Robert K. Krick - Armistead and Garnett: A UNC Press Civil War Short, Excerpted from The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond, edited by Gary W. Gallagher

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Virginians Lewis A. Armistead and Richard B. Garnett, two Confederate officers killed during Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, lived remarkably parallel lives. In this Civil War Short, Robert K. Krick follows the two men from their early military careers campaigning against American Indians and Mormons through two decades of military service and onto the field at Gettysburg, where both were mortally wounded. The work was originally published in The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond, edited by Gary W. Gallagher, which combines fresh evidence with the reinterpretation of standard sources to testify to the enduring impact of the Civil War on our national consciousness and refocus our view of the third day at Gettysburg.

Robert K. Krick is author of Conquering the Valley and Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain, among other books. He lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

UNC Press Civil War Shorts excerpt rousing narratives from distinguished books published by the University of North Carolina Press on the military, political, social, and cultural history of the Civil War era. Produced exclusively in ebook format, they focus on pivotal moments and figures and are intended to provide a concise introduction, stir the imagination, and encourage further exploration of the topic. For in-depth analysis, contextualization, and perspective, we invite readers to consider the original publications from which these works are drawn.

Armistead and Garnett consists of the essay "Armistead and Garnett: The Parallel Lives of Two Virginia Soldiers," by Robert K. Krick, from The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond, edited by Gary W. Gallagher. 1994 The University of North Carolina Press. Originally published as part of the Military Campaigns of the Civil War series, Gary W. Gallagher, editor.

www.uncpress.unc.edu

The Library of Congress has cataloged the original edition of this book as follows:

The Third day at Gettysburg and beyond / edited by Gary W. Gallagher.

p. cm. (Military campaigns of the Civil War)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8078-2155-1 (cloth : alk. paper).

1. Gettysburg (Pa.), Battle of, 1863. I. Gallagher, Gary W. II. Series.

E475.53.T56 1994

973.7349dc20 94-752

CIP

UNC Press Civil War Shorts ebook edition published in 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4696-1283-6

For more information on UNC Press ebook shorts, visit www.uncpressebookshorts.com.

ARMISTEAD AND GARNETT

The Parallel Lives of Two Virginia Soldiers

Robert K. Krick

What did Maxcy Gregg and Thomas R. R. Cobb have in common? Why do Paul Semmes and William Barksdale fit together in Confederate imagery? Or Abner M. Perrin and Junius Daniel, John M. Jones and Micah Jenkins, Lawrence OBryan Branch and William E. Starke? The men in those pairs stand together, of course, because they fell together, Confederate general officers killed at the same time and place. Lewis A. Armistead and Richard B. Garnett seem to make a matched pair in that deadly fraternity, but in fact, unlike others on the list, the two Virginians had experienced remarkably parallel lives during virtually their entire shared four and one-half decades on earth.

The biographical roads that led Perrin and Daniel to adjacent graves at Spotsylvania Court House were very far from identical, but Dick Garnett and Lewis Armistead wound up dead in July 1863 at Gettysburg, victims of the same ill-starred charge, after following astonishingly similar paths. Their common threads included an identical birth year; well-placed Virginian ancestry; close relatives occupying powerful positions in the U.S. Army, with ties that got the young men into the U.S. Military Academy; mutual discomfort at West Point; two decades of antebellum military service in the same Sixth U.S. Infantry, without ever deviating from commissions in that unit; extensive common experience with Mexicans, Indians, and Kansas in the tumultuous 1850s; a transcontinental adventure through the Mormon War and across the Sierra Nevada to gold rush California; service in the unfriendly Colorado River desert; and nondescript opportunities for distinction as Confederate officers before July 1863.

THIS PREWAR PHOTOGRAPH of Lewis Addison Armistead is published here for the first time through the kindness of two leading authorities on Confederate images, Bill Turner and Lawrence T. Jones. The view was taken at a St. Louis gallery operated by T. Harry Hughes. The original print, together with twenty-six other rare images, fell victim to a ring of Postal Service thieves looting registered parcels in Dallas, Texas, in 1988.

Lewis Addison Armistead was born at New Berne, North Carolina, on February 18, 1817, the son of Elizabeth Stanley and Walker Keith Armistead, an army officer from Virginia. The boys father was one of five brothers who had fought in the War of 1812. His uncle, Maj. George Armistead, had commanded Fort McHenry in September 1814 when its resistance to British attack inspired Francis Scott Key to write The Star-Spangled Banner. Another uncle was killed in Canada that same month. Walker Keith Armistead held the rank of lieutenant colonel at the time of Lewiss birth. The next year he became a full colonel and was brevetted to brigadier general when Lewis was eleven years old.

The family name of the prominent and militarily inclined Armistead family was pronounced at some variance from the obvious phonetic version, in typical Virginian fashion. A scholarly treatise on Virginia language patterns, with a list quaintly titled Some Virginia Names Spelt One Way and Called Another, identifies the correct nineteenth-century pronunciation as Umsted. Whether or not one accepts the vowel switch to open the pronunciation, the i in the middle of the word clearly was silent.

Walker Keith Armisteads position as one of the handful of general officers in the U.S. Army unquestionably was pivotal in securing admission for Lewis to the military academy. The elder Armistead wrote directly to the secretary of war on January 24, 1833, to solicit for my son... a cadets warrant and signed himself as Brigr Genl. He added the arrant misstatement that the boy was a splendid student. Less than two months later young Lewis was writing to the secretary of war, from Winchester, to acknowledge his acceptance to West Point. He was one of ten boys from the rather small Armistead clan who applied to the military academy during the four decades before the Civil War.

Richard Brooke Garnett also was born in 1817, in Essex County, Virginia, one of twin sons delivered on November 21 to Anna Maria Brooke and William Garnett. Richards twin brother, William Henry, died in the 1855 yellow-fever epidemic in Norfolk. Seven of his nine other siblings had also died by 1861. Two of Dick Garnetts sisters married Virginia Military Institute professors, Thomas H. Williamson and John Mercer Brooke (whose second wife was Sandie Pendletons widow, ne Kate Corbin). Anna Garnett died in 1854 and was interred in the plot next to that where Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson would be buried nine years later. Her brother George Mercer Brooke was a general in the U.S. Army, who would replicate for young Dick Garnett the role that W. K. Armistead played in securing appointment to West Point for the next generation.

A final Garnett family connection has led to a great deal of confusion among modern students endeavoring to identify Confederate photographs. Richards father, William Garnett, had a younger brother named Robert Selden Garnett. R. S. Garnetts fourth child and first son, who bore his fathers full name, became the first Confederate general killed during the Civil War. Long after the wartime deaths of the cousins, a photograph of a dark-bearded man appeared in print labeled as Richard B. Garnett. Another photograph of a beardless, but apparently dark-haired, man was identified as that of Robert S. Garnett. According to turn-of-the-century family members, neither image was Richard. The late Eleanor Brockenbrough of Richmond, an incomparable and virtually infallible authority on Confederate matters, knew the family members involved and concluded that no likeness of Dick Garnett survives.

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