Articles
by David M. Jordan.,
BULLETIN OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY PENNSYLVANIA, Fall 1981
Winfield was born in Montgomery County, in what was then the hamlet of Montgomery Square, east of Lansdale, on February 14, 1824. He was one of twin boys; his brother was named Hilary, while he was named after the hero of the War of 1812, a war in which his father had fought. Benjamin Franklin Hancock, son of a pensioned veteran of the Continental Army, had returned to the Lansdale area after his discharge, married Elizabeth Hoxworth, and commenced the study of law. The birth of twin sons complicated the financial picture for the young family, and Benjamin took up school teaching to put food on the Hancock table.
In 1828, Benjamin Hancock moved his family to Norristown, then a quiet village of some eight hundred inhabitants. The Hancocks lived in a small house on Ridge Pike, about a mile from the court house, until Benjamin's law practice justified a move to more spacious quarters on Swede Street, near Lafayette, where his office adjoined the family dwelling.
Benjamin Hancock developed a substantial law practice, and he became a pillar of the community as well. He was a deacon in the Baptist church and a lifelong Democrat. From his father, Winfield absorbed at an early age respect and reverence for the law, for the concept of due process, for the Almighty, and for the principles of the Democratic party, as they matured in the age of Jackson and Van Buren. "I never knew a man whom I respected as much as my father," Winfield was to say many years later. "It was due to his character, his appearance, and the method of his life."
Of his mother, Winfield said, "My mother was a good woman, did her duty always, and belonged to a family of resolute and hospitable character."
Winfield and Hilary were sent to the Norristown Academy. Here they came under the tutelage of masters Eliphalet Roberts and the Rev. Samuel Aaron, who taught such subjects as arithmetic, Latin, reading, and rhetoric. When Hancock attained fame, Roberts paid him the tribute of saying, "I never found a knife-mark on his section of the long, old-fashioned white pine desk, nor was I ever obliged to speak to him about its condition."
Winfield's life-long friend, and later his attorney, B.E. Chain, recalled that "the boys at school recognized him as a leader. He was quiet but firm in all he undertook." In 1839, when Winfield was fifteen years old, he was selected for the honor of reading the Declaration of Independence at the town's Fourth of July celebration.
In the following year, 1840, Congressman Joseph Fornance appointed Winfield to the military academy at West Point. For Fornance it may have been simply a favor to a fellow lawyer and Democrat, but the Congressman may have heard the stories about young Hancock mustering his schoolmates behind the academy, furnishing them with paper hats and wooden muskets, and marching them through all sorts of military evolutions. In any event, Deacon Hancock hesitated over permitting a military education for his son; his doubts were resolved by his pastor, who said that since soldiers were necessary it was best that they should be good Christians.
Winfield's matriculation at the military academy effectively marked the end of the strictly Montgomery County phase of his life. From that point on, Hancock's career and accomplishments belonged really to the nation which undertook to train, educate and employ him. Still, he always retained the consciousness of his ties to Norristown and to the county of his birth.
At West Point Hancock met General Scott, who found him to be a promising young man. Scott told him that nearly all the namesakes that he had heard of had turned out to be great scamps; he hoped that Hancock would be the exception. Hancock's career at the Point was unexceptional; his class standing upon graduation in 1844 was eighteenth out of twenty-five. Hancock's contemporaries at the academy included many who would win fame in the fraternal war to come, among them McClellan, Longstreet, Jackson, Buell, Rosecrans, Couch, Reynolds, Wright, Pope and Grant. An impressive roster of Civil War generals, to Hancock they were simply fellow students.
Upon his graduation, Winfield was first designated a brevet (temporary) second lieutenant in the Sixth Infantry Regiment; Congress severely restricted the size of the peacetime military establishment, and there were not sufficient available commissions to take care of the military academy's graduating class. Not until two years later, in June 1846, did an opening develop so that Hancock could be commissioned a regular second lieutenant. He served in the Red River region until the outbreak of war with Mexico, and in March of 1847 he landed with Scott's army at Vera Cruz. In the Mexican War, Hancock saw action at Contreras and Cherubusco, at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. He fought with honor and won distinction, being brevetted a first lieutenant after Cherubusco.
Following the war, while the nation attempted without success to digest what Allan Nevins called "the fruits of Manifest Destiny," the soldiers went back to more mundane pursuits, to await the next and even more spectacular failure of the politicians. Hancock served briefly with his regiment at Fort Crawford, Wisconsin, and then from 1849 to 1855 he was assigned to Jefferson Barracks, outside of St. Louis, in the Quartermaster's department.
As a dashing and handsome young officer, and a veteran of the recent war, Hancock was a prized catch for the hostesses of St. Louis in his off-duty hours. He was polite and congenial, and he obviously made his mark in society there. On January 24, 1850, in one of the leading events on the St. Louis social calendar for that season, Winfield was married to Almira Russell, the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis merchant. The union between Winfield and Myra was a happy one, which endured for the rest of his days, even though it was subjected to the pressures of danger, enforced separation, and, in their later years, the deaths of their children.
Early in 1855, Hancock received his regular commission as a first lieutenant, and, in November of the same year, he was promoted to captain. In 1856 and 1857, Hancock was stationed in Florida. Later in the same year he was sent to Leavenworth, Kansas, and then on to Utah in the expedition against the Mormons. Subsequently, Hancock was transferred to California, where he found himself when news arrived, in 1861, of the outbreak of the Civil War.
