February 14, 1824 was a cool and blustery Valentine’s Day, and as is usual in the mid-Atlantic region, there was the promise of snow. James Monroe was in the White House. The Missouri Compromise had become law just a few years before, and ending slavery was already being discussed between England and the United States. In eastern Pennsylvania, a few miles north of Norristown, Pennsylvania, twin sons were born to Benjamin Franklin Hancock and his lovely wife, Elizabeth. Since the scholarly school master and future barrister was named after an American icon, he felt that he should name his sons after those whom he admired. The first he named after the great War of 1812 commander General Winfield Scott, and the second he named after his friend Hilary Baker. A few years later, another boy child, John Hancock, was born to the couple. The close-knit husband and wife loved all three sons, but their eldest, Winfield Scott Hancock, showed amazing promise, and was his father’s favorite.1

Winfield was interested in just about everything: he enjoyed science and conducted his own experiments. He enjoyed geometry, botany, and poetry. He excelled at art and often delighted his classmates with clever cartoon drawings. As a debater he was unequalled, showing a maturity in understanding politics and American history at an exceptionally young age. And, like many of the youth in that era, the young Hancock spent many of his leisure hours playing soldier. Friendly and handsome, the youth made friends easily.2

When Hancock turned 16, Pennsylvania Congressman John Sterigere stopped by the Hancock home in Norristown and noticed the young man. Offering to refer him to West Point, Sterigere did not have to convince Benjamin Hancock of the opportunity that awaited his son. “Winfield is a smart boy, a very smart boy,” Mr. Hancock told the statesman, “a great deal smarter than the other one…if you will say the word he will go.”3

Hancock entered West Point in the waning days of summer in 1840. In his valise, his father had slipped in the U.S. Constitution, with a note bidding his son to read it every year. Since his son’s destiny was to be a soldier, the concerned father felt that Winfield should understand the government that he would defend. It was sound advice.

Hancock’s four years at West Point tested his scholastic ability, honed his military skills, and made him many friends, including upperclassmen as well as classmates. When Hancock was a plebe, one of the senior classmen was future general William Tecumseh Sherman – also named after a great warrior. An instant friendship sprang up between the two, and though they didn’t see one another after Sherman’s graduation for nearly a quarter century, Sherman corresponded often with Hancock, and looked after him with “fatherly esteem”. Sherman later said of Hancock that “he was one of the greatest soldiers of history. In my mind he was always a knight…as a military commander, he had in his lifetime few, if any, superiors.”4

Some of the men who graduated from West Point with Hancock in 1844 included Simon Bolivar Buckner, Lew Wallace, Alexander Hays, and Alfred Pleasonton. Hancock’s closest friend of his classmates was fellow Pennsylvanian Alex Hays, though Hancock also formed friendships with underclassmen Harry Heth and A.P. Hill, who were plebes when he was in his last year at the Point.

Shortly after graduation, Hancock was sent to serve in Louisiana on the Red River which was considered Indian Territory, and then to Ohio for recruiting duty. While he was stationed in Cincinnati, war broke out with Mexico in the spring of 1846. Restless for action and eager to get onto the field, Hancock received a second lieutenancy, and like the rest of his graduating class who had remained in the military, was off to the land beyond the Rio Grande.

During the Mexican War, Hancock fought gallantly and with distinction, making men like General Winfield Scott, Ulysses S. Grant, and Albert Sidney Johnston take notice. Hancock was conspicuous in the Battles of Cherubusco and Contreras. He entered Mexico City under General Worth, and ended the war with a brevet to first lieutenant.5

After the war, his soldierly duties took him to St. Louis, Missouri. There, his friend Don Carlos Buell introduced him to Almira Russell. Romance kindled and bloomed – and the couple was married on January 24, 1850. Two children were born to the couple while they were stationed in St. Louis: Russell in 1851 and Ada in 1856.6

Hancock spent many years in frontier duty. He fought Seminoles in 1857 and was in Johnston’s march against the Mormons in 1858. He was sent to California in 1859 as the commander of the Quartermaster Department of Southern California, to be stationed in Los Angeles. He, his wife Almira, and their two children, with little Ada barely three years old, boarded a steamer bound for California via the Isthmus of Panama. The voyage was long and at times perilous. Armed men tried to take Russell one day by knifepoint, but Hancock plunged himself forcefully into the middle of the crowd and threatened them with their very lives if they hurt his son. The men wisely backed away. Before docking in San Francisco, Ada fell ill, and nearly died of Panama fever, believed today to have been diphtheria.7

