Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/97

Rh to its command. On 1 July the report reached Gen. Meade, who was fifteen miles distant, that there was fighting at Gettysburg, and that Gen. Reynolds had been killed. Gen. Meade, who knew nothing of Gettysburg, sent Gen. Hancock with orders to take immediate command of the forces and report what should be done; whether to give the enemy battle there, or fall back to another proposed line. Hancock reported that he considered Gettysburg the place to fight the coming battle, and continued in command until the arrival of Meade. In the decisive action of 3 July he commanded on the left centre, which was the main point assailed by the Confederates, and was shot from his horse. Though dangerously wounded, he remained on the field till he saw that the enemy's assault was broken, when he despatched his aide-de-camp, Maj. W. G. Mitchell, with the following message: "Tell Gen. Meade that the troops under my command have repulsed the enemy's assault, and that we have gained a great victory. The enemy is now flying in all directions in my front." Gen. Meade returned this reply: "Say to Gen. Hancock that I regret exceedingly that he is wounded, and that I thank him in the name of the country and for myself for the service he has rendered to-day." In a report to Gen. Meade, after he had been carried from the field, he says that, when he left the line of battle, "not a rebel is in sight upright, and if the 5th and 6th corps are pressed up, the enemy will be destroyed." Out of fewer than 10,000 men the 2d corps lost at Gettysburg about 4,000 killed or wounded. It captured 4,500 prisoners and about thirty colors. Gen. Hancock at first received but slight credit for the part he took in this battle, his name not being mentioned in the joint resolution passed by congress, 28 Jan., 1864, which thanked Meade, Hooker, Howard, and the officers and soldiers of the Army of the Potomac generally. But justice was only delayed, as, on 21 April, 1866, congress passed a resolution thanking him for his services in the campaign of 1863.

Disabled by his wound, he was not again employed on active duty until March, 1864, being meanwhile engaged in recruiting the 2d army corps, of which he resumed command at the opening of the spring campaign of that year, and bore a prominent part in the battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, where the fighting was almost continuous from the 5th to the 26th of May. In the engagement at Spottsylvania Court-House, Gen. Hancock, on the night of the 11th, moved to a position within 1,200 yards of Gen. Lee's right centre, where it formed a sharp salient since known as "the bloody angle," and early on the morning of the 12th he gave the order to advance. His heavy column overran the Confederate pickets without firing a shot, burst through the abatis, and after a short hand-to-hand conflict inside the intrenchments, captured "nearly 4,000 prisoners, twenty pieces of artillery, with horses, caissons, and material complete, several thousand stand of small-arms, and upward of thirty colors." The fighting at this point was as fierce as any during the war, the battle raging furiously and incessantly along the whole line throughout the day and late into the night. Gen. Lee made five separate assaults to retake the works, but without success. In the subsequent operations of the army, at the crossing of the North Anna, the second battle of Cold Harbor, and the assault on the lines in front of Petersburg, Gen. Hancock was active and indefatigable till 17 June, when his Gettysburg wound, breaking out afresh, became so dangerous that he was compelled to go on sick-leave, but resumed his command again in ten days. He was appointed a brigadier-general in the regular army, 12 Aug., 1864, "for gallant and distinguished services in the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor, and in all the operations of the army in Virginia under Lieut.-Gen. Grant." On 21 Aug. the 2d corps was brought to Petersburg by a long night march, and on the 25th occurred the only notable disaster in Hancock's career. While he was intrenched at Ream's Station on the Weldon railroad, which the corps had torn up, his lines were carried by a powerful force of the enemy, and many of his men captured. The troops forming the remnants of his corps refused to bestir themselves, and even the few veterans left seemed disheartened by the slaughter they had seen and the fatigues they had undergone. Gen. Morgan's account of the battle describes the commander, covered with dust, begrimed with powder and smoke, laying his hand upon a staff-officer's shoulder and saying: "Colonel, I do not care to die, but I pray to God I may never leave this field." In the movement against the South Side railroad, which began 26 October, Gen. Hancock took a leading part, and, although the expedition failed, his share in it was brilliant and successful. This was his last action. On 26 Nov. he was called to Washington to organize a veteran corps of 50,000 men, and continued in the discharge of that duty till 26 Feb., 1865, when he was assigned to the command of the Middle military division, and ordered to Winchester, Va., to relieve Gen. Sheridan from the command of the Army of the Shenandoah. The latter set out the next morning with a large force of cavalry on his expedition down the Shenandoah valley. Gen. Hancock now devoted himself to organizing and equipping a force as powerful as possible from the mass at his command; and his success was acknowledged in a despatch from the secretary of war. After the assassination of President Lincoln, Gen. Hancock's headquarters were transferred to Washington, and he was placed in command of the defences of the capital. On 26 July, 1866, he was appointed a major-general in the regular army, and on the 10th of the following month he was assigned to the command of the Department of the Missouri, where he conducted a successful warfare against the Indians on the plains, until relieved by Gen. Sheridan. He was transferred to the command of the 5th military district, comprising Texas and Louisiana, 26 Aug., 1867, with headquarters at New Orleans. At this time he issued his "General Order No. 40," which made it plain that his opinion as to the duties of a military commander in time of peace, and as to the rights of the southern states, were not consistent with the reconstruction policy determined upon by congress. He was therefore relieved at his own request, 28 March, 1868, and given the command of the Division of the Atlantic, with headquarters in New York city. After the accession of Gen. Grant to the presidency, he was sent, 5 March, 1869, to the Department of Dakota; but on the death of Gen. Meade, 6 Nov., 1872, he was again assigned to the Division of the Atlantic. Gen. Hancock's name was favorably mentioned in 1868 and 1872 as a candidate for presidential honors, and he was nominated the candidate of the Democratic party in the Cincinnati convention, 24 June, 1880. On the first ballot he received 171 votes, in a convention containing 738 members, and Senator Bayard, of Delaware, 153½. The remainder of the votes were scattered among twelve candidates. On the second ballot Gen. Hancock received 320 votes, Senator Thomas F. Bayard 111, and Speaker Samuel J. Randall,