Hancock offered his services to Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania, but he received no answer. He then procured orders from the War Department, recalling him to Washington, and upon arrival there found that staff duty, as a quartermaster, awaited him. Since his old friend McClellan had been installed as army commander, Hancock solicited him for a position with line troops rather than staff duty, and he was soon successful in winning command of a brigade and the rank of Brigadier General of Volunteers.
The Civil War found Winfield Scott Hancock in the prime of his life, trained and ready for the responsibilities which were entrusted to him. He was thirty-seven years old, tall, handsome, and robust. His service in the Mexican War had taught him what the man in the ranks needs to function efficiently; his service in the quartermaster's corps had taught him how to fulfill those needs. He was a strict disciplinarian, aided in this function by one of the most colorful and sulphuric vocabularies in the army. He made sure that his staff performed up to the high standard he set for it, for he realized quickly that faulty staff work can doom the most brilliantly-conceived tactical device. Hancock was an affable man, one who made friends easily and kept them with little difficulty, and was affectionately regarded by his soldiers. He had none of the regular army man's scorn for volunteers, recognizing early that a citizenry in arms could be a mighty fighting machine, if properly led.
On top of everything, and most importantly, Winfield Scott Hancock was one of the great combat generals of the war. Heedless of his own safety, he was often found in the front lines, calculating that he could hardly ask his men to do what he himself would not risk. One of the most dramatic moments of the Civil War came at Gettysburg, at the height of the awesome Confederate artillery barrage of almost two hours duration, immediately preceding Pickett's charge. Hancock, accompanied by his staff, rode slowly across his front from the right end of his line all the way to the left, "while shot and shell roared and crashed around him," as one observer wrote, in order to nerve and steady his men for the additional ordeal which lay just ahead. Hancock never lost his cool in the midst of battle and, as a result, his troops kept theirs. When he was directed to have his men at a certain place at a certain time, they were there. In addition, Hancock's men fought with a ferocity that made them notorious to their rebel foes.
It was in the spring of 1862 that Hancock and his brigade first saw action. After being transported, with the rest of the Army of the Potomac, to the peninsula between the James and York Rivers, Hancock's brigade participated in McClellan's march toward Richmond. It was involved in action around Yorktown, and on May 5 fought in the battle near Williamsburg. It was at Williamsburg that Winfield Scott Hancock first came prominently to the notice of the army -- and the country.
The Confederates had retired from Yorktown and McClellan followed after them in his usual cautious manner. On the extreme right of the line Hancock's brigade captured two redoubts and found itself holding a key position in the rear of the enemy's fortifications. Asking for reinforcements, Hancock was directed to fall back. He interpreted his orders loosely, in order not to yield an important position, and evacuated only the foremost redoubt. Longstreet, the Confederate commander, perceived the threat to his left which Hancock's brigade posed and ordered General Jubal Early to dislodge the Federals. Early's charge was repulsed by a hail of musketry, and when the Rebels had been brought to a halt, Hancock rose up, waved his hat, and shouted, "Now, gentlemen, the bayonet!" The fierce charge he led broke Early's brigade and it fled in a panic, losing 500 killed and wounded and 145 prisoners. Hancock's success rendered the Confederate position untenable, and the rebel army had to be moved out of Williamsburg and back to Richmond. McClellan, in his communique following the battle, said, "Hancock was superb," attaching to the Pennsylvanian a sobriquet which he was always thereafter to carry.
Hancock and his brigade took an active and distinguished part in the battles before Richmond over the next two months, and on July 1 he was recommended by McClellan for the promotion to the rank of major general.
In September, 1862, Hancock led his brigade in the battle of South Mountain and then into the sanguinary fight on Antietam Creek. When General Israel Richardson was mortally wounded in the fighting at Antietam, Hancock was given command of Richardson's division and took part in the bloody fighting round the Sunken Road.
After Antietam, McClellan permitted Lee to retreat unpursued into Virginia, and Lincoln, his patience tried to the utmost by the general, finally relieved him on November 7. The new commander of the Army of the Potomac, General Ambrose E. Burnside, soon planned an advance across the Rappahannock to the town of Fredericksburg. Everything went wrong for Burnside, and when he finally got his army across the river he found Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia dug into a virtually impregnable defensive position. Burnside sent division after division to make a frontal assault on a stone wall at the foot of Marye's Heights; Rebel infantrymen stood behind the wall and annihilated the waves of blue-coated soldiers charging at them. The second division to hurl itself at this awesome position was that of Hancock; the general himself led the charge, was slightly wounded, and saw more than half of his division go down before Burnside finally, reluctantly, ordered a withdrawal.
The next spring, with Burnside now replaced by "Fighting Joe" Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac, Hancock's division played a prominent part in the battle of Chancellorsville. When Jackson made his famous flank march and rolled up the entire Union right on the evening of May 2, Hancock on the left repulsed the simultaneous attack which Lee delivered and helped to preserve the Federal army from destruction. When Hooker lost his nerve completely the next day and ordered a retreat back across the Rappahannock, Hancock's division formed the rear guard of the army, and, as one observer wrote, "repelled every attack of the enemy, and often were opposed to many times their number. As usual Hancock was right among his men, holding them to their work by his presence."