In the two years that he served in California, Captain Hancock and the men who served with him grew close in friendship. One of his closest friends was Lewis A. Armistead, a native North Carolinian whose uncle, George Armistead, had protected the American flag during the British assault on Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812. When the dark clouds of war over the slavery issue and states rights reached the breaking point with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Hancock knew that war was inevitable. He wrote to Washington shortly after Fort Sumter, asking to be reassigned to the east. He feared being in the periphery of the nation would keep him out of the war. Knowing that some of his colleagues would go with the Confederacy, Hancock knew where his duties lay. He was “devoted to his profession, absolute in his faith, and in his fidelity to his government.” Before he and his family sailed from San Francisco back to New York, in August of 1861, Hancock and his wife hosted a farewell party at their home in Los Angeles. Six of the guests were from the South, including Lewis Armistead and General Albert Sidney Johnston and his wife. “Hearts were filled with sadness,” remembered Almira Hancock, “over the sundering of life-long ties.” Armistead appeared to be the most dejected of all. Near the end of the bittersweet soiree, Johnston persuaded his wife to sing, which she reluctantly did. One of the songs, which Almira accompanied on the piano, was the Irish “Kathleen Mavourneen”. The melody brought tears to many eyes, and afterward Armistead came to Hancock and said, “Hancock, goodbye; you can never know what this has cost me.” The two would never meet again, and yet Hancock and Armistead would indeed be part of the cost, at a place called Gettysburg.8

Brigadier General Hancock’s first commission during the Civil War was in Kentucky, under General Robert Anderson, lately of Fort Sumter fame, to fight Braxton Bragg to keep Kentucky loyal to the Union. In this they succeeded. Hancock served for a time in Virginia, then joined the Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1862, in time for General McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign – an attempt to take Richmond that resulted in many battles, and few Federal victories. Distinguishing himself in battle, one of the men he led commented that “one felt safe when near him.” Able to out-curse the best of them, and with a temper that flared hotly and then diminished, Hancock was amazingly calm in battle. He became a division commander after the Battle of Antietam in September, 1862.9

Hancock’s division seemed to be, always, in the hottest part of the battlefield. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862 the blood on the slopes of Marye’s Heights belonged mostly to Hancock’s men. Nearly half of the Union’s casualties that mild winter day, and following ghastly cold night, were from Hancock’s division. They fought with great valor, too, at Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863. After that battle, and while the Army of the Potomac was on its way north into Hancock’s home state of Pennsylvania in June, Hancock was given command of the Union Second Corps. A friend and fellow Pennsylvanian, George Meade, was made commander of the entire army – just days before the men in blue and gray found themselves in a death grip on the fields near the town of Gettysburg.

Hancock was in Taneytown, Maryland when news from Gettysburg brought a portent of bad news. John Reynolds, commander of the Union First Corps and in command of the field until Meade was to arrive, was killed within minutes of arriving at the front. General Meade told Hancock to give his 2nd Corps command to General Gibbon, to rush to Gettysburg, and take command there. Still hoping that the battle would not be at Gettysburg, but at Pipe Creek where he hoped to choose the ground, Meade remained at Taneytown, and sent Hancock northward into Pennsylvania.

When Hancock arrived at Gettysburg, the Confederates had taken the day, and the Union men were badly battered and retreating to Cemetery Hill. Hancock inspired the dejected troops and surveyed the position. He liked it. Placing the men in a fishhook-shaped line, with their flanks well anchored on high ground – and with a nice high ridge in-between, Hancock urged Meade to fight at Gettysburg, where the ground was excellent.10

Hancock and his 2nd Corps were conspicuous at Gettysburg on both July 2nd and 3rd. General Lee, excited over his victory on the first day, and determined to hit the Union again, decided on a flank attack the second day. Hancock’s men were deployed on Cemetery Ridge, the center of the Union fishhook line. When 3rd Corps commander General Dan Sickles decided that he didn’t like his position, he moved his corps away from the line to the Emmitsburg Road. The Confederates, led by General Longstreet, attacked Sickles’ men where they had deployed – in the Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, and the Peach Orchard. Not wanting Sickles’ men annihilated, Hancock sent his old division into the fray. The Irish Brigade lost nearly half their remaining numbers in the Wheatfield. Two of Hancock’s brigade commanders, General Zook and Colonel Cross, were killed there as well. The now disorganized Union line was in danger of being overrun – but Hancock stayed calm, and ordered the remaining men on Cemetery Ridge – including Willard’s Brigade and the 1st Minnesota regiment – to charge the phalanx of oncoming Confederates while reinforcements arrived from nearby Culp's Hill. The charge was successful. The line held.

