4^th of July, 1863.  In the aftermath of Gettysburg came the miraculous news that a second victory of equal importance had been won.  On July 4, Ulysses S. Grant captured Vicksburg after a long siege, removing the last confederate stronghold on the Mississippi and giving the Union complete control of the river.  It was the beginning of the end for the confederacy.

For Winfield Scott Hancock, the work wasn’t finished yet, not by a long shot.  He recuperated at home until the spring of 1864, and then returned to the army to serve under Grant.  Throughout that summer, Hancock led his troops onward, through some of the most gruesome fighting of the Civil War.  The Wilderness.  Spotsylvania.  Cold Harbor.  Petersburg.  His corps suffered over 40,000 casualties, but Hancock was never criticized for a single action.  Grant later said, “Hancock stands as the most conspicuous figure of all the general officers…he commanded a corps longer than any other one, and his name was never mentioned as having committed in battle a blunder…his genial disposition made him friends, and his personal courage and his presence in the thickest of the fight won for him the confidence of troops serving under him.”

Robert E. Lee surrendered in April of 1865. And then, almost immediately, Hancock was given a new and grisly responsibility. When President Lincoln was assassinated and his killers were caught and found guilty, Hancock was ordered to oversee their execution. Although he was personally reluctant to hang Mary Surratt, as a soldier he declared himself “bound to act as I did.”  Next, after a short mission to the Indian territories, Hancock was assigned to New Orleans, to manage the transition from military rule back to civilian rule.  His leniency with the former secessionists surprised and upset many hardline Reconstructionists, but cheered many Democrats. As a result, Hancock was for a short while a Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 1868.  In 1870, he provided a cavalry escort for an exploration of western Wyoming, which indirectly resulted in the creation of Yellowstone Park, and the naming of Mount Hancock at its southern border.  And in 1872, he became the most senior officer in the U.S. military, stationed on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor, overseeing the Division of the Atlantic.

In 1880, Hancock was back in the national spotlight yet again, this time as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.  He lost to James Garfield by less than 40,000 votes out of almost 9 million votes cast, the smallest popular vote margin in American history.  But, in true Hancock fashion, he graciously attended his rival’s inauguration.

His last public act was to preside over the funeral of President Grant, in 1885.  After that he took a final visit to Gettysburg.  And then, in 1886, the man who had survived numerous battle wounds died from complications of diabetes, while still on the job on Governor’s Island.  He was survived by his wife Almira, who was left to comfort herself with a prized possession: the bible that Hancock’s friend Lew Armistead had sent her as he lay dying at Gettysburg.

Today Winfield Scott Hancock is hardly remembered by most Americans.  There are too few statues in his honor, and his humble mausoleum sits largely unnoticed within an ugly chain link fence in Montgomery Cemetery, in Norristown, PA.

But he was the hero of Gettysburg.  The man who defeated Robert E. Lee. The man who was almost President.  His colleagues called him, “Pure gold.”  His admirers called him, “The Handsomest Man in America.”

And everyone who ever met him – friend or foe – agreed: he was Hancock the Superb.