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The Incredible American Generals that Defined their Eras

Khalid Elhassan May 4, 2022 36 min

6. Unfortunate Last Words

The death of General Sedgwick. Wikimedia

At the Battle of Antietam, General Sedgwick was sent on a poorly planned charge. His division was shot to pieces, lost 2200 men, and he was hit by three bullets. When he recovered and returned to duty, he was promoted to command his own corps. He won early success with his VI Corps during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, but the battle ended in defeat. In the Overland Campaign in 1864, Sedgwick led his corps in the Battle of the Wilderness. On May 9^th, 1864, at the start of the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, he was positioning his artillery, when his troops came under sniper fire and began to get jittery.

The avuncular Sedgwick chided his men for their timidity under single bullets, and wondered how they would react when they confronted massed Confederates on the firing line, and faced full volleys. The men were chagrined, but continued to flinch. So Uncle John Sedgwick continued: “Why are you dodging like this? They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dista…“, at which point his pep speech was interrupted by a sniper bullet that hit him in the face. It struck beneath his left eye, killed him instantly and turned him into the highest-ranking Union battlefield death of the Civil War.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.