Caption: When George Meade was awakened by an officer from the War Department in the early morning hours just after midnight on June 28, 1863, he expected to be arrested for his repeated arguments with Commander-in-Chief, Major General Joseph Hooker. Instead, he received orders from President Lincoln ordering him to take command of the Union's mighty Army of the Potomac. Since Meade made his home in Philadelphia, Lincoln felt the Pennsylvanian would "fight well on his own dunghill." Three days later, Meade presided over what many consider the most significant military engagement of the Civil War: the bloody battle of Gettysburg.
Courtesy of The Union League of Philadelphia
Caption: The Union victory at Gettysburg would go on to become one of the most celebrated battles of American history. George Meade, however, would not receive the adulation that the public bestowed Grant, Sherman, and other Civil War generals. In the 1920s, however, Violet Oakley painted this mural which now hangs in the Pennsylvania Senate, placing him alongside Commonwealth heroes William Penn and George Washington.
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee/Photo by Hunt Commercial Photography.
Caption: In early May of 1863, a "spent" cannon ball hit Brigadier General John W. Geary in the chest at the battle of Chancellorsville. While not quite enough to kill him, it did knock him unconscious and left him unable to speak above a whisper for many weeks. Less than a month later, Geary was leading his men at the Battle of Gettysburg. His division defended Culp's Hill during the final two days of the battle.
Courtesy of the State Museum of Pennsylvania.[PHMC]
Caption: Like his adversary Abraham Lincoln, Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was born in Kentucky. A West Point graduate, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, and former secretary of war, Jefferson Davis by February, 1861, was provisional President of the Confederacy. In the late Spring of 1863, Robert E. Lee convinced President Davis that the time was right for another invasion of the North. Taking the war to the North would ease pressure on war-ravaged Virginia, and a victory might still convince a European nation to assist the struggling Confederacy. So, in June of 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia turned north and began their march towards Pennsylvania.
Courtesy of the R. W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, Louisiana
Caption: Robert E. Lee, by Louis Mathieu Didier Guillaume, c. 1862-65.
Courtesy of the R. W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, Louisiana
Caption: General Stuart and his staff, by John Adams Elder.
Courtesy of the R. W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, Louisiana
Caption: Born in Philadelphia to a well-to-do family, George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885) graduated from West Point in 1846 and then served with distinction in the Mexican-American War. As commander of the Army of the Potomac, McClellan was a superb administrator, but his reluctant to use the Army he had so ably organized infuriated Lincoln. Frustrated that McClellan would not follow Lee's retreating army after the battle of Antietam. In November 1862, Lincoln relieved him for the second and final time as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac.
From the Collections of The New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, New Jersey