6. Unfortunate Last Words
At the Battle of Antietam, General Sedgwick was sent on a poorly planned charge. His division was shot to pieces, lost 2200 men, and he was hit by three bullets. When he recovered and returned to duty, he was promoted to command his own corps. He won early success with his VI Corps during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, but the battle ended in defeat. In the Overland Campaign in 1864, Sedgwick led his corps in the Battle of the Wilderness. On May 9th, 1864, at the start of the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, he was positioning his artillery, when his troops came under sniper fire and began to get jittery.
The avuncular Sedgwick chided his men for their timidity under single bullets, and wondered how they would react when they confronted massed Confederates on the firing line, and faced full volleys. The men were chagrined, but continued to flinch. So Uncle John Sedgwick continued: “Why are you dodging like this? They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dista…“, at which point his pep speech was interrupted by a sniper bullet that hit him in the face. It struck beneath his left eye, killed him instantly and turned him into the highest-ranking Union battlefield death of the Civil War.