{"id":622,"date":"2013-07-04T06:00:30","date_gmt":"2013-07-04T10:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thequicksliver.wordpress.com\/?p=622"},"modified":"2013-07-04T06:00:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-04T10:00:30","slug":"7-4-13-hancock-the-superb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/7-4-13-hancock-the-superb\/","title":{"rendered":"7.4.13 Hancock the Superb"},"content":{"rendered":"

4th<\/sup> of July, 1863.\u00a0 In the aftermath of Gettysburg came the miraculous news that a second victory of equal importance had been won.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was the beginning of the end for the confederacy.<\/p>\n

For Winfield Scott Hancock, the work wasn\u2019t finished yet, not by a long shot.\u00a0 He recuperated at home until the spring of 1864, and then returned to the army to serve under Grant.\u00a0 Throughout that summer, Hancock led his troops onward, through some of the most gruesome fighting of the Civil War.\u00a0 The Wilderness.\u00a0 Spotsylvania.\u00a0 Cold Harbor.\u00a0 Petersburg.\u00a0 His corps suffered over 40,000 casualties, but Hancock was never criticized for a single action.\u00a0 Grant later said, \u201cHancock 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\u2026his 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cbound to act as I did.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And in 1872, he became the most senior officer in the U.S. military, stationed on Governor\u2019s Island in New York Harbor, overseeing the Division of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

In 1880, Hancock was back in the national spotlight yet again, this time as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But, in true Hancock fashion, he graciously attended his rival\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n

His last public act was to preside over the funeral of President Grant, in 1885.\u00a0 After that he took a final visit to Gettysburg.\u00a0 And then, in 1886, the man who had survived numerous battle wounds died from complications of diabetes, while still on the job on Governor\u2019s Island.\u00a0 He was survived by his wife Almira, who was left to comfort herself with a prized possession: the bible that Hancock\u2019s friend Lew Armistead had sent her as he lay dying at Gettysburg.<\/p>\n

Today Winfield Scott Hancock is hardly remembered by most Americans.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

But he was the hero of Gettysburg.\u00a0 The man who defeated Robert E. Lee. The man who was almost President.\u00a0 His colleagues called him, \u201cPure gold.\u201d\u00a0 His admirers called him, \u201cThe Handsomest Man in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

And everyone who ever met him \u2013 friend or foe \u2013 agreed: he was Hancock the Superb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4th of July, 1863.\u00a0 In the aftermath of Gettysburg came the miraculous news that a second victory of equal importance had been won.\u00a0 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…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[259,492,538,731,825,1042,1270,1300,1345],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-8","tag-civil-war","tag-gettysburg","tag-hancock-the-superb","tag-lew-armistead","tag-mississippi","tag-robert-e-lee","tag-ulysses-s-grant","tag-vicksburg","tag-winfield-scott-hancock"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}