After the debacle at Chancellorsville, General Darius N. Couch, commander of the Second Corps, asked to be relieved of duty, saying that he could no longer serve under Hooker. On June 10, 1863, Winfield Scott Hancock assumed command of the famed corps with which his name would always be connected.
He did not have long to bask in his new eminence. The defeated army which had pulled back from Chancellorsville, with George Gordon Meade as its new commander in place of Hooker, was put to an immediate test as Lee charged up the Shenandoah Valley and across the Potomac for a new invasion of the north. In the late days of June and the early days of July, 1863, the two armies drew together, drew near a small but busy crossroads town in Pennsylvania, a town named Gettysburg.
In the monumental, pivotal battle which took place at Gettysburg the first three days of July, in the numerous examples of heroism which were demonstrated there, the richest laurels were won by Hancock of Montgomery County. From the inception of the battle to its bloody conclusion, Hancock was a key figure, nearly an indispensable one for the Union cause.
It was indeed a crucial conflict. Another defeat on the order of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville could have resulted in calamitous losses for the Union -- Washington, Baltimore, perhaps even Philadelphia, depending upon the direction a victorious Robert E. Lee might have taken. It must be kept in mind, however, that Vicksburg fell to Grant at the same time as the battle of Gettysburg, so that a Confederate victory in Pennsylvania which resulted in anything less than the destruction of Meade's army might not have changed the basic economic and industrial equations of the war very much. Lee's army in Pennsylvania, after all, was an army which had to keep in constant motion simply to avoid starving. What a southern victory at Gettysburg might have done to the northern will, however, is another question altogether, and it was in this psychological realm that the Union cause was in the most jeopardy. Lincoln and his generals could prosecute the war only so far as they were supported by the northern people. Another major defeat, on northern territory, following on the heels of the butchery at Fredericksburg and the fiasco at Chancellorsville, could have been fatal for the Union hopes.
As the month of June 1863 waned and blended into July, Meade and his army raced to catch up with the Army of Northern Virginia. Hancock led his new corps for most of the two hundred miles from the Rappahannock to southern Pennsylvania, doing one of the things for which he was always most noted: marching his army hard, fast, in good order, and without loss. On the morning of July 1, the Second Corps was massed in Taneytown, Maryland, a few miles south of the Pennsylvania border, when Hancock rode over to see Meade. While the two generals were talking, two messengers, one after the other, appeared. The first told the commander that fighting had begun at the crossroads town of Gettysburg, fourteen miles north, with the First and Eleventh Corps in action. The second brought the terrible news that General John Reynolds, a Pennsylvanian like Hancock and Meade and the leader of the First Corps, had been killed in the initial fighting. Meade quickly issued orders to Hancock, whom he knew as his best fighting general, to proceed, ahead of his corps, to Gettysburg and to take command of all the Union forces there.
Meade's order was given at ten minutes past one; at half-past three Hancock rode up to General Oliver O. Howard on Cemetary Hill just south of the town of Gettysburg and told him that Meade had directed him to take command. Howard outranked Hancock and made an awkward little scene about his supercession, but in light of the defeat fast overtaking the Union cause he soon yielded up his responsibilities. Hancock saw that the Federals were fleeing south through the town, closely pursued by Confederates. He recognized immediately that Cemetary Hill was the key to any position which might be maintained in the area, and he managed to halt and rally the flying troops and to recall the beaten soldiers of Howard's Eleventh Corps to a position on the crest of Cemetary Hill. By halting the Union army's flight and fortifying Cemetary Hill and nearby Culp's Hill, Hancock saved the first day of Gettysburg -- the accidental part of the battle
-- from the turning into a Union disaster.
With affairs stabilized, Hancock was able to look over the ground and, noting the topography, to advise Meade that here, south of Gettysburg, was the place to fight the major battle against Lee's invading army which had to be fought. The high ground of Culp's Hill, Cemetary Hill, Cemetary Ridge, and the two Round Tops, running from north to south, offered an excellent position from which to oppose an antagonist who could not stand still but had to attack, had to keep moving. Hancock's selection of the battlefield, and Meade's acquiescence in that choice, even though he had earlier hoped to fight elsewhere, may have been ultimately, the most decisive determinations of the Gettysburg campaign.
By the morning of July 2, Hancock had rejoined his Second Corps and posted it on Cemetary Ridge, in the center of the Union line. Meade had reached the field and taken control of the Federal army. Late in the afternoon, Meade was required to call on Hancock for emergency duty once again. On the left of the Union line, the Third Corps, led by flamboyant Daniel Sickles, had advanced, without Meade's concurrence, far ahead of the general line, into a peach orchard, leaving a gap between his men and the Second Corps. As the afternoon wore on, the Confederates under John Hood hit the Third Corps a terrific blow, going through and around the peach orchard to a jumble of giant boulders soon named the Devil's Den. As Longstreet followed up on this attack, it appeared that control of the Round Tops was threatened, and loss of these strong points would jeopardize thw whole Union line. Hancock was directed to take command of the entire left, and he managed to pour in enough troops to stem the tide, though he lost some of his best commanders. Far to the right, a fierce attack by a division of Louisiana troops almost captured Culp's Hill, before darkness intervened.
