Originally aired on January 19, 1996 - In part 73 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles Confederate General George E. Pickett. His name is attached to the most famous charge in American military history, yet, as Dr. Robertson says, his Civil War career ended in disgrace.
#73 – General George E. Pickett
His name is attached to the most famous charge in American military history. Yet his Civil War career ended in disgrace. Perhaps the saddest part of his life was the fact that his exalted opinion of himself was shared by few others.
George E. Pickett was born January 28, 1825, in Richmond. He graduated dead-last in the West Point Class of 1846. Pickett atoned for his low cadet standing with solid service in the Mexican War and on the western frontier. He entered Confederate service early in the Civil War as a colonel in command of the lower Rappahannock River sector. A year later, he was promoted to general more from military need than from any personal accomplishment. Pickett’s close friendship with General James Longstreet helped his advancement.
After a shoulder wound at Gaines’ Mill in June, 1862, Pickett saw no major action for the better part of a year. In that time, he ascended to major general and division command under Longstreet. Still, not until Gettysburg did Pickett enjoy the great moment when his military star would shine noticeably.
Lack of center-stage action until then did not stop Pickett from developing an air of flamboyance. He was of medium height and usually clad in buff gauntlets, a small blue cap, and matching blue cuffs on a splendidly tailored uniform. His curving mustaches would have been more prominent but for the fact that his dark-brown hair (always heavily perfumed) hung shoulder-length in ringlets. Pickett had a midlife passion for his young fiancée, La Salle Corbell, to whom he always signed his letters: “Your Soldier”.
In short, the dashing and debonair George Pickett was the infantry wing’s answer to cavalryman Jeb Stuart.
The moment of glory Pickett sought finally came, and it was action-filled and short. On July 3, 1863, he commanded the massive attack that General Lee ordered against the center of the Union line at Gettysburg. “Pickett’s Charge” lasted less than an hour. Three-fourths of the Confederates involved were killed, wounded, or captured. Picket was never the same thereafter, Pickett found himself shuttled from one inconspicuous assignment to another. One observer referred to his as “poor shattered Pickett, no longer a favorite of anyone’s.”
Late in March, 1865, Lee ordered him to “hold at all costs” the strategic road junction of Five Forks on the flank of the Petersburg defenses. On April 1, a surprise Union assault overran and all but destroyed Pickett’s division. The general at the time was enjoying himself at a shad-bake behind the lines. Because of an acoustic shadow, Pickett never heard the sound of the battle. Lee all but dismissed him from the army as a result.
After the war, Pickett settled in Norfolk and sold life insurance. His participation in veterans’ affairs was limited because of his war record as well as his close association with James Longstreet, whom Virginians by then had ostracized as a “Republican turncoat”.
In July, 1875, the prematurely old and thoroughly embittered Pickett died in a Norfolk hospital. Tradition has it that months after his passing, his wife burned all of the general’s papers. One of the results of this shortsighted act was to block for over a century any substantive biography of Pickett.
That will now change. Mrs. Pickett, it turns out, did not succeed in obscuring her husband’s statements. A cache of over 100 Pickett letters – spanning his adult life - has just been discovered. That treasure-chest of material will surely lead to several, long overdue, book-length studies of a dashing soldier who stood in the spotlight for one bloody and fleeting moment.
