So MG Dan Sickles disobeyed orders by moving his Third Corps
out of its assigned position along Cemetery Ridge on the second day of he
battle.
So his corps suffered over 40 percent casualties.
So the entire battle plan nearly collapsed and the Union
line was breached temporarily.
So he was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor
for his actions during the battle, although 34 years and much politicking later .
How? Why?
Perhaps, for one thing, Americans take orders,
military or otherwise, like the “pirates’ code”, as guidelines on occasion. And sometimes they reap great rewards for it.
Arthur MacArthur Jr. disobeyed orders to stay put
at the base of Missionary Ridge, grabbed the unit flag instead, and led the Union
troops on a successful charge over the summit. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for it.
Years later, his son Douglas supposedly disobeyed some order,
not sure which, and, for reasons not well understood or documented, was awarded the Medal of Honor.
In more recent popular culture, the most successful
war movie in decades tells the story of a unit of Army rangers sent to rescue a
buck private who refuses an order from a Ranger captain (yeah, right), gets pretty
much the entire squad killed, and ends as the plot's surviving hero.
So Dan Sickles maybe figured the odds and got away with it.
In recent years, some have attempted to polish the reputation of Dan Sickles and explain how, tactically, his corps landed in a poor spot terrain-wise. A tragic turn of events at Chancellorsville had taught him the danger of defending an indefensible spot. Others say his action disrupted Longstreet and Lee’s battle plan enough
to save the day despite the heavy losses suffered. Others take the attitude of the
character from Peter Gent’s 1973 best seller North Texas Forty, who admitted,
“What could have happened did happen.”
That is a point not accepted by Virginians
or, easily by many other southerners. It is a feeling most famously expressed by William
Faulkner in his 1948 novel, Intruder In The Dust:
“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not
once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two
o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the
rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are
already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and
his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill
waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t
happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there
is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances
which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave
yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much
at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think
This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to
gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself
to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast
made two years ago.”
Yes, what could have happened did happen and, oh
yes, Dan Sickles lost a leg during the battle and the bones rest on display at Army
Medical College in Washington, D.C. Historians regard his actions on Day Two as the awful results of orders not followed. There is no monument to him on the battlefield. He spent much of his after-war life trying to destroy the reputation of General George Mead who does have a monument there, in the most prominent spot.
On the plus side of his history, Dan Sickles was
most instrumental in saving the Gettysburg Battlefield as a national park. On being reminded that the preservation efforts resulted in no monument to him, he is reported to have said, "The whole damn battlefield is my monument."
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| Barksdale's Brigade nearly crushes Third Corps. |
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