As the two armies lay sleepless in their positions on the night of July 2, it was clear that the battle had not yet been decided. Both armies had been badly battered, but the next day's fight would be required to settle the issue.
Early on July 3, after a stiff fight, the Federals were able to recapture Culp's Hill. Then a calm settled over the battlefield. Lee had tried the Union left, had come within a whisker of success, but had then been repulsed. He had tried the right, on Culp's Hill, and had similarly been stopped short. Every man in the Union army knew, as that hot July day drew on, that Lee would try the Union center before the battle ended. And in the Union center were the three corps under the overall command of Winfield Scott Hancock.
From noon to one o'clock, a great concentration of artillery took place along Seminary Ridge, the parallel ridge to the west where Lee had stationed his army. At one o'clock one hundred and twenty Confederate guns opened up with an unbelievable barrage upon the Union lines, a storm of shells, and iron, and death, which continued for almost two hours. It was in the midst of this battering that Hancock made his famous ride from one end of his line to the other. When the rebel barrage suddenly stopped, it was followed by the charges which represented the final throw of the dice by Robert E. Lee, the charge of eighteen thousand [hundred] Confederates led by George Pickett and his Virginians.
Pickett's charge was directed against Hancock in the Union center; "the shock of the assault," as Hancock later reported, "fell upon the second and third divisions of the Second Corps, assisted by a small brigade of Vermont troops." There was, Hancock said, "a terrific contest at very close quarters." This was, one may recall, what was called "the High Tide of the Confederacy," as the rebel infantrymen reached the Union lines, in some cases penetrated them, and then, after the fiercest hand-to-hand fighting, were either killed, captured or thrown back. "The repulse ... " Hancock finally reported, "really decided the battle, and was practically the end of the fight."
At the height of the fray, while he was among the Vermont brigade earlier referred to, Hancock was severely wounded in the thigh. He continued to control his troops until the victory was won and then sent his aide to Meade, to tell him "that the troops under my command have repulsed the assault of the enemy, who are now flying in all directions in my front."
Only when the surviving Confederates were fleeing back to the safety of Seminary Ridge did Hancock permit himself to be treated for his wound. Even then he regretted that he was not able to mount a pursuit of the defeated southerners; he sent a note to Meade, urging that an advance at that point could gain a complete victory.
Meade, feeling that his own men were badly used up, permitted Lee and his beaten army to head south again without any vigorous pursuit. Hancock went east, after a few days in a field hospital, home to Norristown, where he lay in his father's house, suffering agonies from his wound. Finally, Doctor L.W. Read of Norristown was able to extract the ball from the general's thigh, and his recovery could commence. In retrospect, though Hancock suffered from the never-fully-healed wound for the rest of his days, he was one of the lucky ones. He was able to keep his leg at a time when most army doctors amputated wounded limbs with hardly a second thought. Probably it was only Hancock's rank and eminence which saved his leg.
Through the late summer and fall of 1863, Hancock convalesced in Norristown, united with his whole family, but finally chafing for a return to his duties. In December, still not really recovered, he reported for duty and resumed command of the Second Corps. Since the Army of the Potomac was then engaged in no particular activity, Hancock was sent north on recruiting missions, to be lionized by the people of Pennsylvania and New York, and, incidentally, to squelch a rumored movement to substitute him for Meade as head of the Army of the Potomac, but with Grant, now commander of all the Union armies, on the scene as well, in actual charge of strategy. Grant, preparing for the final campaign, the campaign from which there would be no retreat, reorganized and consolidated Meade's army into three corps, the Second under Hancock, the Fifth under Gouverneur K. Warren, and the Sixth under John Sedgwick. The cavalry operated independently under Sheridan.
With the army thus established, it embarked on the campaign on May 3, 1864, and within a couple of days was forced by Lee into an unwanted battle in that impenetrable expanse of scrub oak and second-growth timber called the Wilderness, just south of the Rapidan River. In the three days of this battle Hancock and his corps were conspicuous for their gallantry and good service. Hancock's corps fought on the left wing in a struggle with the corps of Hill and Longstreet that has been called "a synonym for savage ferocity and unrelenting determined action." It was in the Wilderness that Grant received a message that Hancock had been driven from his position; Grant snapped that he didn't believe it. A few minutes later another report arrived, correcting the earlier one and stating that Hancock had routed the enemy before him. Grant, sitting on a stump and whittling, looked up briefly and said, "Hancock is a glorious soldier."
From the inconclusive carnage of the Wilderness, Grant disengaged and moved his army to the left, hoping to get behind Lee and race him south. He just failed to beat the Confederates to the crucial crossroads at Spottsylvania Court House, and the failure touched off another great battle there. Hancock's divisions waged the incredible battle of the Mule Shoe and the Bloody Angle at Spottsylvania, twenty hours of fire and death and bayonet thrust at point-blank range in rain and mud, soldiers fighting on top of heaped-up corpses, until the rebels finally retired in the face of Hancock's implacable will.
