Civil War Sesquicentennial Preview #3

CONFEDERATE LEADERS

PENINSULA CAMPAIGN

James Jubal Longstreet Early

George Pickett

J

G

ames Longstreet was born in 1821 in South Carolina. As a brigadier general, he led his soldiers in several major battles, including First Manassas, the Peninsula Campaign and Williamsburg.

–– Neal E. Wixson

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J

ubal Early was born in 1816 in Virginia. He fought in the Battle of First Manassas and was promoted to brigadier general before the Peninsula Campaign and Seven Days battles.

–– Neal E. Wixson

eorge E. Pickett was born in 1825 in Richmond. As a brigadier general, he was in the battles of Williamsburg, Seven Pines and Gaines’s Mill before sustaining a serious wound.

–– Neal E. Wixson

WILLIAMSBURG

PENINSULA CAMPAIGN

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George Custer

I

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t was during the Peninsula Campaign that George Custer, later known for his tragic mistakes fighting Indians at Little Big Horn, got early war experience.

Less than a year out of West Point (he graduated at the bottom of his class), Custer was a second lieutenant in the Union Army when he arrived on the Peninsula.

Custer quickly gained a reputation for brashness and braggadocio.

On May 5, as the Union pursued the Confederate Army from Yorktown to Williamsburg, Custer volunteered to lead a detachment over exposed ground to explore a formidable Confederate redoubt. It was empty.

At the close of the Battle of Williamsburg, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock noted Conferderate dead were strewn for 600 yards in front of his line. Custer’s take in a letter to his sister was that he had “captured a Captain and five men without any assistance.� — Rusty Carter

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