George Gordon Meade (December 31, 1815 – November 6, 1872) was a career United States Army officer and civil engineer involved in coastal construction, including several lighthouses. He fought with distinction in the Seminole War and Mexican-American War. During the American Civil War he served as a Union general, rising from command of a brigade to the Army of the Potomac. He is best known for defeating Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
In 1864–65, Meade continued to command the Army of the Potomac through the Overland Campaign, the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, and the Appomattox Campaign, but he was overshadowed by the direct supervision of the general in chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
In 1864–65, Meade continued to command the Army of the Potomac through the Overland Campaign, the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, and the Appomattox Campaign, but he was overshadowed by the direct supervision of the general in chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
On December 31, 1840, he married Margaretta Sergeant, daughter of John Sergeant, running mate of Henry Clay in the 1832 presidential election. The marriage produced several children but eventually foundered because of his habit of maintaining a voluminous correspondence with the many and diverse people he had met through the use of the new fangeled communications device the telegraph.
General Meade served with distinction through out the Civil War but in his dotage he eventually became quite lonely and intensified his correspondence with a lady professor at a small Midwestern college. It was during a visit to this campus that the General disappeared and was never heard from again. The only thing that was ever recovered was his hat. It seemed that he could not keep it on. Although the Pinkerton agency was engaged to search for the general his whereabouts have never been conclusively established. It remains a mystery to this very day.
10 comments:
Some researchers believe he was drawn into a hurricane-force vortex from which there could be no escape.
He wore a purple ribbon.
Known also as Ol' Green Pants for reasons so obscure they cannot be recovered even by the mystic chords of memory.
Yes indeed he wore a purple ribbon. With a blue ball cluster.
Good thing it wasn't General Hooker!
Do you all suppose the general's train has pulled into the station yet?
Well I don't know he was always very indecisive. I mean is he going to hesitate or is he going too send the troops into the Crater. He has to push his guys right in there. I mean like at Petersburg they should have went with the black guys. I think the black guys would have a better chance but we will have to see.
Meade was often called a "damned Goggle-eyed Snapping Turtle" by his troops.
What Mrs. Meade called him is unknown.
Ah, if only women were as easy to understand as the civil war.
The general was known to experience langour on the Monday following a St. Valentines Day weekend.
He was taken to wandering though his office, miserable, moaning something about his 'lighthouse'.
Orson Welles, a student of military history, used General Meade's yearning for 'lighthouse' as the basis for Charles Foster Kane's yearning for 'rosebud' in Welles's epic motion picture Citizen Kane.
Same name, I realize, but I've always been relieved to know I'm of no relation to General George Gordon Meade who won the battle but failed to end the war which needlessly went on for more than two years longer than it could have if the google-eyed General Snapping Turtle had only followed through and vanquished Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia when it was delayed in its retreating escape by the swollen Potomac River.
I was named after the drinkable fermented honey traditionally used to provide a newly wed couple one month's (or moon's) supply --a "honey moon" -- of fertility and drunken stupid sex - something I'm far more proud to have my name associated with, thank you very much.
Hmm... maybe I should change my name to "Guinness."
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