On July 3rd, General Lee ordered a charge of his own on the Union center. It seemed reasonable at the time to do so: he had carried the first day’s fight, and almost broke the Federal line, and flanks, on the second day.

When the Confederate cannonade crashed their first volleys upon Cemetery Ridge, Hancock was with General Meade at his headquarters. “I immediately rode to the line of battle,” Hancock remembered, “with my staff and orderlies [I] rode down the whole line…I immediately sent word to General Meade.” Hancock was concerned because one of his brigades, led by Colonel Carroll, had been taken from his line and sent to bolster Cemetery Hill. He asked for his brigade back. He knew Carroll would be needed, but the Eleventh Corps refused – they needed Hancock’s men to ensure the safety of the flank. Disgruntled, Hancock also had a disagreement with General Hunt, the commander of the artillery, who had slowed down their own cannonade. Hancock insisted that they keep firing, and Hunt insisted that they preserve their ammunition for the attack that was imminent. Like the 11th Corps, Hunt got his way.11

As the Confederate shells screamed and the smoke rose, the men on Cemetery Ridge were astonished to see their commander, General Hancock, calmly riding down the line. He wore a black felt hat, wore his coat buttoned at the top and open at the waist, and sported a rapier sword. “Every soldier’s heart stopped beating,” one man recalled, “for this seemed certain death to the general.” When one of his staff implored him to dismount and take cover, Hancock answered, “There are times when a corps commander’s life does not count.”12

After about two hours of cannonade, the Confederate and Union guns grew quiet. A light breeze dissipated the smoke. Soon, men in gray and butternut could be seen nearly a mile away emerging from the woods on Seminary Ridge. The faint strains of Dixie could be heard. It was about 3 o’clock.

The Union guns fired anew and the soldiers in blue, crouched by the low stone wall on the ridge were told to hold their fire. Pickett’s Charge had begun. Among those in the ranks rushing toward their destiny was Hancock’s old friend, Lewis A. Armistead, a brigade commander in Pickett’s division.

The Union artillery successfully blew gaps in the Confederate line, but the majority of Lee’s men managed to continue onward toward Cemetery Ridge. Noticing the hole in the Confederate line to his left, Hancock saw an opportunity. Riding to the spot where the Vermont brigade stood ready to fight, he told them to enfilade the line – to advance and fire a withering volley into the sides of the advancing Confederates.

As soon as he gave the order, a bullet hit his saddle, dislodging a nail from the saddle and driving it into the general as well – barely missing his femoral artery. “The ball passed through the front of his middle,” explained one of his staff who saw Hancock shortly after he fell, “and carried into the wound with it a large wrought nail…The bullet and the nail entered near the groin, the ball passing back through the thigh and lodging near the socket of the thigh bone, which was slightly splintered. The general was assisted from his horse by two officers of General Stannard’s [Vermont] staff, who were near him at the time.” The wound, extremely painful, was considsered to be mortal. Hancock, believing that Gettysburg was his last battle, refused to leave the field. Propping himself up with his elbow, bleeding profusely, and growing faint with the loss of blood, Hancock stayed until the contest was over and the Union had prevailed.13
After the battle, Norristown native and Gettysburg civilian Jennie Wills, wife of attorney David Wills, insisted on seeing the general. After being made as comfortable as possible, Hancock was taken to Westminster, and from there by train to Baltimore, then Philadelphia, then home.

Amazingly, Hancock survived the ghastly wound, largely because George Meade refused to let him die, and sent his own surgeon to operate on Hancock. Dr. Read finally extracted the bullet over a month later, by having Hancock sit in a chair as though on a horse.

