Culp’s Hill is one of Gettysburg’s least visited areas of the battlefield.  Yet, on the evening of July 2 and the morning of July 3, 1863, the contest on that wooded hill constituted one of the hottest and most pivotal events of the battle.  The man in charge of that area of the field for the Union was a methodical, by-the-book West Point graduate-turned-lawyer.  He is rarely mentioned when studying the Battle of Gettysburg.  Even General Meade, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, neglected to mention Culp’s Hill or the man who deserves the accolades of saving it from Confederate hands.  He was Major General Henry Warner Slocum.

Henry Slocum was born on September 27, 1827 in Delphi Falls, Onondaga County, New York, a hamlet located a few miles southeast of Syracuse.  He was the sixth child of eleven.  His parents, Matthew and Mary Ostrander Slocum, were an honorable couple with little means to support their large family.¹

Henry showed a proclivity to exceptional intelligence from an early age, and hoped to further his education.  He taught at the local school until age 21, when he received a much anticipated, and appreciated, appointment to West Point.  Henry’s roommate was Philip Sheridan, and the pair remained good friends for the duration of their lives.  Henry, in fact, helped his roommate with the scholastic burdens of the academy, which the irascible Sheridan greatly appreciated.  Another who knew the studious Slocum said, “Study was his pleasure and recreation.”²

Slocum graduated seventh in his class in 1852 and was assigned to the U.S. Artillery.  He fought against the Seminole uprisings in Florida and spent some time at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina.  During the lull in duties, Slocum studied law in nearby Charleston.   He resigned his commission in 1856, returned to New York to marry his fiancée, Clara Rice, and passed the bar in 1858.  Slocum’s father had died in 1853, so Henry’s mother came to live with Henry and his family.  Six children were born to the couple, and four lived to adulthood.³

Before the war, Slocum also ran for office, serving in various capacities in his state, including the local militia in Syracuse.  When Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12, 1861, Slocum knew he had to fight.  “Clara,” he said to his wife, “I was educated at the expense of my country, and it is my duty to go.”⁴

Slocum began the war as the colonel of the 27th New York Infantry, a three-month regiment.  He led them at First Manassas, the first major battle of the war.  He quickly ended up in a hospital, having been severely wounded in the right thigh as he led a charge.  It took him a few months to recover, and when he returned, he had been promoted to brigade command.

General Slocum’s star rose meteorically, and it was partly due to highly placed political friends.  Nevertheless, Henry strictly obeyed military protocol, and did not attempt to use politics to his advantage.  As part of General William Franklin’s Division, Slocum and his brigade distinguished themselves at the Seven Days’ Battles, part of General McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign.  When Franklin was promoted to command of the Sixth Corps, Slocum took command of Franklin’s Division.  With that rank, Slocum and his troops fought at the Battles of Second Manassas, South Mountain, and Antietam.⁵

In October 1862, Slocum was given the command of the Union Twelfth Corps, the smallest corps in the Army of the Potomac with nine thousand men.⁶

At the Battle of Chancellorsville, Slocum served as a wing commander, a position General Joe Hooker, the latest of the army commanders, implemented.  Hooker did not use the cavalry and artillery with the same precision; as a result, Chancellorsville proved disastrous for the Union Army.  Most of the rank and file blamed Hooker for the loss.  Some of the subordinate generals were thoroughly disgusted with Hooker’s inability to successfully lead an army.  Among these were Generals Darius Couch, John Sedgwick, and Henry Slocum.  Slocum signed a letter, with the other two generals, to President Lincoln, insisting that the President remove the incapable Hooker and replace him with George Meade.  When Hooker remained in command, Couch resigned in protest, and Winfield S. Hancock replaced him as leader of the Federal Second Corps.⁷

Eventually Lincoln replaced Hooker with George Meade, just three days before the Battle of Gettysburg.  The entire Union army was on the move, following the advancing Confederates, led by Robert E. Lee, into Pennsylvania.

General Meade had planned to fight Lee in the unpopulated area of Pipe Creek, a hilly and partially wooded area in Maryland, about ten miles south of Gettysburg.  Henry Slocum, as a highly ranked general and being in the loop, had known about these plans.  As he and his corps progressed northward into Pennsylvania, he hoped to stay near Pipe Creek.  When the battle began, by accident, farther north at Gettysburg, Henry Slocum tarried at Two Taverns, a small village a few miles south.

General Slocum has been largely ignored in the annals of the famous battle at Gettysburg, and he has also received a large share of criticism for not arriving earlier on the first day of the fight.  Upon careful inspection, however, General Slocum was actually instrumental in helping secure the victory for the Union at the Pennsylvania crossroads town.

