Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1914 — STORIES of CAMP and WAR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

STORIES of CAMP and WAR

MAJ.-GEN. GEORGE G. MEADE Remarkable Lifelike Btatue on Monument at Gettysburg—Magnificent Picture of Commander. The statue Maj.-Gen. George G. Meade which adorns the great Pennsylvania monument at Gettysburg,—hta strikingly impressive representation of the grand old commander of the army of the Potomac. It has the pose and look of a soldier of the very highest class, such as Gen. Meade was, says the National Tribune. Everything about the statue breathes courage, invincible determination and soldierly feeling It looks the man of blood and iron that Gen. Meade was, and makes a magnificent idealization of the American commander. Gen. Mead# has high claims to being thus remembered to posterity. Maj.-Gen. George G. Meade was born at Cadiz, Spain, Dec. 31, 1815 His father was then American consul that that place. He graduated from West Point in 1835, nineteenth in a class headed by George W. Morrell, and in which Gens. Martindale, Roberts, Brooks, Stokes, Naglee, Prince, Haupt, Patrick and Grier. Next to Gen. Meade in the class wgs Montgomery Blair, who soon resigned, and was afterwards postmaster-general of the United States under President Lincoln. Cadet Meade was assigned to ’ the artillery, but resigned Oct. 26. 1836. He was reappointed six years later as a second lieutenant of topographical engineers, and from that time until the beginning of the war was employed in surveying, building lighthouses, etc., with the exception of a year’s service in the Mexican war, where he received a' brevet for gallant conduct at Monterey. Tho opening of the war found him a captain of engineers. He was appointed a brigadier-general of volunteers Aug. 21, 1861, and assigned to, a brigade in the Pennsylvania reserve corps. He bandied his brigade with skill and gallantry, was severely wounded at Glendale, but returned In time to command a division of the first corps of Manassaß, South Mountain and Antietam. He distinguished himself at Fredericksburg when his division broke through the enemy’s lines. If It had been properly supported, the Confederate right flank would have been turned, and the battle of Fredericksburg made a brilliant victory instead of a disastrous defeat. Dec. 25, 1862, he was promoted to command the Fifth corps, and June 28, 1863, succeeded Hooker in command of the Army of the Potomac. His selection for that high command was generally approved by his brother officers and the army. During the remaining two years of the Army of the Potomac’s splendid history he was in command, and under him the army gained its brightest laqrels, beginning with the victory at Gettysburg and ending with the capture of the Confederate army at Appomattox. Aug. 18, 1864, he was commissioned a major-general in the United States army, and at the close of the war was placed in command of the military division of the Atlan-' tic. The citizens of Philadelphia presented him with a fine residence, and after his death, Nov, 6, 1872, a fund scription and presented to his family, of SIOO,OOO was collected by subGen. Huidekoper and the Gettysburg Battlefield commission and the Van Ammringe Monument committee are to be congratulated on the high artistic success of their work.