George Gordon Meade

George Gordon Meade

George Gordon Meade (born December 31, 1815 in Cádiz , Spain , † November 6, 1872 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) was a general in the US Army .

Youth and military career

Meade was the son of a merchant from Philadelphia who worked as a shipbroker for the US government in Spain, but had lost all of his fortune there during the Napoleonic Wars . After the death of their father, the family returned to the USA in 1828. Since the army was able to give him free training, George Meade applied in 1831 for admission to the US Military Academy in West Point , New York . After completing his training, he took part in the Second Seminole War as a lieutenant in the artillery . Meade resigned in 1836 to work as an engineer for the Alabama, Georgia & Florida Railroad . After his marriage to Margarette Sergeant, the daughter of a former vice-presidential candidate, and the birth of their first children, Meade ran into financial difficulties again, so that he successfully sought a return to the army. In 1842 he joined the topography troops with his rank as a lieutenant and took part in the Mexican-American War . Later he was mainly occupied with building lighthouses and surveying the coastline and the Great Lakes . In 1856 he was promoted to captain.

Civil war

A few weeks after the war began, Meade was appointed Brigadier General of Volunteers in late August 1861, on the intercession of the Governor of Pennsylvania . He was given command of a brigade in the Pennsylvania Reserves , an infantry division made up of surplus volunteers (that is, beyond the quota provided by the federal government for Pennsylvania). This large formation took part in 1862 as part of the Potomac Army under General McClellan in the peninsula campaign against the Confederate capital Richmond . Meade was seriously wounded in the Battle of Glendale on June 30, but returned to the troops in mid-August and proved himself, now as a division commander, in the Battle of Antietam . Therefore, he was promoted to major general on November 29th. In the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, the division was the only major unit to break into enemy lines. Because of this achievement he was appointed commanding general of the V Corps , with whom he took part in the Battle of Chancellorsville .

After the dismissal of Joseph Hooker on June 28, 1863, Meade was surprisingly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Potomac Army over the heads of several senior generals because he was considered the most experienced and qualified of all commanding generals in the capital. Meade himself had expected General John Fulton Reynolds to be appointed.

At this point, the opposing Northern Virginia Army, under the command of Robert E. Lee, was on an advance into Pennsylvania, threatening Harrisburg , Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. From July 1st to 3rd, both armies clashed at Gettysburg , where Meade, taking advantage of the terrain, managed to repel Lee's attacks - with high losses on both sides - and to force him to evade to Virginia . For this he received the formal thanks from Congress and the promotion to Brigadier General of the Regular Army . However, parts of the government and the public accused him of letting Lee escape lightly instead of completely destroying his army. This criticism increased in the further course of the year when Meade in Virginia was outmaneuvered several times by Lee and could not show any further successes.

When President Abraham Lincoln in March 1864 General Grant to the commander of the army appointed, he came from the West Virginia and pitched his headquarters in the plains of the Potomac army. Meade offered Grant his replacement, but this refused. The leadership of the Potomac Army remained with Meade, while Grant took over the strategic planning. Due to some mistakes made by Grant and Meade, the Potomac Army suffered considerable losses in the battles in the Wilderness , Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor , but was able to constantly push Lee back and finally force the Confederates to battle for positions in Petersburg and Richmond. A protracted siege broke out here, which only ended in April 1865. Lee had to vacate his positions and dodged west, but was overtaken by Grant and Meade and surrendered at Appomattox Court House . The victory at Gettysburg was viewed in retrospect as one of the turning points of the war.

In 1864 Meade was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

post war period

George Gordon Meade Memorial in Washington, DC

After the war, Meade, who had been promoted to Major General of the Regular Army in the fall of 1864 , was given command of the Department of the East or South (Department of the South) or the Territorial Command Atlantic (Military Division of the Atlantic) . However, he felt set back by the fact that not he, but Grant's subordinates in the western theater of war, William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan , were appointed to the top positions of the army. In 1872 Meade died of pneumonia attributed to his injury in 1862. Because of his distinctive facial features and his moody and irritable character, the soldiers nicknamed him the Old Goggle-eyed Snapping Turtle ("old goggle -eyed snapping turtle"). Today's US military base Fort George G. Meade in Maryland, Meade County, Kansas and Meade County, South Dakota are named after him. In Philadelphia there is the General Meade Society of Philadelphia , which operates various activities in memory of the General. Meade is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Known descendants

• Matthew Fox , actor. Great-great-great-grandchildren
• Happy Rockefeller , great-great-granddaughter.

In art

Meade is played by Richard Anderson in the feature film Gettysburg , an adaptation of Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels .

Publications

• General Meade's Letter on Gettyburg , Collins Printing House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA 1886.

Web links

Commons : George Gordon Meade  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

literature

• Tom Huntington: Searching for George Gordon Meade: The Forgotten Victor of Gettysburg . Stackpole, Mechanicsburg (PA) 2013, ISBN 978-0-8117-0813-5

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Keegan : The American Civil War . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-499-62831-3 , p. 261, 262 (English: The American Civil War. A Military History . Translated by Hainer Kober).
2. ↑ General Meade Society (English).
3. ↑ George Gordon Meade's grave in the Find a Grave database .
4. ^ Matthew Fox genealogy .