Fort George G. Meade: The First 100 Years

4 THE FIRST 100 YEARS
under Gen. Joseph Hooker. He also led the 3rd Division
during the Battle of Fredericksburg and commanded the
V Corps at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
On June 28, 1863, upon Hooker’s resignation, Meade
was given command of the Army of the Potomac shortly
before the start of the Civil War’s bloodiest battle:
Gettysburg.
When receiving a messenger from President Abraham
Lincoln informing him of the appointment, Meade
initially assumed his bitter differences with Hooker had
caught up with him and he was being arrested and courtmartialed,
he wrote to his wife.
During the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, Meade was
able to hold off the attacks of Gen. Robert E. Lee and
nearly decimated the Confederate Army.
Meade’s legacy, however, was tarnished by Lee’s ability to
retreat back to Virginia. Lincoln harshly criticized Meade
for not finishing off the Army of Northern Virginia at
Gettysburg, and Meade offered his resignation.
But it was denied, and on July 7, 1863, Meade was
promoted to brigadier general in the regular Army.
In the spring of 1864, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the newly
appointed lieutenant general and general in chief of
Union forces, made his headquarters with the Army of
the Potomac. While Meade technically oversaw the Army
of the Potomac, Grant made all command decisions
regarding the Army’s movement.
Meade was largely overshadowed by Grant for the
rest of the war, although he nominally commanded the
Army during the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania,
Cold Harbor and Petersburg. He was promoted to
major general, at Grant’s request, after the Spotsylvania
campaign.
“Meade has more than met my most sanguine
expectations,” Grant wrote to Secretary of War Edwin
Stanton. “He and [Gen. William Tecumseh] Sherman are
the fittest officers for large commands I have come in
contact with.”
But tellingly, Meade was not present at the surrender
of Lee’s Army in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on
April 9, 1865, which effectively ended the Civil War.
After the war, Meade held several military commands
and eventually returned to Philadelphia, where he died
on Nov. 6, 1872, due to complications from his old
war wounds combined with pneumonia. Still on active
duty, Meade was 56 and buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery
in Philadelphia. Among the Civil War luminaries who
attended his funeral were President Grant, Sherman, and
Generals Philip Sheridan and Winfield S. Hancock.
“The mention of Meade has always been met with a
certain degree of pause,” wrote Civil War scholar Allen
C. Guelzo. “Surprise that an officer with such modest
credentials could manage to pull off such a mammoth
victory as Gettysburg, and then chirping criticism that,
having triumphed as he did, Meade failed to do more.
Although both of those reactions are unfair, they are also
accurate,” he wrote. “And together, they have come to
define George Gordon Meade’s long-term reputation.”
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(Pg. 3) Originally intended as a backdrop for one of four
Service Men’s Clubs on post, the mural, painted by a WWII
soldier, is a symbolic depiction of Civil War era Union and
Confederate soldiers fighting side by side against Hitler’s
Germany. At the left and right corners of the mural are two
WWII Divisions.
(Pg. 2 & 5) Portrait of Brig. Gen. George G. Meade.