Lewis Armistead was not as fortunate. The only general officer of Pickett’s Division to successfully pierce the Union center, the general was shot down on Cemetery Ridge. Knowing that Hancock was in charge in the center, he asked to see his old friend. When the news reached him that Hancock had also been shot, Armistead plaintively said, “Tell General Hancock how sorry I am.” Two days later, he died at Gettysburg.14

Hancock spent the autumn and winter of 1863 convalescing, and lucky to be alive. Learning that Hancock was frustrated, Meade sent him a letter. “You will have to be patient and resigned and give your wound time to heal,” he wrote, “consoling yourself with the reflection that matters could be much worse.”15

Hancock returned in 1864, and fought with his 2nd Corps at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. At Petersburg, his old wound bothered him to the point that he had to relinquish command. Finally, in the autumn of 1864, he was relieved of field command and sent to Washington. He missed the surrender at Appomattox, but the rigors of war weren’t quite over for Hancock.
On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater. Booth, the assassin, was later killed, but several of his accomplices were arrested, put on trial, and convicted. Some received prison terms, but four were condemned to the gallows. On July 7, 1865 David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, and Mary Surratt were executed. In the blistering heat at the Washington Navy Yard the prisoners were escorted to the place of execution. The man in charge of the execution was General Hancock. Believing, and hoping, that Mary Surratt would get a last-minute reprieve, he held out as long as possible. No word came, and Mrs. Surratt was the first woman executed by hanging in the United States. “I have been in many a battle,” Hancock wrote, “and have seen death…I’ve been in a living hell of fire, and shell, and grape-shot and I’d sooner be there ten thousand times over than to give the order this day for the execution of that poor woman. But I am a soldier, sworn to obey, and obey I must.”16

At war’s end, unrest in the South continued for many years. Hancock was again called upon. He served in Louisiana, as the commander of the Department of the Gulf. The fact that the people of Louisiana respected and liked him is praise indeed. He then served as commander of the Division of the Atlantic, stationed on Governor’s Island in New York. He left that position for three years while he served his country in the Dakota Territory until 1872, when he returned to New York, a city that he grew to love. While he and his family lived in New York, the first of many tragedies befell the family, with the death of his daughter, Ada, in 1875. Hancock chose her burial site, and built a mausoleum in Norristown that overlooked the house where he was born. More tragedies followed. His son, Russell, had married and gave his parents two grandchildren, Ada and Winfield Scott. The little grandson, sadly, died an infant – and the loss deepened the grief that Hancock had already experienced with his daughter’s death. Not long afterward, Russell, too, died. Winfield and Almira buried both their children, something no parent ever should have to do.17

Hancock was also discouraged about his twin, Hilary. Unable to keep up with his famous brother, Hilary failed at nearly everything he tried. Shifting from job to job, consistently intoxicated, and never able to find a good woman to marry, Hilary lived the life of a vagabond. This too, contributed to the sadness of Hancock’s later life.18

In 1880, the Democratic Party asked Hancock to be their candidate for the Presidency, and Hancock finally acquiesced. His health was already precarious, but always willing to fight the good fight, Hancock agreed. Hancock did not win the Presidency – he lost by a narrow margin to James A. Garfield, but students of history are grateful that Hancock ran. Because of the nasty attacks that happen during Presidential elections, soldiers and friends of Hancock wrote many articles to defend him, and because these writings survive, we know much more than we would have about the general.
Ulysses S. Grant said, “Hancock stands the most conspicuous figure of all the general officers.” One of the soldiers on Hancock’s staff at Gettysburg wrote, “He was aptly termed by a distinguished Confederate general as a thunderbolt of the Army of the Potomac.” Another remembered, “Handsome in form, commanding in mien and carriage, the soldier marking each feature…earnest in his every word, obedient to his superiors, exacting every obligation…[he] impressed all with whom he came in contact.”19

In 1885, General Hancock was in failing health, mostly from diabetes. He managed to visit Gettysburg that year, and, when Ulysses S. Grant died that summer, was one of the officiating soldiers at the funeral.

