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Lewis A. Armistead

ncpedia.org

Originally aired on February 07, 1997 - In part 128 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the life of Brigadier General Lewis Addison Armistead and describes his role in the most famous attack in American military history.

#128 – Lewis A. Armistead

The most famous attack in American military history is known popularly (but somewhat mistakenly) as Pickett’s Charge. It was a climax to three days of violent combat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Scores of paintings have been done of the charge. The centerpiece for many is a Confederate officer leading his men against the Union lines while holding his hat above his head on the point of a sword.

That officer was Lewis A. Armistead. Son of Virginia parents, he was born in 1817 at Newbern, North Carolina. Armistead had a short and unpleasant stay at West Point. Academically deficient from the start, he was finally expelled after two years for breaking a dinner plate over the head of fellow Virginia cadet Jubal Early.

In 1839 Armistead joined the Regular Army as a lieutenant. He soon married the granddaughter of Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Armistead won two brevet promotions for gallantry as an infantry officer in the Mexican War. Permanent heartache came to him in 1855, when his beloved wife died in a cholera epidemic at Fort Riley in the Kansas Territory.

Civil war found Armistead stationed in California. Union-born officers held a farewell party for those Southerners who were leaving to defend their homeland. At one point in the evening, Armistead hugged his special friend, Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania, and tearfully said: “Goodbye, Hancock. You can never know what this has cost me.”

In September, 1861, Armistead arrived in Richmond impoverished, widowed, and with an orphan son in hand. Armistead’s first Confederate service was as colonel of the 57th Virginia, a regiment containing men from Pittsylvania, Franklin, and Botetourt counties. Although one officer thought Armistead “good-natured”, the commander of the 57th Virginia was not that way with his soldiers.       

A veteran of long army service, Armistead was a strict disciplinarian. Obeying an order, he insisted, was the first qualification of a good soldier. Under his stern leadership, his regiment became one of the most efficient units in all the Southern armies.

By the spring of 1862, Armistead still had seen no combat. Yet his prewar training and experience brought him elevation to brigadier general. His new command had five regiments, including his own. Armistead remained as close to the 57th Virginia as General Thomas Jackson always was with his Stonewall Brigade.

For the next year, Armistead’s only battle action was at Seven Pines and Malvern Hill. Then, on the afternoon of July 3, 1863, at Gettysburg, Armistead’s brigade – as part of General George Pickett’s division – was in the massive Confederate assault against the center of the Union lines. Armistead took a position several paces in front of his soldiers. With black felt hat at the end of his sword, he led them forward with unflinching gallantry.

Men fell by the scores. Undeterred, Armistead and a handful of Virginians reached the Federal lines and leaped over a stone wall. The little band swept forward another ten yards before a heavy volley of musketry shredded the party.

Armistead, shot several times and bleeding profusely, was slumped against the wheel of a cannon. As Union soldiers tended to him, he asked of the whereabouts of his old friend, Winfield Hancock. He learned that his longtime associate commanded the sector against which Armistead’s charge had been made, and Hancock himself had been wounded in the action.

Lewis Armistead died two days later in a Union military hospital. Friends eventually recovered his body and buried it in a family plot in a Baltimore churchyard. His life, but more so his death, exemplified the motto he early adopted: “Trust in God and fear nothing.”