Hallowed Ground - James M. McPherson [25]
Over on the Union side of the lines, Northern officers pondered the day's events and wondered what would come on the morrow. Meade called a meeting of his corps commanders in the small farmhouse that served as his headquarters. (The house is still there, about three hundred yards east of the equestrian monument to Meade just behind the scene of the next day's fighting at the climax of Pickett's charge.) Meade asked for a vote by his generals on whether to retreat or to stay and fight. They all voted to stay.
A myth long persisted that Meade wanted to retreat, but was only persuaded to the contrary by this vote. The origins of the myth lay with two Daniels: Dan Sickles and Major General Daniel Butterfield, Meade's chief of staff, whose main claim to fame was his composition, the previous year, of the bugle call “Taps.” Both Daniels were cronies of the deposed army commander Joe Hooker, and their loyalties lay more with Hooker than with his successor. When Meade took over the army on June 28, there was not time to replace the experienced Butterfield with a new chief of staff before the battle was upon him. Butterfield later claimed that on July 2 Meade had instructed him to prepare orders for a retreat. What actually happened was that Meade asked Butterfield to draw a map of all the roads in the Union rear and to prepare contingency plans for a withdrawal in case it became necessary. This was only prudent, and Meade could be justly criticized if he had failed to prepare for every contingency.
But Meade, like his corps commanders, wanted to stay and fight. Butterfield's motive for stating the contrary was probably a desire to discredit Meade in order to make Hooker look better. As for Sickles, while recovering from loss of his leg he smarted at criticism of his move forward to the Peach Orchard contrary to orders. He continued to believe that this move had saved the army and won the battle—and also that by precipitating the fighting on July 2, it had undercut Meade's intention to retreat.
Sickles lived long enough to argue this case many times. Elected to Congress in 1892, he introduced the bill that created Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895. He made sure that the park boundaries included the area where his Third Corps had fought, so that visitors would always be able to see why he took them forward to the higher ground at the Peach Orchard and along the Emmitsburg Road. In 1897, after persistent lobbying, the army belatedly awarded Sickles the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry at Gettysburg. In his ninety-fourth year, Sickles attended the huge fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the battle at Gettysburg, still insisting that his move had set the stage for victory. Sickles died the following year, having outlived every other corps commander at Gettysburg.
Having decided to stay and fight, Meade made his preparations for the morrow. Two divisions of Hancock's tough Second Corps held the Union center just forward of Meade's headquarters. One of those divisions was commanded by General John Gibbon, a native of North Carolina who had remained loyal to the flag under which he had served for twenty years while three of his brothers went with the Confederacy. Looking back years after the battle, Gibbon recalled that Meade told him on that night of July 2 that “if Lee attacks tomorrow, it will be in your front,” because he had tried both flanks and failed. Gibbon gritted his teeth and told Meade that he would be ready if Lee came his way.
Day Three: July 3, 1863
JULY 3 DAWNED warm and humid—normal for midsummer in Gettysburg.