In early 1886, Hancock grew more feeble and ill, with an infectious carbuncle on his leg. Just five days before his 62nd birthday, an alarmed Almira summoned the doctor to her husband’s bedside. It was too late. At 2:30 p.m. on February 9, 1886, General Hancock died.20

After a grand military funeral in New York, Hancock was laid to rest in the tomb beside his daughter, Ada, in Norristown.
Perhaps the finest praise comes from those who had been his enemies during the Civil War. A Louisiana paper stated: “The citizens of Louisiana have reason to honor the character and cherish the memory of the humane and magnanimous Hancock. They deplore his death.” General Fitzhugh Lee, the nephew of Robert E. Lee, wrote upon hearing of his death that “I was very fond of Gen. Hancock. He was a noble gallant fellow and a soldier of undoubted merit and great ability…Virginia and the South will deeply regret the death of a generous soldier, a courteous gentleman, and a strong, firm, and constant friend.” And from the South Carolina News and Courier came: “The South has changed but little…since the men who recoiled at Hancock’s lines at Gettysburg began the retreat that ended at Appomattox. But the men who stood with him on the summit…that day and who cheered with him in triumph as he rode along the lines, scarcely mourn his loss more sincerely than do those whom he opposed.”21

Born to be a soldier, General Hancock will always be remembered for his amazing military ability, his exactness in obedience, his calm amid chaos, and his love for his fellow man – not caring from which side of the battle line one came once the fight was over. A significant reason that the nation has endured can be attributed to Hancock, and those from both sides of the Mason Dixon Line who were like him.

Sources: Gambone, Al. “The Death of General Hancock”. Historical Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Vol. XXX, no. 1, Fall 1995. Jordan, David M. Winfield Scott Hancock: A Soldier’s Life. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988. Kanazawich, Michael. Remarkable Stories of the Lincoln Assassination. Orrtanna, PA: Colecraft Industries, 2008. Obituaries of General Hancock, General Hancock File, Gettysburg National Military Park. Letter, Hancock to Rothermel, Dec. 31, 1868, PA State Archives. Letter, Rudolf Hummel, Librarian of Montgomery Co. Historical Society, to Dr. Tilberg, Oct. 30, 1947, Hancock File, GNMP. Death Certificate of General Hancock, copy, GNMP. Webb, Gen. Alexander. “Chancellorsville and Gettysburg”, Journal of the Military Services Institution of the United States. Vol. XLVIII. Governor’s Island, NY: Military Service Institution, 1911. Letter, General George Meade to General Hancock, Nov. 6, 1863, copy, GNMP. Pennsylvania At Gettysburg. Vol. II,pp. 1073-1082. Copy, GNMP. Tucker, Glenn. “Hancock at Gettysburg”, unpublished thesis, copy, GNMP. Tucker, Glenn. Hancock The Superb. Dayton, OH: Morningside Bookshop, 1980. The Gettysburg Compiler, Nov. 24, 1885, copy, GNMP. The Gettysburg Compiler, Oct. 21, 1880, copy,GNMP. Gettysburg Star & Sentinel, July 13, 1886, copy, GNMP. Warner, Ezra J. Generals In Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996 (reprint).

End Notes:
1. Jordan, p. 11. Letter, Hummel to Dr. Tilberg, Oct. 30, 1947.
2. Tucker, Hancock The Superb, pp. 24-26.
3. Ibid., p. 21.
4. Obituaries of General Hancock, GNMP.
5. Warner, p. 203. Tucker, p. 40.
6. Gambone, p. 3.
7. Jordan, p. 25.
8. Ibid., p. 32.
9. Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, p. 1074. Jordan, p. 34.
10. Tucker, “Hancock at Gettysburg”, p. 11.
11. Letter, Hancock to Rothermel, PA State Archives.
12. Tucker, Hancock the Superb, pp. 150-151.
13. The Gettysburg Compiler, Oct. 21, 1880. Many
soldiers who witnessed Hancock's wounding
at Gettysburg testified of their experiences
to debunk the rivals who were trying to
discredit Hancock's war record during his
bid for the Presidency. As a result, we have
many eyewitness accounts of Hancock's
activities at the Battle of Gettysburg.
14. Tucker, p. 161.
15. Letter, Meade to Hancock, Nov. 6, 1863, copy, GNMP.
16. Kanazawich, p. 88.
17. Gambone, p. 12.
18. Ibid.
19. Gettysburg Star & Sentinel, July 13, 1886. Though General Grant had already died, he was still quoted in the obituary.
20. Gambone, p. 12. Letter, Hummel to Dr. Tilberg, Oct. 30, 1947.
21. Obituaries of General Hancock, Hancock File, GNMP.

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