The Hero of Gettysburg

July 1-3 is the anniversary of the turning point of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg. As we remember Gettysburg, we should take care to remember the man who was dubbed "The Hero of Gettysburg." After proving himself one of the greatest American generals of all time, he later became the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Throughout his life, he offered a model of honesty and patriotism which should forever be emulated by Americans.

When he was a child, he befriended and defended the victims of bullies. At a time when even abolitionists looked down on black people, his son said of him, "My father has always impressed on my mind that all men are born free and equal."

He was a great warrior. When he was the Democratic nominee for president, he refused to accept campaign contributions. He was a superb American, admired by people of all political persuasions for his unimpeachable integrity and devotion to public service.

He was Winfield Scott Hancock, born on February 14, 1824 near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And in 1881, he was elected the sixth president of the National Rifle Association.

Named after the military hero Winfield Scott, Winfield Scott Hancock served ably as an infantry lieutenant in Indian Territory, and then as an officer in the Mexican War. As a child, he learned from his lawyer father a deep respect for Common Law. When Winfield departed for the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1840, his father placed in his luggage the Constitution of the United States, and Blackstone's Commentaries, with the instruction to read each at least once a year. Blackstone, of course, was the author of the most influential legal treatise ever written, the analysis of common law and civil liberty which declared the right "of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition" to be one of "the natural rights of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression."

In 1856-58, Hancock and his wife Almira were stationed in Florida, where the Seminole Indians still carried out raids. While in Florida, Almira Hancock learned how to shoot.

When the Civil War began, the Hancocks were serving in Los Angeles. There was very little pro-Union sentiment in the city; most people wanted California to join the Confederacy, or to create an independent Western republic. As historian Glenn Tucker explains:

Probably all that saved the faraway section of Southern California for the Union at this critical moment was Hancock's care in seeing that his precious guns, ammunition, and supplies were adequately protected. He assembled 20 or so derringers for his own use in an emergency, then recruited every Union sympathizer in the neighborhood to be ready on a moment's notice. He armed Mrs. Hancock... [In a federal arms depot, Hancock] hid the boxes of guns and ammunition underneath great heaps of grain, drew up his wagons to form a barricade and prepared to fight it out. No officer was closer than a hundred miles, but Hancock faced attack with some confidence. Finally a squadron of cavalry arrived from Fort Tehone, a hundred miles away, and paraded, and the danger of the loss of Southern California was minimized. Many credited Hancock with holding it for the Union cause.

Having saved Southern California for the Union, Hancock headed east to join the fighting. His first major engagement was the battle of Williamsburg (May 4-5, 1862) in the Peninsula campaign; there he forced the Confederates to retreat by breaking their left flank. General George McClellan said "Hancock was superb today." Thereafter, he was known as "Hancock the Superb."

At Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862), Hancock took command of the Second Corps after Israel B. Richardson was killed in action. Hancock's division fought at Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862), in the grueling assault on Marye's Heights. After the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville (May 3, 1863), Hancock led the rear guard which protected the Union withdrawal.

On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1, 1863), Hancock formed the Union defensive positions at Little Round Top and Cemetery Ridge — the key positions which held the Union center. As McClellan had observed, Hancock "had a wonderfully quick and correct eye for ground."

On the third day of Gettysburg, Hancock commanded the First, Second, and Third Corps — three-fifths of the Union army. That day, Robert E. Lee flung the Virginia militia and Confederate Lt. General James Longstreet into "Pickett's Charge," a bold offensive gamble to win the battle, and perhaps the war, in a single day.

The charge began, and Hancock was everywhere, ordering the regiments and brigades. The steady advance of Picketts' men was the high water mark of the Confederacy. A bullet ripped through Hancock's saddle, opened an inch-wide hole in his body, and lodged eight inches inside his groin — along with a nail and a piece of wood as big as the bullet. Hancock looked as if he had been cut with a butcher's knife.

Hancock refused to be carried to safety, and continued to direct the combat from his stretcher. Pickett's Charge was repulsed, and the Union dubbed Hancock "the hero of Gettysburg." The Confederates called him the "Thunderbolt of the Army of the Potomac."

