Dan Sickles demonstrating tactical stupidity, shooting his wife’s lover, Francis Scott Key’s son (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

How Dan Sickles’ disobedience may have saved the Union

Angry Staff Officer is a first lieutenant in the Army National Guard. He commissioned as an engineer officer after spending time as an enlisted infantryman. He has done one tour in Afghanistan as part of U.S. and Coalition retrograde operations. With a BA and an MA in history, he currently serves as a full-time Army Historian. The opinions expressed are his alone, and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

In the Army, there’s this thing called the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). The idea behind it is to offer leaders a step-by-step procedure to make good decisions, although it is more commonly used to abuse staff officers and make them want to commit ritual seppuku. If there were a poster child for the antithesis of MDMP, it would be embodied in Civil War General Daniel Sickles.

Dan was not known for making good decisions. First, he got involved in New York Tammany Hall politics, which was notoriously corrupt in the 1850s; he did nothing to change this image. Second, in 1852 he married a fifteen year-old (he was 33). Then he proceeded to cheat on her with a renowned prostitute. Some men keep their extramarital affairs private. That was not Dan’s style: he took his lover to England with him and even presented her to the queen — leaving his young (pregnant) wife at home. However, he did not view keeping of marriage vows as a two-way street, gunning down his wife’s lover in 1859.

Oh yeah, his wife’s lover was Barton Key, the son of Francis Scott Key (he wrote this little song about a star-spangled banner that you may have heard of). Barton was the District Attorney for Washington, D.C., so there was more than a little scandal. In classic fashion, Dan plead insanity, got renowned lawyer Edwin Stanton (soon to become Secretary of War) to defend him, and won. He used the power of the gutter press so well that public opinion was turned against his wife. The dude was the definition of smarmy.

Even his mustache looks dirty. (Image courtesy of the National Archives)

Well, when the Civil War began in 1861, officer commissions were getting passed out like hotcakes to politicians, so ol’ Dan entered the war as a colonel. Through his political connections, he was a major general by 1863, in command of the III Corps of the Union Army of the Potomac. Dan got to the battlefield at Gettysburg during the night of July 1. Commander of the Army of the Potomac, Major General George Meade, ordered the III Corps to take up a position to the south of Cemetery Ridge. Dan got to the position and threw a hissy fit — his corps was largely on low, marshy ground with poor visibility and little room to maneuver.

Now, to be fair, Dan was right. If you visit the battlefield today, all it takes is a glance at the terrain in between Little Round Top and Cemetery Ridge to see that had Union forces held that position they would have been at a disadvantage to enemy forces. Dan immediately requested to move his line forward about a mile to higher ground. Meade sent back the modern equivalent of “Oh hell no.” Sickles requested again, but received a similar response from his testy commander. Given Dan’s reputation, it is amazing that he asked at all. His tactical stupidity took over again and he moved, without orders, to the position that he had in mind.

Map showing Sickles’ new position that he made for himself ( Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW)

Unfortunately for Dan, this put him out of supporting range from the rest of the army, as well as very badly spread out. His movement left a massive gap between his corps and the Union II Corps to his right. It also left the important hill of Little Round Top completely without Union troops. Meade watched in astonishment as the III Corps moved out, as orderly as if on parade, to their new position. He knew it was too late to order them back.

Meade wasn’t the only general who got panicky when Dan moved positions. Confederate General James Longstreet was moving his division into position to attack Sickles’ III Corps where he thought it still was. He was very surprised to find it had moved much closer and was in fact able to view his marching troops. He had to delay the attack by moving his troops further back out of sight of the III Corps, which got Robert E. Lee all hot and bothered as well. Damn Yankees were confusing.

However, from the high ground in the Peach Orchard, things looked good to Dan. He sent out a recon force made up of the 2nd United States Sharpshooters and the 3rd Maine Volunteer Infantry to see what was going on in front of him. Expecting to only meet furry woodland creatures, the 2nd USSS and the 3rd Maine crashed right into Longstreet’s Division which was waiting patiently in the woods. When the bloodied remnants of the recon force came back, Dan began to feel as though perhaps he had made a mistake. When the Confederate attack struck his thin lines at every point, he really realized what a jam was in. The penultimate realization came when a Confederate cannonball carried off his leg. Really a downer.

What came next is, of course, history. The III Corps fought valiantly but was beset on all sides by Confederate forces and was smashed. That might have been the end of the story and of the Army of the Potomac that day, but for the unintended consequences of Dan’s boneheaded maneuver. His corps probably would’ve been overwhelmed had it stayed in place in the Union line from an attack that would have started earlier. This would have driven the Union line back on itself and caved in its left flank, which was Lee’s intention all along.

What actually happened was that the brunt of the Confederate force was spent on the III Corps in what was essentially a forward position. By the time the Rebels had forced the III Corps to retreat, they were already severely mangled and disorganized, and still not yet to the Union main line. The delay that Sickles had caused Longstreet in moving into position bought time for the Union V Corps to arrive on the battlefield and go into action along Sickles’ original line. The V Corps also contained the Union’s secret weapon of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who went “Bayonets Forward” into a couple regiments of Alabamans on Little Round Top on the extreme left of the line. Over on the II Corps front, the 1st Minnesota stymied the Rebs by charging a few brigades and giving them a proper Gopher-state whooping — at a cost.

The V and II Corps managed to drive off further Confederate attacks, defeating Lee’s plan to roll up the Union left flank. With this defeat, Lee then decided to attack the Union center. This attack, known forever as “Pickett’s Charge,” failed completely. The Union prevailed at Gettysburg, and Lee would never again have the force to invade so far north. Had Dan obeyed orders, this may have gone differently. Tactical stupidity sometimes pays off.