25. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Without General Abner Doubleday’s ferocious stubbornness on the first day of Gettysburg, things could have gone differently in the Civil War’s greatest battle. The story could well have been one in which the Confederates were the ones to first secure and occupy the heights south of Gettysburg. The Army of the Potomac’s morale was none too high after humiliating defeats in the preceding months in the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. It was also under a newly appointed commander whom most did not know. It would have been forced to attack strong defensive positions situated on high ground, that were manned by an enemy brimming with confidence after a string of recent successes. Because no good deed goes unpunished, Doubleday was penalized rather than applauded.
General George Meade, the Army of the Potomac’s new commander, disliked Doubleday. He thus was inclined to believe false reports that I Corps under Doubleday, rather than saving the day, had broken and fled, causing the entire Union line to unravel. So Meade took I Corps from Doubleday, and sent him back to command his division. Doubleday fought well in charge of his division throughout the rest of the battle, and was wounded in the process. But he neither forgot nor forgave Meade’s injustice. After the war, Doubleday was stationed in San Francisco, where he secured a patent for the cable car railway that still runs there to this day. He retired from the US Army in 1873, became a New York lawyer, and wrote memoirs and histories of the Civil War. He died in 1893, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