President Lincoln explained, "When I go down in the morning to open my mail, I declare that I do it in fear and trembling lest I may hear that Hancock has been killed or wounded." Lincoln also wrote "Some of the older generals have said to me that he is rash, and I have said to them that I have watched General Hancock's conduct very carefully, and I have found that when he goes into action he achieves his purpose and comes out with a smaller list of casualties than any of them."

Fittingly, the Uberti "Gettysburg Tribute" historic rifle includes an engraving of Hancock.

Although the wound caused him pain for the rest of life, Hancock recuperated sufficiently to return to fight in the Wilderness Campaign, where, in the Battle of Spotsylvania (May 12, 1864) he earned the rank of "major general" for breaking through a Confederate salient in less than an hour and capturing almost 3,000 prisoners.

He was not always victorious in battle, and his Second Corps suffered terrible losses at Cold Harbor (June 3, 1864). But as General Grant recalled, "his name was never mentioned as having committed in battle a blunder for which he was responsible." McClellan called him "brilliant in the extreme." William Tecumsah Sherman declared him "one of the greatest soldiers in history."

During Reconstruction, Hancock was appointed Governor of the 5th Military District, which encompassed Texas and Louisiana. Hancock refused to bully the defeated and vulnerable citizenry of Texas and Louisiana. His General Orders No. 40 of November 29, 1867, announced how he intended to govern. Predicting "they will crucify me," Hancock wrote:

General Orders No. 40 was soon published all over the country. Hancock's policy was joyfully received by the south as a sign that the war was finally over, and by Northerners who looked forward to reconciliation and the restoration of constitutional government.

But for the radical majority in Congress who believed that the southern states were conquered areas deserving punishment, Hancock's words were anathema. In a famous letter to the civil governor of Texas, William Pease — one of those who found fault with General Orders No. 40 — Hancock defended the right of critics of the national government to express their opinions, no matter how vehement:

Hancock recognized that there was a great deal of intimidation by carpetbaggers who had employed the threat of federal retaliation in order to prevent their political enemies from voting. Hancock refused to allow the military to be part of the problem. In Special Orders No. 213 of December 18, 1867, Section IX, he declared:

He likewise refused to use military force to interfere with the operation of the courts, unless the civil authorities asked him for aid.

Hancock's generous policy toward the conquered South was unique among the military governors of the time. His supporters thought he provided a model for national reconciliation. Congress and the military hierarchy disagreed. General Grant repeatedly countermanded Hancock's orders. In response, Hancock wrote to a congressional ally: "I may expect one humiliation after another until I am forced to resign... [But n]othing can intimidate me from doing what I believe to be honest and right."

The conflict came to a head when Hancock, a Democrat, appointed fellow Democrats to the New Orleans City Council. On February 27, 1868, only six months after his appointment, he requested and received reassignment to the West.

Although Hancock was considered as a possible Democratic presidential nominee in 1876, the party nominated New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden, who ran against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. The election of 1876 was one of the dirtiest in American history. There were disputes in Oregon, Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana about who had won the state's electoral votes. Hayes was eventually declared the winner by a single vote, after a special commission voted 8-7 along partisan lines to award all the contested votes to Hayes.

But in some of the contested states, the reason the vote had been so close was that Democrats had illegally prevented many black people from voting. So although the Republicans had perpetrated numerous dirty tricks in ballot counting, Hancock the Democrat defended the legitimacy of Republican President Hayes. As Hayes recorded in his diary,

If Hancock had not written General Orders No. 40, he might have quietly achieved more of the goals expressed in Orders No. 40. However, it was those forthright written words that placed him on the path to a presidential nomination. In a letter to Hancock, former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Jeremiah S. Black, who had also served as Attorney General under President Buchanan, wrote that General Orders No. 40 would give him "a place in history which your children will be proud of."

In 1880, the Democrats nominated Winfield Scott Hancock for president. Hancock's running mate was William H. English, a banker from Indiana. Neither Hancock nor English would accept personal donations. Although local Democratic organizations (like local Republican organizations) spent their own money, the Republican candidate James A. Garfield also accepted huge personal donations. As Hancock's biographer notes, "Undoubtedly, his extreme punctiliousness about money at a time when the opposition party was spending lavishly impaired his prospects."

