Happy Birthday, General Meade

[ole]

Blatantly stolen post. Most of you remember CC.

31 December 1815 – George Meade’s birthday!

1815 – Year of the Pig/Boar: Pigs are usually honest, straightforward and patient persons; they are chivalrous and gallant. They don’t make many friends but they make them for life; pigs are extremely loyal. They don’t talk much but have a great thirst for knowledge. They study a great deal and are generally well informed. Pigs are quick-tempered despite the fact that they hate quarrels and arguments. They are kind to their loved ones. Pigs are reserved with those they do not know too well, but as time passes and they gain confidence, those around them may discover a lively and warm-hearted person behind the mask of aloofness.

Also Born in 1815: Otto von Bismarck, Union generals William French, Henry W. Halleck, and Phil Kearny.

Happening in 1815: James Madison was president; the first commercial cheese factory was established in Switzerland; Battle of New Orleans (War of 1812); Hartford Convention (where it’s now obvious that they most likely talked about cheese and not secession); first railroad charter granted in the U.S. (by New Jersey); Battle of Waterloo; Sir Humphry Davy patents the miner’s safety lamp; the ‘Great September Gale of 1815’ – one of only five major hurricanes (historically) to hit New England; and the world’s largest historical volcano eruption (Mount Tambora, Indonesia) – killing over 71,000 and subsequently christening the next year (1816) as ‘The Year Without Summer’ (due to the eruption’s effect on weather).


Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Likes: Romance, loyalty, feeling secure. Financial/material stability. Ambitious mates, feeling committed, making long term relationship plans, dependability, reliability, and perseverance.

Dislikes: Flightiness, being bossed around, crudeness/coarseness, dominance, game playing, ego displays, extravagance, being challenged by a lover, indecisiveness.

Ideal Careers: Scientist, engineer, manager, civil servant, mathematician, farmer, builder, politician, and director.

Famous Capricorns: Stephen Hawking, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Benjamin Franklin, Nicolas Cage, Joan Baez, Jimmy Page, David Bowie, Mao Zedong, Muhammed Ali, J.D. Salinger, J.R.R. Tolkien, Edgar Allan Poe, Martin Luther King, Rudyard Kipling, Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, Janis Joplin, Isaac Newton, Tiger Woods, and Al Capone.


Hogwarts House Hat Sorter – General George Meade: Ravenclaw – Intelligence, creativity, wit, and wisdom; animal is the eagle. A logical riddle must be solved to gain entry into the Ravenclaw dormitories; only a password is required for Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin.


Bio-Bytes: George Meade was born in 1815 in Cadiz, Spain; the 8th of 11 children. Meade died on 6[or 7] November 1872 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from complications of his old wounds combined with pneumonia (age 56). Meade entered West Point in 1831; graduated in 1835 (West Point graduating classmates include: Henry Naglee, Marsena Patrick, Herman Haupt, George Morell) – even while at West Point, however, Meade did not plan a military career for himself. Meade spent a year in the artillery (3rd U.S. Artillery), was a civil engineer for the Alabama, Georgia, and Florida Railroad (after resigning from the Army); however, with employment opportunities unfavorable, Meade re-entered the Army in 1842 (topographical engineers), served in the Mexican War (assigned to the staffs of Generals Zachary Taylor, William J. Worth, and Robert Patterson). Meade was brevetted to first lieutenant for gallant conduct (a pig trait!) at the Battle of Monterey.

Meade, in Washington in 1840, met and subsequently married Margaretta Sergeant. They had seven children. Like many families in the Civil War, Meade’s family life was subject to the existing sectional strife: Margaretta’s sister was married to the Governor of Virginia (Wise) – who would later become a brigadier general in the Confederate Army.