Hancock's corps fought again at the North Anna and at Totopotomy Creek and finally at the dreadful butchery of Cold Harbor, where there was finally confirmed the hard truth which the Civil War had developed, that with modern weapons an entrenched defensive line could be held easily against a superior opponent. Even Grant conceded that the assault at Cold Harbor had been unwise. Nevertheless, the Army of the Potomac continued its relentless move south, marching by the left flank again, over the Chickahominy, over the James, and up to Petersburg, south of Richmond, where a lost opportunity for assault before Lee arrived doomed the armies to months of siege and trench warfare.
Off and on through the summer and early fall of 1864, Hancock suffered from the effects of his Gettysburg wound and his too-early return to action. The upper part of his femur had been splintered by the ball, and mid-19th century medical care, while it and his strong constitution saved his life, could not heal the general's wound. Suffering intense pain, traveling much of the time by ambulance, he was forced in June to give up his command of the Second Corps for a ten-day period and, finally, in November to retire from the command for good. He was recalled to Washington and set about recruiting a corps of veterans for action the next spring.
In February 1865, Hancock was named to head the Middle Military Division, and he took his newly-recruited corps with him to Winchester, in the Shenandoah Valley. Lee's surrender at Appomattox took place before Hancock's new force saw any action, and news of the return of peace was soon followed by the shock of LIncoln's assassination. Hancock, as commander of the district which included Washington, returned immediately from Winchester, and the knowledge of his presence helped to calm the feelings of panic which were sweeping the capital.
As division commander, Hancock was nominally in charge of the trials and execution of the alleged conspirators with John Wilkes Booth. Actually, he had nothing whatever to do with these matters until the day of the hanging, when he was served with a writ of habeas corpus by Mary Surrat's lawyers. Hancock appeared in court, accompanied by the Attorney General, and produced a document from the President suspending the writ of habeas corpus in that case. The executions then took place as scheduled. Hancock was later criticized for his part in what was called "the judicial murder of Mary Surratt," but the unfortunate woman's lawyer came forward and attested to the fact that the general had been as helpful and sympathetic in the circumstances as was possible.
Hancock transferred his headquarters to Baltimore and was engaged in the army's transition to its new postwar existence when he was named commander, in 1866, of the Department of the Missouri, at the request of General William T. Sherman. While in this position, Hancock led a well-publicized but ultimately unsuccessful expedition across Kansas to pacify the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Kiowa tribes.
Late in 1867, the general was propelled into the center of reconstruction politics. The army, by this time, had become one of the prizes in the bitter struggle between Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans in Congress; with the army's chief, Grant, taking the Radicals' side, the authority and power of the president were now severely restricted. The only thing Johnson could do in regard to the occupation forces in the south was designate commanding generals, and since most of those available were in sympathy with Grant and the Radicals this power was more illusory than real. At the end of August, 1867, however, Johnson removed the arrogant, offensive, and high-handed Phil Sheridan from command of the Fifth Military District, comprising Louisiana and Texas, and sent Winfield Scott Hancock there in Sheridan's place.
Hancock came to Washington before going to New Orleans, and both Grant and Johnson gave him the benefit of their ideas as to how he should carry out his new duties. Hancock kept his own counsel, but when he arrived in New Orleans the first thing he did was to issue a document which became famous as General Orders No. 40, announcing that the legitimate civil authorities would be permitted to govern without military interference, in the absence of an actual emergency. This order was so totally at variance with the despotic military rule with which Sheridan and his fellow district commanders had been vexing the conquered south that the residents of Louisiana and Texas could hardly believe what they were hearing.
Hancock's order caused a great stir, both north and south, in the former Confederacy and in the halls of Congress, where Representative James Garfield of Ohio introduced a bill, which went nowhere, to reduce the number of major generals in the army -- aimed clearly at Hancock. But the general from Norristown did not care. He had fought for the restoration of the Union, and that cause had been successful. He had not fought -- and he believed that his fellow soldiers had not fought -- for the reconstruction of southern society to the taste of the Radical Republicans. He had not fought to bring about the subjugation of the natural leaders of the southern states to the rule of illiterate field hands and the avaricious and ambitious carpetbaggers who controlled them. Hancock had not abandoned the Democratic doctrines with which he had been brought up, nor the concepts of the Constitution which he saw the Radical leaders trampling underfoot, and these doctrines and concepts were given voice in General Orders No. 40 and the orders and policies which followed. Hancock believed in the supremacy of civilian government over the military, and his orders and letters from New Orleans served as lectures on the Constitution to the politicians in Washington who were determined to fix a military despotism on the south.
Southerners from Richmond to San Antonio thrilled to Hancock's words, seeing in them an opportunity to emerge from the blight of war and occupation and get to the work of true reconstruction. The Radicals, however, were vastly discomfitted by Hancock's administration in New Orleans, and they soon, with the help of Grant, were able to remove him. In February 1868, Grant ordered Hancock to restore to office several contumacious aldermen in the New Orleans city government, removed by Hancock because of their willful flouting of standing orders of both Hancock and Sheridan. Hancock protested Grant's reversal, attempting to lay before the army commander the facts upon which his actions were based, but Grant refused to listen. Hancock then carried out Grant's order and immediately asked to be relieved of his command.
When he returned to Washington, with none too friendly feelings toward the old comrade who had humiliated and disparaged him for transparent political motives, Hancock reported to army headquarters and signed the register, as regulations required, but did not call personally upon Grant, as tradition suggested. Later, passing Grant on the street in conversation with another man, Hancock merely touched his hat to Grant without stopping to speak. From these two incidents Grant constructed an enmity which he carried to the end of his days.