There were no personal charges that could be used against Hancock, so Republicans focused on the presumed political naïveté of military figures (a hypocritical charge for a party that had twice nominated Ulysses Grant — who, like Hancock, had not previously held elective office).

The popular vote was the closest in American history, as Garfield edged Hancock by only 9,464 votes. Garfield won the Electoral College 214 to 155. Democratic disunity in the swing state of New York, with 35 electoral votes, cost Hancock the presidency of the United States.

But Hancock did not retire from public life. Instead, he set to work to fix one of the problems which had been revealed by the Civil War. During the Civil War, it was widely known that Confederate soldiers, many of whom had grown up on farms, were superior to the more urbanized Union army with regard to firearm proficiency.

The Union soldiers' training was inadequate. Many of them fired only a single round in all of their training, and some fired none at all. In 1864, Hancock had taken an informal survey of his own men and found that a third of them had never shot their musket. It was also suspected that Custer's 1876 disaster at the Little Big Horn was partly due to the army's lack of skill with firearms.

Former Union officers founded the National Rifle Association in 1871 in New York State to promote marksmanship. Unfortunately for the NRA, Alonzo B. Cornell was elected governor of New York in 1880. Cornell was openly hostile to the nascent National Guard. Cornell naïvely predicted: "There will be no war in my time or in the time of my children." He added, "The only need for a National Guard is to show itself in parades and ceremonies. I see no reason for them to learn to shoot if their only function will be to march a little through the streets. Rifle practice...is a waste of money...."

When Gen. George W. Wingate, an attorney and then vice president of the NRA, attempted to convince Governor Cornell that American soldiers should be skilled in the use of arms, Cornell bellowed back: "Then we should take their rifles away from them and sell them to benefit the Treasury. It would be more practical and far less expensive to arm them with clubs which require no instruction in their use."

Cornell had won office as a fiscal conservative, and his cuts to the New York National Guard budget financially destabilized the fledgling National Rifle Association.

Hancock was elected NRA president in 1881, based on hopes that his prestige as a nationally recognized and beloved figure would bolster the organization. In this regard, Hancock was a forerunner of NRA president Charlton Heston, whose prestige also boosted the NRA.

As president, Hancock explained, "The object of the NRA is to increase the military strength of the country by making skill in the use of arms as prevalent as it was in the days of the Revolution."

By aiming to revive the Revolutionary tradition of the American marksman, Hancock and the NRA were taking sides in one of the cultural battles of the era. As the Industrial Revolution matured, more and more American workers were performing simple, repetitive tasks in huge factories. The view that individuals were mere cogs in the industrial machine had its parallel in warfare — in the view that the ordinary soldier should just follow orders blindly and shoot in the general direction of the enemy's mass. A random hail of bullets was all that infantry was supposed to produce.

The contrary view — of Hancock and other NRA leaders — was that Americans were more than brutes in service of the military-industrial complex. They were individuals who should be the masters of their arms, and whose personal skills should be encouraged and celebrated with competitions and prizes. The Americans of 1881 could, in Hancock's view, be every bit as competent and personally excellent as the Americans of 1781.

The same cultural conflict which led to the founding of the NRA continues today. On one side are pessimists who insist that modern Americans are too clumsy and hot-tempered to be trusted with guns. On the NRA side are people who believe that the virtues and skills of the Founding generation can and must be emulated by Americans of every generation.

The best biographies acknowledge a subject's foibles. Hancock's biographers, however, did not tell us what his faults were. His wife of 36 years, Almira, did not reveal his faults, and she destroyed many of his personal letters. His political rivals could find little more to complain about than his stubborn honesty and integrity.

General William T. Sherman told an interviewer, "if you will sit down and write the best that can be put in the English language of General Hancock as a soldier and as a gentleman, I will sign it without hesitation." When Winfield Scott Hancock passed away in 1886, former President Hayes said succinctly, "he was through and through pure gold."

