John Gibbon

John Gibbon (born April 20, 1827 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † February 6, 1896 in Baltimore , Maryland ) was an officer in the US Army .

Life

Gibbon grew up in North Carolina and attended the Military Academy at West Point , which he graduated in 1847 together with the later General Ambrose Powell Hill and Ambrose Everett Burnside . He excelled in the war against Mexico and the Indian Wars, served as a teacher at West Point, and wrote a manual for artillerymen. At the outbreak of the American Civil War he held the rank of captain of the artillery . Although his family largely opted for the south , Gibbon remained loyal to the Union Army .

After some time as artillery commander in the division of Major General Irvin McDowell , he was promoted to Brigadier General of the Volunteers on May 2, 1862 . He was placed in command of a brigade of regiments from the Midwest which, under his command, earned the name Iron Brigade in the Second Battle of Bull Run and the battles of South Mountain and Antietam . It was also Gibbon to whom the brigade owes its characteristic feature, the black hats.

In November 1862 he was given command of a division in the 1st Corps of the Potomac Army . After a serious wound sustained during the Battle of Fredericksburg , he commanded a division of the II Corps at Gettysburg and at times the whole corps during the battle in which he was wounded again. After his recovery he took back command of his old division and led it in the Battle of the Wilderness as far as St. Petersburg in 1864 . On June 7 of the same year he was promoted to major general of the Volunteers, and in early 1865 he was given command of the newly formed XXIV Corps of the James Army . After the Civil War he became a colonel and regimental commander of the 36th US Infantry Regiment and in 1869 commander of the 7th US Infantry Regiment.

In 1876 his regiment was part of the great campaign against enemy Indian associations in the area of Little Big Horn . Gibbon's formation was supposed to advance against the Indians from the north, but could not arrive in time to help George Armstrong Custer's cavalry , which was almost completely wiped out. In 1877 Gibbon took part in the campaign against the Nez Percé under Chief Joseph , where he was wounded in the Battle of the Big Hole. In 1885 he was promoted to Brigadier General in the US Army . He retired on his 64th birthday. John Gibbon died in Baltimore on February 6, 1896.

literature

John Gibbon: Personal Recollections of the Civil War . Dayton, OH 1988 (reprinted from New York 1928 edition).
Dennis S. Lavery & Mark H. Jordan: Iron Brigade General. John Gibbon, a Rebel in Blue (Contributions in military studies; Vol. 138). Greenwood Press, Westport, CT 1993, ISBN 0-313-28576-4 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Gibbon, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	General of the US Army
DATE OF BIRTH	April 20, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH	Philadelphia , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH	February 6, 1896
Place of death	Baltimore , Maryland