Several months after the return of Hancock from Louisiana, the political parties met in convention. Grant was the unanimous choice of the Republicans, and Hancock was very nearly selected by the Democrats. Meeting in New York City in early July 1868, the Democrats considered Hancock, Congressman George Pendleton of Ohio, Senator Thomas Hendricks of Indiana, President Johnson, and a number of dark horses. Behind the scene were movements for a reluctant Horatio Seymour, the war governor of New York, and for an eager Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, still consumed with presidential fever and prepared to rejoin the Democratic party which he had left more than a decade earlier, if only it would tender him its nomination. The Byzantine and shadowy maneuverings of the Democratic politicians at this convention, particularly the sinuous machinations of the party leaders of New York, leading Chase on to cover their ultimate plans for the nomination of Seymour, would require hours additional to do them justice. Suffice it to say that at the end of the second day of voting, after the eighteenth ballot, Hancock had vaulted into the lead with considerable momentum going for him. At that point a suspicious altercation broke out on the floor, a motion to adjourn was made, and despite the "nays" on the motion clearly outnumbering the "ayes," the presiding officer, Governor Seymour, ruled that the motion had carried and the convention was adjourned. The amazed Hancock supporters, amateurs in a professional's game, could do nothing but watch Seymour's back as he walked away.
That night, in the hotel lobbies, saloons, and back rooms of Manhattan, Hancock's chances were cut up into little pieces. Those who had helped to make up his leading total were cajoled away, and the ex-generals, supporters, and friends who constituted the "Hancock interest" at the convention were unable to do much to prevent this. When the balloting resumed the next day, Hancock slipped some, and this was fatal. It was therefore no great surprise when, on the twenty-second ballot, Ohio suddenly threw its votes to Horatio Seymour, starting a stampede which ultimately carried the convention for the supposedly reluctant New Yorker. In the aftermath of the convention, a few observers recorded their views that Seymour, who could barely bring himself to acknowledge that the Civil War had been successful, was a hopelessly beaten candidate while with Hancock the party might have won. As the election developed, of course, Seymour was defeated easily by Grant.
The new president, still nursing his grudge against Hancock, sent the latter to the Department of Dakota, though his rank and seniority entitled him to something better than what was clearly a military backwater. two years later, when the command of the Department of the Pacific became vacant, Hancock applied for it, only to be told by Sherman that the post would go to a junior in rank because of Grant's hostility.
In 1872, Meade died, and command of the Department of the Atlantic, traditionally the prerogative of the senior major general, became vacant. Hancock was now the senior major general of the army, outranked only by Sherman and Sheridan. Though there was speculation in the press as to whether Grant would again flout rank and tradition in his enmity to Hancock, he yielded this time and Hancock was given the command which he would hold to his death, with headquarters first in New York City and then on Governor's Island, in New York Harbor.
Hancock was again considered for the presidency by the Democratic party in 1876, and again a crafty New York governor, this time Samuel J. Tilden, came away with the nomination. During the following summer Hancock came prominently into public view during the widespread railroad strikes and the rioting and civil strife which accompanied them. Incited by the actions of the Baltimore & Ohio, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia & Reading, and other lines in cutting ten per cent off their workers' already low salaries, while dividends were maintained at an unreduced level, strikers began shutting down the great railroad lines, first the B&O in Baltimore and across West Virginia, and ultimately the Pennsylvania, principally in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. The strikes quickly got out of hand, and the civil authorities asked President Hayes for military assistance. Hayes responded and ordered Hancock, as the commander of the affected division, first to Baltimore and then to Philadelphia to quell the uprisings. Though there were many deaths and tremendous losses of property, mainly due to the inneffectual efforts of state militias, Hancock and the army were able to bring the disorders under control by their presence alone, without having to resort to force. the labor troubles had spread throughout the eastern half of the country, with the greatest bloodshed and destruction taking place in Pittsburgh, so that Hancock's cool and unflustered actions in restoring public order did much to place him even higher in popular esteem.
In 1880, General Hancock was again a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. As the party's convention assembled in Cincinnati, however, most attention was centered on the possible course of Tilden, who had been deprived of an apparent victory four years earlier but had subsequently been damaged by the revelation of schemes to bribe southern election officials during the controversial recounts. Other leading candidates were Senator Thomas Bayard of Delaware, Hendricks of Indiana, Justice Stephen Field of California, and Allen Thurman of Ohio. Waiting in the wings was Congressman Sam Randall of Philadelphia, Speaker of the House and, he hoped, heir apparent to the Tilden strength. On the eve of the convention, Tilden published a letter which apparently took him out of the race (though he clearly hoped for an acclamation in his favor), but he asked his people to support a wealthy oil man named Henry Payne of Ohio. The only nominating speech which stirred any interest was that of Dan Dougherty of Philadelphia, naming Hancock, and the first ballot gave Hancock a surprise lead over Senator Bayard. The convention then adjourned, and the party professionals prepared to take care of Hancock overnight as they had done twelve years earlier. This time, though, the Hancock campaign had some savvy politicos at its head, not just the army buddies and admirers who had failed in 1868. Major Ned Burke of Louisiana and Senator William Wallace of Pennsylvania were among the canniest pros in the business, they had prepared well for the convention, and they made sure that Hancock's strength increased, not decreased, overnight. Burke had carefully held back some of his controlled southern vote on the first ballot -- even he was surprised at the general's strength -- and this reserved vote along with new accretions came forth on the ballot the next morning. Randall had finally been brought out as Tilden's legatee, since Payne had failed to make an impression, but it was too late. Wallace held a majority of Pennsylvania for Hancock, and it was all over. A flurry of vote changes followed, and Hancock soon had a unanimous nomination.
