George Meade: the victor of Gettysburg

Meade fought in the Seven Days battles of 1862, where he was badly wounded at Glendale, and led troops at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville before his victory over Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. As army commander he went on to fight the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor campaigns and the siege of Petersburg.²

Compare: Lee vs Meade

What was George Meade famous for?

George Meade is famous for winning the Battle of Gettysburg, fought from 1 to 3 July 1863, only days after he took command of the Army of the Potomac. His army held the high ground south of the town, threw back Lee's attacks and ended Lee's second invasion of the North.³

Early life and career

Meade was born on 31 December 1815 in Cádiz, Spain, to an American family that lost its fortune during the Napoleonic Wars, and the family moved to the United States. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1835 and resigned his commission in 1836 to work as a civil engineer, including on railroad and river surveys.⁴

In 1842 he rejoined the army in the Corps of Topographical Engineers, building lighthouses and breakwaters on the coast. In the Mexican-American War he served as a staff officer and was present at the battle of Monterrey.⁵

On 31 August 1861 Meade became a brigadier general of volunteers at the head of a Pennsylvania brigade. He was severely wounded at Glendale in the Seven Days battles, led a brigade at Second Manassas and a division at South Mountain and Antietam, commanded a division at Fredericksburg and led the V Corps at Chancellorsville.⁶

How did Meade take command of the Army of the Potomac?

Meade was woken in his tent at 3 a.m. on 28 June 1863 by an officer from Washington carrying the order that relieved Joseph Hooker and gave him the Army of the Potomac. Meade wrote to his wife that he first thought he was being relieved or arrested. Lee's army was already in Pennsylvania.⁷

His first general order, issued the same day, told the troops: “As a soldier, in obeying this order, an order totally unexpected and unsolicited, I have no promises or pledges to make.” The army he inherited numbered about 90,000 to 95,000 men, by the count of the American Battlefield Trust and Meade's own later testimony to Congress.⁸

His first plan was defensive. Meade's engineers chose a line along Big Pipe Creek in Maryland, and a circular told the corps commanders how to occupy it if a battle came in that area. It was a contingency plan only: once John Buford's cavalry and John Reynolds's infantry were fighting Lee's army at Gettysburg on 1 July, Meade sent the rest of his army there.⁹

Gettysburg, 1 to 3 July 1863

On 1 July Confederate forces converging from the west and north drove the Union defenders back through the streets of Gettysburg to Cemetery Hill, and Reynolds was killed. During the night both armies brought up reinforcements, and Meade's army took up a line of hills and ridges south of the town.¹⁰

On 2 July James Longstreet struck the Union left at the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den and the Round Tops, while Richard Ewell's divisions attacked Culp's Hill and East Cemetery Hill. Using their shorter interior lines, Union commanders moved reinforcements to each threatened point, and by evening the Federals still held Little Round Top.¹¹

Not every subordinate obeyed. Daniel Sickles moved his III Corps forward to an exposed line without orders, and Meade had to send in troops from other corps to support it. In 1864 Sickles told Congress's Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War that Meade had meant to retreat from Gettysburg.¹²

After nine o'clock that night Meade gathered his corps commanders in the small Leister farmhouse that served as his headquarters. They reported their losses and voted on what to do next; the generals agreed to hold their position and wait for Lee to attack again, which matched Meade's own view.¹³

On 3 July, after an artillery bombardment, Lee attacked the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. The Pickett-Pettigrew assault, known as Pickett's Charge, briefly pierced the Union line but was driven back with severe losses. On 4 July Lee began withdrawing toward the Potomac.¹⁴

Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. The National Park Service counts about 10,000 killed or mortally wounded, nearly 30,000 wounded and almost 10,000 captured or missing; the American Battlefield Trust estimates 51,112 casualties on both sides.¹⁵

Why did Meade not pursue Lee after Gettysburg?

Meade did pursue Lee, but cautiously. His army was exhausted, he had lost senior commanders such as Reynolds, killed, and Hancock, wounded, and he had led it for less than a week. At Williamsport most of his corps commanders advised waiting a day, Meade agreed, and Lee crossed the Potomac first.¹⁶

On the evening of 4 July Meade consulted his corps commanders again and told Henry Halleck in Washington that he would reconnoiter and, if the enemy retreated, “pursue him on his flanks”. A flooded Potomac held Lee at Williamsport, Maryland, but when Meade advanced on 14 July he found the Confederate works empty.¹⁷

Lincoln was deeply disappointed. When Halleck passed on the President's dissatisfaction, Meade asked to be relieved. Lincoln drafted a reply on 14 July saying that Lee “was within your easy grasp” and that “your golden opportunity is gone”, but he never sent it. Meade kept his command and was made a brigadier general in the regular army.¹⁸

How did Meade work with Grant?

From the spring of 1864 Ulysses S. Grant, the new general-in-chief, traveled with the Army of the Potomac. Meade kept formal command, but Grant directed the army's movements. Meade offered to step aside so Grant could choose his own commander; Grant refused and wrote that the offer raised his opinion of Meade even more than Gettysburg had.¹⁹

Meade commanded the army at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor and in the siege of Petersburg. In May 1864 Grant wrote to the Secretary of War that Meade had “more than met my most sanguine expectations”, and at Grant's request Meade was made a major general in the regular army.²⁰

The arrangement was hard on Meade. He resented the credit Grant received, and when Grant favored Philip Sheridan for promotion, Meade complained in his letters home that the chance of distinction had been denied him.²¹

How did George Meade die?

George Meade died of pneumonia in Philadelphia on 6 November 1872, at the age of 56. He had held several military commands after the war and was a commissioner of Fairmount Park in the city. He was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.²²

The sources differ on when he joined the park commission: the National Park Service gives 1866, while the Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, written by his son, gives June 1867.²³

How is George Meade remembered?

Meade is remembered above all at Gettysburg, where the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania unveiled an equestrian statue of him on the battlefield on 5 June 1896. In Washington, the George Gordon Meade Memorial, a gift of Pennsylvania designed by the sculptor Charles Grafly, was dedicated in 1927 and now stands on Pennsylvania Avenue.²⁴

The Washington memorial was removed in 1969 for construction work and reinstalled in front of the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in 1983, according to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, or 1984, according to the National Park Service. The historian Tom Huntington gave his biography of Meade the subtitle “The Forgotten Victor of Gettysburg”.²⁵