The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara [150]
His theories on defensive warfare are generations ahead of his time. The generals of Europe are still ordering massed assaults against fortified positions long years after his death, in 1904, at the age of eighty-three.
RICHARD EWELL
Serves with courage until the end, but as a corps commander he is fated never to achieve distinction. Of the Battle of Gettysburg he is later to remark: “It took a great many mistakes to lose that battle. And I myself made most of them.”
AMBROSE POWELL HILL
Never to take his place in the Richmond society he so dearly loved, so richly deserved. Five days before Appomattox, at the Battle of Five Forks, he is killed by a sniper’s bullet.
JOHN BELL HOOD
Loses not the arm but the use of it; it remains withered within his pinned sleeve for the rest of his days. Complains bitterly about the handling of the army at Gettysburg, is later given a command of his own: the Army of Tennessee. Defeated in Atlanta by Sherman, he spends much of the rest of his life justifying his actions in the field.
DORSEY PENDER
His wound grows steadily worse. An operation is performed within the month, at Staunton, but he begins to hemorrhage. The leg is amputated. He dies within the month. His wife attributes his death to the judgment of God.
ISAAC TRIMBLE
Wounded, is left behind to be captured by the enemy. Loses his leg, survives the war. Of the charge at Gettysburg he says: “If the men I had the honor to command that day could not take that position, all Hell couldn’t take it.”
JOHNSTON PETTIGREW
Survives the charge at Gettysburg with only a minor wound in the hand. Is shot to death ten days later in a delaying action guarding the retreat across the Potomac.
GEORGE PICKETT
His division is virtually destroyed. No field officer is unhurt. Of the thirteen colonels in his command that day seven are dead, six are wounded. His casualties exceed 60 percent. The famous Charge of the Light Brigade, in comparison, suffered casualties of approximately 40 percent. Pickett survives to great glory, but he broods on the loss. When the war is over he happens one day on John Singleton Mosby, on the way to see Robert Lee, and together they visit the old man. The meeting is, in Mosby’s words, “singularly cold.” After it is over, Pickett comes outside and says bitterly, “That man destroyed my division.”
JUBAL EARLY
Serves until near the end of the war, when Lee finds it necessary to relieve him because of complaints against him by citizens he has offended. His conduct after the war is notable for two episodes: He becomes the Southern officer most involved in trying to prove that Longstreet was responsible for the loss at Gettysburg, and he becomes the central figure in the infamous Louisiana lottery, which cost thousands of Southerners thousands of dollars.
ARTHUR FREMANTLE
Returns to England after three months in the Confederacy and writes a book on his experience, which is published in the South three months before the end of the war. It is a very readable and entertaining book, which predicts a certain Southern victory.
HARRISON
He vanishes from Longstreet’s records. Years after the war Moxley Sorrel attends a play, notices something vaguely familiar about one of the actors, recognizes Harrison. He goes backstage for a moment, they speak for a moment, but Sorrel is a gentleman and Harrison is a player, and there is no further connection. Nothing else of Harrison is known.
JOHN BUFORD
Never to receive recognition for his part in choosing the ground and holding it, and in so doing saving not only the battle but perhaps the war, he survives the summer but is weakened by wounds. In December of that year he goes down with pneumonia, and dies