— Dave Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute. Paul Gallant and Joanne Eisen are senior fellows.

"The most desperate struggle occurred on Longstreet's front , where two Union regiments at separated points of this combat zone, the 20th Maine and the 1st Minnesota, achieved lasting fame by throwing back Confederate attacks that came dangerously close to breakthroughs.

A mile to the north, however, another Alabama brigade threatened to puncture the Cemetery Ridge line near its center.

Their attack hit a gap in the Union line created by the earlier advance of Sickle's corps to the peach orchard. Winfield Scott Hancock's 2nd Corps occupied the sector, but until Hancock could shift reinforcements to stop the assault he had only eight companies of one regiment on hand to meet the oncoming brigade.

The regiment was the 1st Minnesota, veteran of all the army's battles since the beginning at Bull Run. Hancock ordered these 262 men to charge the 1,600 Alabamians and slow them down long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

The Minnesotan's did the job, but only forty-seven of them came back. Hancock plugged the gap, and the Confederate attack all along the southern half of the battlefield flickered out in the twilight."

James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988).

"It was at Gettysburg that the First had its rendezvous with history, not once, but twice. It was here that the First earned the right to be on William F. Fox's list of the Civil War's great fighting regiments. On July 2, the First was called upon to stop the advance of the Confederates through a gap in the Union line. They did so at a cost of two-thirds of those involved, described by Hancock as one of the most gallant deeds in history.

The next day, the regiment participated in one of the great military dramas of American History--the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge and repulse. At the Copse of Trees, the First lost another one-third of the few survivors from the day before."

Robert W. Meinhard, "The First Minnesota at Gettysburg," The Gettysburg Magazine (January 1991).

I like to share this letter each year when the Gettysburg Anniversary comes around. It's from the Rochester Union and Advertiser, dated July 13, 1863.

A Visit to the Gettysburg Battle Field.

Gettysburg, Pa., July 7th, 1863

Editors Union: Presuming an account direct from the field of the late dreadful and sanguinary struggle at this place, may prove of interest to the friends of our brave Rochester boys who participated in its glorious results, I pen you a few observations of my experience during the past twenty-four hours. Through the persistent efforts of an influential citizen, I obtained a pass from Gen. Schenck to leave Baltimore and proceed to the battlefield, and left with a party of friends in a carriage on the eve of the fifth, it being impossible for any civilian to go by railroad.

On arriving at Westminister we met Sedwick's baggage trains, and were obliged to remain over night, though we could find no food for man or beast, as all the towns, and most of the residents on the Gettysburg "Pike" were completely cleared out last week by the rebels.

We proceeded early in the morning, and ere long we had plenty of indications of the late struggle, in the ambulance wagons filled with wounded, and others on foot, plodding wearily along, most all of the men exhibiting wounds of some kind. When within six miles of Gettysburg the signs of desolation were striking, in the destruction of all fences and crops within sight. As we approached nearer, dead horses in the road and adjoining fields became plentiful, causing a stench quite sickening.

We finally left the road and turned into the cemetery, and soon found ourselves on the now celebrated "Cemetery Hill" for a time, during the most critical period of the engagement, the headquarters of General Meade. At this elevated point we had a fine and comprehensive view of the field, it being the centre itself. The sight here was appalling indeed, the beautiful repose of the dead being one mass of ruins-the imposing arched entrance gate being sadly disfigured by shot and shell-the fences, the ornamental iron railings being felled and scattered in all directions, the chaste and beautiful marble shafts, monuments and tablets lay broken and dismantled, the ground strewn with soldiers' accoutrements, muskets and dead horses, whilst cannon balls, fragments of shell, grape, cannister and cartridges lay thickly strewn about; also some few champagne bottles which I noticed on the graves near where Meade's headquarters were. Off to the right and left could be seen thousands of new made graves, with their pine head boards. On an elevation, alone among the graves stood a wounded horse.