George Meade designed a number of lighthouses after the Mexican war (the last link has more detailed information about Meade as a lighthouse designer and engineer):

www.longbeachisland.com/bllths2.jpg

www.cyberlights.com/lh/nj...secon1.htm

upload.wikimedia.org/wiki...pemay2.jpg

www.jupiterlighthouse.org/

www.lighthousefriends.com...asp?ID=701

At the onset of the Civil War, Meade was appointed brigadier general and commanded a brigade of Pennsylvania volunteers (Meade’s friendship with John Reynolds began at this point).

At the battle of Glendale (Seven Days), Meade was badly wounded. He was hit just above the hip, his liver was grazed, and the bullet just missed his spine as it went through his body. He was also hit in the arm, but Meade refused to leave. A heavy loss of blood changed his mind and he finally left the field.

While Hooker and Meade’s relationship grew rather ‘frosty’ in the aftermath of Chancellorsville, Hooker had previously praised Meade’s distinguishing performance at South Mountain. Meade’s brigade stormed the heights at South Mountain – whereby Hooker is believed to have said: “Look at Meade! Why, with troops like those, led in that way, I can win [whip] anything!” [Hooker was Meade’s corps commander at the time.]

On June 28th, 1863, Meade was awakened from sleep around 3:00am – the purpose of which, Meade thought, was his own arrest and departure for Washington. Meade would later uncharacteristically joke, “The news was much worse.” Meade would succeed Joe Hooker as the Commander, Army of the Potomac (an assignment he did not seek and only accepted reluctantly).

Although Meade’s reputation has been controversial at times (particularly negative amongst earlier historians); modern views tend to show Meade in a more positive light. Meade’s temper was legendary (‘Old Snapping Turtle’) – his staff suffered abusive eruptions of Meade’s notorious temper notwithstanding the fact that Meade is known to have always remained kindly and tender with his immediate family (a very pig trait!). Additionally, the Sickles controversy, Meade’s negative relationship with the press, and some conflict with his new boss, Ulysses S. Grant, all contributed towards less than complimentary analyses of Meade’s legacy and achievements in days gone by. Modern treatments of Meade, however, are more likely to highlight specific instances where Meade is known to have shined and thus produce a more balanced view of ‘the feisty General’: Meade’s performance at Gettysburg in the larger context of taking command of the Army of the Potomac within the previous 72 hours; his performance at Fredericksburg and South Mountain (demonstrating an aggressiveness often lacking in the Army of the Potomac); his insightful grasp and progressive understanding of shifting warfare tactics – away from frontal assaults; and Grant’s recognition of Meade’s value in keeping Meade on as the Commander of the Army of the Potomac. Despite some of the friction between them, Grant praised Meade as follows: “Meade has more than met my most sanguine expectations. He and [William T.] Sherman are the fittest officers for large commands I have come in contact with.”

Other comments on Meade:

Grant: “General Meade was an officer of great merit, with drawbacks to his usefulness that were beyond his control. He had been an officer of the engineer corps before the war, and consequently had never served with troops until he was over forty-six years of age. He never had, I believe, a command of less than a brigade. He saw clearly and distinctly the position of the enemy, and the topography of the country in front of his own position. His first idea was to take advantage of the lay of the ground, sometimes without reference to the direction we wanted to move afterwards. He was subordinate to his superiors in rank to the extent that he could execute an order which changed his own plans with the same zeal he would have displayed if the plan had been his own. He was brave and conscientious, and commanded the respect of all who knew him. He was unfortunately of a temper that would get beyond his control, at times, and make him speak to officers of high rank in the most offensive manner. No one saw this fault more plainly than he himself, and no one regretted it more. This made it unpleasant at times, even in battle, for those around him to approach him even with information. In spite of this defect he was a most valuable officer and deserves a high place in the annals of his country.” [Grant Memoirs]

McClellan: “Meade was also one of my early appointments to brigadier-general. He was an excellent officer; cool, brave, and intelligent; he always did his duty admirably, and was an honest man. As commander of an army he was far superior to either Hooker or Burnside.” [McClellan’s Own Story]

