Who is george meade

He received an appointment to the United State Military Academy, in , and attended the school primarily as a result of his financial situation. He graduated 19th out of 56 members of the class in and served briefly during the Seminole War before retiring.

He worked for some time as a civil engineer until , when he asked to be reinstated to the army, and was appointed a second lieutenant in the Corps of Topographical Engineers. He served with the corps in New Jersey and Florida, constructing breakwaters and lighthouses. He returned to topographical work after the war in near the Great Lakes until his services were again called upon at the outbreak of the Civil War. On August 31, , Meade was promoted from captain to brigadier general of volunteers, and was given command of a Pennsylvania brigade.

He helped work on the defenses of Washington, then joined the army of the Potomac under General George B. At Glendale, he received several serious wounds. Hooker began to shadow him, but on June 28 a messenger arrived from Washington to relieve him of command and give the army to Meade. The Army of the Potomac had always been buffeted by political currents. Charles Stone spent six months in prison without learning what the charges were against him. But Meade abruptly found himself commanding the army that Lee had manhandled pretty effectively in the past.

By the time Meade was ready to attack, Lee had slipped across the river. Lincoln believed otherwise. Lincoln never did replace Meade, who remained in command of the Army of the Potomac until it was dissolved after the war. His health broken by war wounds, Meade succumbed to pneumonia in at age By that time his reputation had further eroded.

He was not flamboyant. Content to do his duty, he believed his virtue would one day be recognized—and he was wrong about that. Toward the end of the war Meade watched angrily as one-time subordinate Philip H. Sheridan grasped for glory and found it, often to the detriment of the Army of the Potomac.

Although Grant and Meade got along well enough in the course of the war, during his presidency Grant passed Meade over for advancement, preferring Sherman and Sheridan. There is a statue to Meade standing on Cemetery Ridge, the middle of the Union lines here. This is the State of Virginia memorial, which towers 41 feet above the battlefield.

Crowning it is an equestrian statue of Lee. Compare that memorial to the more modest one of Meade and you might think that Lee won the battle. Both during and after the war, Lee has been lionized. In this view of the war, the noble South fought a valiant but doomed battle against the institutionalized, bureaucratic forces of the North. Southern generals like Lee and Jackson and Stuart tend to be remembered as glamorous warriors. By the start of the Civil War, nearly two decades later, Meade was promoted from captain to brigadier general of Pennsylvania volunteers.

He helped work on the defenses of Washington, then joined the army of the Potomac under General B. Upon recovering, he was then sent to replace John F. Reynolds as division commander in the corps of Joseph Hooker, and led the division through the battles of South Mountain and Antietam. During the Battle of Gettysburg, the deadliest battle of the Civil War, Meade managed to lead his troops to victory against the Confederate Army, his greatest victory of his military career. Meade continued to lead the Army of the Potomac in a subordinate role until the end of the war.

He died in Philadelphia on Nov. Virginia Humanities acknowledges the Monacan Nation , the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. We invite you to learn more about Indians in Virginia in our Encyclopedia Virginia.

Skip to content. Contributor: Ethan S. George G. Meade, at the Battle of Gettysburg. December 31, George G. Meade graduates from the U. Military Academy at West Point, finishing nineteenth in his class.

Meade, a Mexican War veteran, is given command of a brigade of Pennsylvania troops. June 27, Union general George G. Meade is seriously wounded, though he recovers within the year. Meade achieves a breakthrough against Confederate general A. Hill's division.