost Lee the battle.
Ewell survived the war but was captured in 1865. He retired to a quiet life as a farmer in Tennessee and died of pneumonia in 1872, forever haunted by the ghost of Stonewall Jackson. Ewell’s hesitation was deepened by the absence of Major General J. E.
B. Stuart, the Confederacy’s legendary cavalry commander. Stuart had gone on an unauthorized, theatrical ride around the Union army, leaving Lee completely blind to enemy movements. Stuart did not arrive until late on July 2 and received a rare, sharp rebuke from Lee.
He fought fiercely to restore his reputation but was killed less than a year later at the Battle of Yellow Tavern. His storied legacy was forever tainted by his fateful absence at Gettysburg. No general at Gettysburg was more controversial than Union Major General Daniel Sickles. On July 2, dissatisfied with his assigned defensive line, Sickles did the unthinkable.
Without orders, he advanced his entire Third Corps nearly a mile forward to an exposed position at the Peach Orchard, leaving the Union flank completely vulnerable. The Confederate assault crashed into his line. During the fierce fighting, a twelve-pound cannonball shattered Sickles’ right leg. As he was carried from the field on a stretcher, he calmly puffed on a cigar to steady his men.
The leg was amputated, but Sickles did not stop there. He donated the shattered bones to the Army Medical Museum in Washington. For the next fifty years, he regularly visited his leg on the anniversary of the battle. Despite his grave insubordination, he received the Medal of Honor and lived until 1914, dying at the age of ninety-four.
As Sickles’ line collapsed, the entire Union army was threatened with encirclement. The key to the battlefield was a rocky hill called Little Round Top, defended by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a college professor turned soldier, with his Twentieth Maine regiment. Out of ammunition, outnumbered, and facing a ferocious Confederate assault, Chamberlain made a legendary, desperate gamble. He ordered a bayonet charge.
The sweeping downhill attack secured the Union flank and saved the army. Chamberlain survived the war, witnessed Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and served four terms as governor of Maine. He died in 1914 at the age of eighty-five, remembered as one of the war’s greatest heroes. While Chamberlain held the right flank, Major General Oliver O.
Howard organized the center of the Union army. Howard, who had lost his right arm earlier in the war, commanded the Eleventh Corps, which had been routed on the first day. Under heavy criticism, he anchored the defenses on Cemetery Hill, securing the vital artillery platform that ultimately decided the battle. After the war, Howard devoted himself to civil rights and education, helping to found Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, D.
C. The ultimate responsibility rested with Major General George Meade. He had arrived at the front only three days before the battle. With quiet caution and careful analysis, Meade coordinated the defense that shattered Lee’s army.
Yet his decision not to pursue and destroy the retreating Confederate army enraged President Lincoln. Despite winning the greatest battle of the war, Meade was largely marginalized in history. He died in 1872 from complications of his old war wounds. On July 3, the battle reached its climax.
Major General George Pickett was ordered to lead 12,500 Confederate soldiers across a mile of open ground directly into the heart of the Union lines. It was a slaughter. Pickett’s division was almost completely destroyed. When a shattered Lee ordered Pickett to rally his division for a possible counterattack, Pickett looked at him with hollow eyes and said, “General Lee, I have no division.
” Pickett never forgave Lee. He spent the rest of his life running an insurance company, bitter, broken, and grieving his lost men until his death in 1875. The deeper tragedy of Pickett’s Charge lies in the story of two men: Confederate Brigadier General Lewis Armistead and Union Major General Winfield Scott Hancock. Before the war, they were inseparable friends.
When the conflict erupted, they wept as they parted, knowing they might one day meet in battle. On July 3, that nightmare became real. Hancock commanded the Union defenses at the stone wall. Armistead led the Confederate assault directly toward him, placing his hat on his sword to rally his men.
Armistead broke through the wall, but fell, mortally wounded. As he lay dying, he learned that Hancock had been badly hit only a few yards away. Armistead’s final words were a plea to send his personal Bible to Hancock’s wife. Armistead died two days later.
Hancock survived his wounds, ran for president in 1880, and spent the rest of his life mourning the friend he lost behind that stone wall. Finally, there was James Longstreet, Lee’s veteran companion. Longstreet strongly opposed Pickett’s Charge, predicting its failure. When Lee ordered it anyway, emotion overwhelmed Longstreet.
He could only nod in assent. After the war, Longstreet did the unthinkable for a Southern general. He embraced Reconstruction, joined the Republican Party, and became a close friend of Ulysses S. Grant.
For this, his former Confederate comrades turned against him, blaming him for the South’s defeat at Gettysburg. Longstreet lived in social isolation and died in 1904, still defending his loyalty and his actions. Twenty men, one battlefield, a three-day struggle that reshaped a nation. The generals of Gettysburg carried their triumphs and their wounds, both visible and invisible, for the rest of their lives.
Some were celebrated, some were destroyed, and some were forgotten. But the legacy of those three days in July was written in blood, and it never faded.