Coddington: “People who worked with Meade and knew him well overlooked some of his less prepossessing characteristics and saw, as did Frederick Law Olmsted of the United States Sanitary Commission, a man with a ‘most soldierly and veteran-like appearance; a grave, stern countenance…[…]…He is simple, direct, deliberate and thoughtful in manner of speech and general address…” […]…Meade’s love of truth, strong sense of the fitness of things, and dedication to duty explain the quality of his temper, which was an element in his makeup that caused universal comment among his contemporaries. A quick, active, energetic, masterful man, he had the violent impatience of a perfectionist with stupidity, negligence, or laziness…[…]…Less sympathetic observers have given to posterity a distorted picture of the general. One of these was Charles A. Dana who as Assistant Secretary of War from 1863 to 1865 frequently visited the battlefronts and have occasion to observe Meade. He exaggerated the less attractive features of the general’s temperament and their unfortunate effects on his relations with others…[…]…When not absorbed in military operations Meade was a different person, cracking jokes and relating stories with ‘great fluency and…elegant language,’ and on rare occasions he would sit by the campfire ‘talking familiarly with all the aides.’ There were other manifestations of a pleasanter side. The sight of unfortunate women and children in enemy country often moved him to acts of charity…[…]…Outsiders rarely if ever saw this side of Meade. Not naturally genial or easygoing in his manner, he usually kept aloof and made no effort to make himself popular. As a rule he would not even speak to a member of the press, and reporters in turn did not dare to address him. They exacted a toll for this treatment, and as a result Meade’s reputation suffered from poor press. Yet this man with the *****ly personality, who was so graceless to so many people, years later received the highest tribute possible from one of his subordinates and himself a Gettysburg hero, General G. K. Warren. Although he had not always been on the best of terms with his commander, in looking back over the years Warren concluded that at Gettysburg Meade’s ‘moral character was a tower of strength to us and gave hope to the hearts of those who sought the favor of Providence and believed in the success of a just cause.’ He did not know another man who could ‘so thoroughly have inspired the Army of the Potomac to meet with confidence the great trial it was about to make…’. [Edwin Coddington; The Gettysburg Campaign]

Porter: “There was an officer serving in the Army of the Potomac who had formerly been a surgeon. One day he appeared at Meade’s headquarters in a high state of indignation, and said: ‘General, as I was riding over here some of the men in the adjoining camps shouted after me and called me ‘Old Pills,’ and I would like to have it stopped.’ Meade just at that moment was not in the best possible frame of mind to be approached with such a complaint. He seized hold of the eye-glasses, conspicuously large in size, which he always wore, clapped them astride of his nose with both hands, glared through them at the officer, and exclaimed: ‘Well, what of that? How can I prevent it? Why, I hear that, when I rode out the other day, some of the men called me a ‘****ed old goggle-eyed snapping-turtle,’ and I can’t even stop that!’ The officer had to content himself with this explosive expression of a sympathetic fellow-feeling, and to take his chances thereafter as to obnoxious epithets.” [Horace Porter; Campaigning with Grant]

Theodore Lyman (Meade aide): “I don’t know any thin old gentleman…who, when he is wrathy, exercises less of Christian charity than my well-beloved chief!” [Tagg; Generals of Gettysburg]

Meade letter to a daughter (probably Henrietta; 1862): “I think a great deal about you, and all the other dear children…I often picture to myself as I last saw you – yourself, Sarah, and Willie lying in bed, crying, because I had to go away, and while I was scolding you for crying, I felt like crying myself…It is very hard to be kept away from you, because there is no man on earth that loves his children more dearly than I do, or whose happiness is more dependent on being with his family.”


George Meade died in 1872 and is buried at the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Other Notable 1872 deaths: Samuel Morse, Horace Greeley, Richard S. Ewell, George Catlin, Francis Lieber, Henry W. Halleck, and William H. Seward.


CC
Oops!


General Meade was involved with the Absecon Lighthouse, not the Cape May Lighthouse!

www.lighthousefriends.com...asp?ID=379