The campaign that followed was a curious one. The Republicans had nominated James A. Garfield of Ohio after a long and bitter convention which had been split between the adherents of Grant and James G. Blaine of Maine. It was widely felt that the Republican disunity augured well for Democratic success, because the Democrats, with a storied Union army general, were for the first time protected against a "bloody shirt" campaign. The Republicans, though, patched up their differences, and they tried to wage their usual type of campaign. In the September state election in Maine, however, they suffered a stunning and unexpected defeat and promptly jettisoned the "bloody shirt." Picking up on an obscure plank in the Democratic platform calling for "a tariff for revenue only," the Republican orators shouted that a Democratic victory would mean the end of tariff protection, factories closing, workers starving, and grass growing in the streets. The Democratic party leaders were very slow in reacting to this change in strategy, and the state elections in the "October states," Ohio and Indiana, resulted in two solid Republican victories, instead of a narrow Republican win in Garfield's state and a Democratic triumph in Indiana, as had been expected.
Hancock's part in the campaign was supposed to be primarily a ceremonial one. He sat at home on Governor's Island and entertained visiting delegations. He received virtually no coaching or other help from the party leadership, which remained in Tildenite hands. Hancock's one major contribution to the campaign was an interview published on October 8 in the Paterson (N.J.) Daily Guardian. In the course of the interview the general attempted to reassure the Democrats of New Jersey, where protectionism was a major issue, that his election would really make no difference on the tariff. "The tariff question," he said, "is a local question," one that was "brought up once in my native place in Pennsylvania." It was an issue, he went on, "that the general government seldom cares to interfere with."
As an effort to put some distance between the candidate and the puzzling tariff plank in the platform, the interview might have done some good, but for the wretched statement about the tariff being a "local question." To the Republican press, busily presenting Hancock as a fine soldier who knew nothing at all about civil affairs or government, the interview was a godsend. Hancock was universally derided for his political naivete and compared unfavorably with Garfield, who had many years of service in Congress, though touched with scandal on several occasions.
Other than saying that Hancock was ignorant on political matters, the Republicans pretty much left him alone during the campaign. There was an unfortunate episode in which Grant uttered some gratuitous slanders on Hancock, calling him "ambitious, vain, and weak," but even Republican editors were prompt to notice that the alleged facts set forth in Grant's interview were all jumbled up; the interview was set down to Grant's disappointment at his own failure to win the nomination that year.
Finally, when the election came, it all boiled down to New York. In New York City, where Tammany leader John Kelly had insisted on the nomination of an Irish Catholic for mayor, thousands of Protestant Democrats stayed home or voted Republican, and the majority for Hancock in the city was far less than expected. As a result New York State went for Garfield by 20,000 votes and with it the election. If Hancock had carried New York he would have been elected president. As it was, Garfield's popular vote plurality, in the whole country, was only 7018 votes.
There was talk of contesting the New York vote, but Hancock would not hear of it. He felt that there had probably been fraud in New York and Brooklyn, but he recognized quickly that the nation could not well endure another contested presidential election. He had had his fill of politicians by that time, and he was perfectly content for Garfield to undertake the burdens of the White House.
Hancock regretted that he had lost Montgomery County by a single vote, and he wrote to Perry Chain to get him a ward-by-ward tally of the county voting. It was solely as a matter of interest, however, because he knew that his political career, such as it was, was at an end. After 1880, indeed, matters started to slow down for the Hancocks, and the general receded from the public eye. There were only two more occasions for him to come to public attention, once in 1881 when he presided over the centennial celebrations for the Battle of Yorktown, the other in 1885 when he supervised the great public obsequies for the dead Ulysses S. Grant.
When Grant was dying of cancer at Mount McGregor, Hancock had visited him -- a touching gesture on the part of a man who had been meanly treated by Grant since the war, but one characteristic of Hancock. When Grant passed away, Hancock was in charge of transporting the coffin from Mount McGregor to the city, and he organized and led the great march from City Hall to the burial site on Riverside Drive with impressive dignity. One of Grant's close friends later wrote of Hancock: "With equal nobility he bore his part in the great funeral over his ancient chief and comrade. The majestic character of those rites that attracted the attention of the world was greatly due to the tender care and chivalrous punctilio of him who thought the dead chieftan had wounded him."
Death was beginning to be more and more a factor in Hancock's existence. His beautiful blond-haired daughter Ada had died in 1875 at the age of 18, and neither Winfield nor Myra ever fully recovered from that blow. In the summer of 1880, one of Russell's children, named Winfield after his grandfather, died while on a visit to the house on Governor's Island. In 1883, the general's beloved chief of staff, William G. Mitchell, who had been with him since Williamsburg, passed away, and a year later, on December 30, 1884, the general's son Russell died suddenly at his home in Mississippi, at the age of 34.