We left this heart sickening scene to pursue our observations on the left, reading many of the inscriptions on the graves, eager to see if any belonged to the Rochester regiments. We pursued, in the course of the tide of devastation, our way some two miles through the thick made graves and dead horses, which latter were now as plenty as stumps in a new settlement. Some you could observe no wounds upon, while others were mangled horribly, and some, from their position, holding their heads up, you could not believe were dead until you approached closely.

The ground, all the way, was literally covered with muskets, broken artillery, wagons and wheels, caps, coats, blankets, haversacks, accoutrements of all kinds, playing cards, letters, books, &c., &c., for miles. Whole boxes of ammunition, now broken, were also seen. By most of the solitary graves lay the occupant's out-fit complete, and the food he had with him at the time.

We now proceeded through the first woods on the left, northwest of the cemetery. The trees were completely riddled by shot and shell, while missiles of all kinds were as thick as berries. After passing on through the woods into the fields beyond we first saw the dead rebels who had not, as yet, been interred. This sight was disgusting in the extreme. They lay in all positions, the faces being black from decomposition. The frequency of the sight seemed, however, to harden us to it; so after cutting a few buttons off of them, we left them with a requiescat in pace.

We now cut off to a neat looking farm house, with large barns attached which we thought outside of the line of battle, but on a nearer approach we saw that the premises were within the devastating fire which had swept by it as with the besom of destruction. But all was lonely and silent now, the doors were open, the plates and some food on the table, the house ransacked from cellar to garret, everything broken and strewn about as if by malice. A carnival of demons would not have left a blacker picture of ruin and riot. A shell had entered one side of the house and burst among the bed clothes, where we found fragments of it; the clock ticked solemnly on, and was within three minutes of my watch. In the front yard were four new graves, while within a stones throw were from twenty to thirty dead horses.

On going to the barn, which was riddled with bullets, we found a dead horse in a stall. We put our horse in the barn and pushed on further to the left, and to the first range of hills or mountains went of the village. Here were evidences of a dreadful conflict and carnage, and the rebels lay thick on the ground, and were also buried by hundreds in large pits; some containing as many as five hundred bodies. The stench here was so intolerable that we were obliged to hold large bunches of pennyroyal to our noses, and breathe through the herbs.

On going up the steep and rocky mountain side, we came to an impromptu stone wall fortification, which, on entering, what was my surprise to see a torn and dirty copy of the "Union and Advertiser," also a scrap of "Moore's Rural New Yorker." I knew well then that some of our boys had occupied the very spot, and the post of danger was well defended, for within a hundred yards of that stone wall I saw a hundred rebels laying stiff in their gore. Horrible and ghastly indeed was the tale thus told.

I finally came across three privates of the 140th Reg't, who said that their regiment had occupied the place, and had lost their brave Colonel. They were doing hospital duty to the wounded left a few miles further on. One of them named Campbell, who lived at Lyell Bridge, said their loss was 131, killed, wounded and missing. They showed me some fresh made graves from which I copied the following names: S.O. Webb, Co.. G; Chas. Speisberger, Co. D; Justice Eisenberger, Co. D; Ph. Bechner, Co. D; John Zubler, Co. B; Rob't Shields, Co. C; John Allen, Co. C; John Hindel, Co. C; Rob't Blair, Co. D; Corp.. John Evans, Co. D. I was told that Col. O'Rorke was temporarily interred at their camp hospital about 5 miles northwest of Gettysburg, as no one could be spared in the emergency to convey his remains home. Among the officers in the field hospital are Capt. Starks, wounded in hand, Capt. Speiss, badly, in breast and leg; Capt. Sibley, in thighs; Lieut. Klein, leg and side; McGraw, leg off; and Smith, the "Razor Strop man." wounded leg. All are in care of Brockport surgeon, who belongs to the 140th Reg't.

Every effort is being made to get the wounded into the regular hospitals, but there are thousands of them and it will take time. Thousands are flocking here to aid the sufferers, and here is the place for the Relief Associations to send their "aids and comforts." Meade's army is hard after the fleeing pillagers. From conversations I heard between Union and Rebel officers, they all agree, while mutually complimenting each other's bravery, that this was the most severe and desperately contested engagement of the war. From its track of desolation and ravages, anything worse is beyond imagination.

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