In 1883, Hancock had given to his friend and lawyer, B.E. Chain, the task of supervising the construction of a burial vault in the Montgomery Cemetary. Chain had on a number of occasions loaned the general money, which Hancock was punctilious about repaying, and he carried out other tasks for the general, such as the purchase of whiskey. He and Hancock corresponded about what was happening back in Montgomery County, and when Hancock visited the county he usually stopped to see Chain, although his trips to Norristown were less frequent after his mother's death in 1879. Of all the functions Chain served for Hancock, however, none was more meaningful than the construction of the tomb. Ada, before she died, had expressed the wish that she not be buried in the ground. For that reason, therefore, the vault was to be above-ground. Along with Ada, there was to be room also for the general's own remains, for he wished to be entombed in the hometown of his childhood. There was conflict with Myra on this question, for she was determined to be buried with her family in St. Louis and she wanted her husband's body to go there too. In the end, however, she yielded to his determination.
In late January 1886, during a trip to Washington, Hancock was troubled by an angry boil on the back of his neck. He had it lanced, but it continued to bother him and he returned early to Governor's Island. The boil soon turned into what the doctors called "a malignant carbuncle," and Hancock was in agony from it. On the night of February 5, he lapsed into delirium. On the following two days, the general seemed to gain, being in a cheerful frame of mind, and he talked with Myra of his hopes for a speedy recovery. The night of the 7th, however, he appeared to decline again, and on the next morning was very weak. During that day, the 8th, his failure was rapid. On the morning of the 9th, at about 6:15, Myra rose to leave his room in order to catch an hour or so of sleep. As she reached the door, the general said, "O, Allie, Allie! Myra! Good--" He was unable to finish the sentence, the last words he would ever speak. He soon became unconscious.
The attending physicians were puzzled that the carbuncle was producing such dramatic results, so they called in a consultant from the city. After this worthy arrived, a thorough examination of the dying general was done, and it was determined that he had been suffering severely from diabetes, a discovery which was said to be "a great surprise to the physicians."
There was nothing to be done then but to wait for death, which arrived for Winfield Scott Hancock, peacefully, at about 2:35 P.M. that afternoon, February 9. The family doctor told a reporter that "the general went down to the close of his life like a person descending a flight of stairs."
Mrs. Hancock asked that her husband's funeral should be "as simple and unostentatious as possible." The funeral as it took place was somewhat simpler than Grant's but still more than Mrs. Hancock had in mind. A military escort of 114 men arrived in front of the Hancock home on Saturday the 13th in the drizzling rain, and at precisely 9 A.M. the general's casket and the escort boarded the steamer for the short trip to the Battery. Minute guns commenced firing from Castle William at the same moment. The steamer slipped through a dense fog to the mainland, and by 9:30 all were disembarked at the barge office. A procession headed up Broadway, led by a large platoon of New York City police, followed by the military escort, six carriages containing the fourteen pallbearers, including Sherman, Sheridan, Schofield, Secretary of State Bayard, and other dignitaries, then the hearse with a military guard of honor, a dozen more carriages bearing the family and friends (but not Mrs. Hancock, who was not emotionally up to the strain), then five posts of the GAR on foot, a detachment of the Legion of Honor, and a delegation from Tammany Hall led by General Dan Sickles, who had lost a leg at Gettysburg. Crowds lined Broadway in the drizzle as the procession moved along, and a dense throng had formed at Trinity Church, where the service would be held. After the Reverend Doctor Morgan Dix and Chaplain Goodwin from Governor's Island had read the Episcopal service of burial, the procession moved out to the Dead March from "Saul" and retraced its steps to the barge office. With bells tolling solemnly, the coffin was transferred to the steamer again and carried with the funeral party to Jersey City, where it was loaded onto a special train. All along the route of the train through New Jersey, crowds gathered to pay their respects to the general. As the train neared Philadelphia, the demonstrations became more marked, and at the Mantua station it took on Governor Robert Pattison and three carloads of Pennsylvania dignitaries. At 2:45 P.M. the funeral train drew up at the DeKalb Street station in Norristown.
"All Norristown," a reporter wrote, "came out to witness the soldier's final return home." The local committee, made up of B.E. Chain, Doctor Read, who had removed the ball from Hancock's Gettysburg wound, and Messrs. Wagner, Lowe, Gotwals, and Hunsicker, had done its work well, and the procession with the coffin moved smoothly out Main Street, while the train itself followed to the station at the cemetary. The town council attended in a body, and the members of the Zook Post of the GAR, named after one of Hancock's brigade commanders who had died at Gettysburg, draped their hall in heavy black. At the cemetary itself, the general's coffin was placed in the vault which he had built, and his old orderly, at the direction of Mrs. Hancock, placed floral wreaths on the coffins of her husband and her daughter. A military salute for a major general was fired, the undertaker closed the vault, the five thousand people bared their heads, and a bugler played "taps" for Winfield Scott Hancock.
He was home at last in Norristown -- a modest man, a man who made many friends and few enemies, a man of great accomplishments, and one who went to his grave with the love of his fellow countrymen, both north and south.
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