While it seems inexplicable, General Slocum and his troops did not hear the heavy fighting at Gettysburg while they rested at Two Taverns on the afternoon of July 1, 1863.  The men of his corps defended their general, saying that no noise of a heavy engagement reached their ears.  It is probable that, due to the outlay of the land, the area where the Twelfth Corps stayed may have been the site of an anomaly where sounds of battle were muffled.  Additionally, Slocum did not receive any urgent missives from General Howard, who had expected him that day.  The haphazard manner of arrivals, the lull in the early afternoon, the inability to hear the din of battle, and the fact that no one had been expected to fight at Gettysburg all played a role in Slocum’s tardy arrival.  He reached Cemetery Hill at about 5:30 p.m. on July 1, and General Hancock, whom Meade had ordered to take command due to General Reynolds’s early death, turned over the command to Slocum.⁸

That evening, Generals Slocum, Howard, and Sickles ate a meager dinner prepared by Elizabeth Thorn, the wife of the cemetery gatekeeper – who had gone off to war himself.  Slocum handed over the command to General Meade when he arrived at the Gatehouse, sometime after midnight, early on July 2, 1863.⁹

With General Meade’s sudden ascendancy to the command of the army, and with the onset of the surprise location for what turned out to be the war’s most pivotal battle, General Meade naturally was not explicit in some of his methods.  He expected Slocum, as a highly ranked officer, to simply do his duty and know what to do.  General Slocum, however, was not accustomed to Meade’s manner of leadership.  There were misunderstandings as a result.¹⁰

General Slocum, still believing he was the right-wing commander, turned over the command of the Twelfth Corps to the capable Alpheus Williams.  Watching the flanks of the army was an essential task, as Culp’s Hill overlooked the necessary Baltimore Pike.  The road, one of only three in Union hands during the battle, compared to the seven in Confederate territory, led to the Union supply depot in nearby Westminster, Maryland.  If the South were to control the Baltimore Pike, and attain Culp’s Hill – the extreme right of the Federal line – the Army of the Potomac would be in grave danger indeed.  General Slocum, understanding the value of the land he occupied, was cognizant of this fact.

Slocum made his headquarters on the Baltimore Pike near Culp’s Hill.  The hill, named for the Pennsylvania farmer who owned it, would prove a sanguinary place on July 2 and 3.

Culp's Hill, forming the extreme right of the Union army’s battle line – known to history as the Fishhook Line, was steep and densely wooded.  After the Twelfth Corps deployed there, the battle began at the other end of the Union line.  General Dan Sickles, the Third Corps commander, disobeyed General Meade and moved his men from their line of deployment to the Sherfy Peach Orchard on the Emmitsburg Road, leaving large gaps in the Federal line.  The Confederates quickly made use of Sickles's act.  With battles on the slopes of Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, and the Peach Orchard causing havoc, within hours men in gray moved to assault the sparsely populated Union center – which additional men in blue had vacated in order to help Sickles’s troops.  General Meade, quickly discerning the emergency, ordered troops from Culp’s Hill to redeploy and stop the gray advance.

Slocum was concerned about vacating Culp’s Hill, due to the significance of the position, and asked Meade if one of his two divisions could remain to guard the hill.  Meade answered that Slocum could leave a brigade.

The prescient general deserves accolades for his decision to leave General George Greene, a West Point brigadier and the oldest Union general at Gettysburg, and his New Yorkers.  Slocum’s capable subordinate, General Alpheus Williams, who was acting corps commander, also deserves credit for the decision.  Slocum's concern that the rebels would take over the hill in the Federals' absence proved prophetic.¹¹

The Union boys with stars on their kepis rushed from Culp’s Hill down the Granite Schoolhouse Lane – a quick shortcut to where they were desperately needed – and plugged the holes in the Union line near the current Pennsylvania Memorial.  They relieved the First Minnesota regiment, who had paid a high price to buy time for reinforcements, and stopped the Confederate advance.   

Only one of the two Twelfth Corps divisions had managed to reach the line.  The second division, led by General John Geary, somehow got lost en route to the battle.  At dusk the two divisions returned to their original lines on Culp’s Hill, only to find them occupied by Confederates.

The Confederate troops, part of General Johnson’s Division, General Ewell’s Second Corps, had been unable to reach the heights of Culp’s Hill and take it.  General Greene’s brigade had skillfully kept their ground.  As darkness fell, General Johnson’s men were sandwiched on the hill between Union troops: Greene’s brigade on the heights and the recently returned Federals on the periphery below.

When Alpheus Williams relayed the distressing news to General Slocum, he succinctly replied, “Well, drive them out at daylight.”¹²

Early the next morning, at first light, the battle on Culp’s Hill began.  It provided the longest sustained fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg, from dawn until shortly before noon – heavily sustained and with great sacrifice on both sides.  Slocum’s men, however, “repulsed the enemy with great vigor.”¹³

Little is known about the actual losses on Culp’s Hill, as the majority of the casualties were Confederate.  The Twelfth Corps, however, along with partial regimental contingents of the First and Sixth Corps, suffered casualties as well.  George Meade did not even mention Culp’s Hill in his first Official Report, ignoring Greene’s Brigade and their heroic stance.  When Slocum insisted upon its correction, Meade complied, but omitted Slocum’s part in placing Greene at such an essential area.  Slocum was offended, but eventually recovered from the slight.

With the failure of Pickett’s Charge on the afternoon of July 3, the Battle of Gettysburg ended.  Slocum was philosophical about Lee’s escape into Virginia.  “Please don’t believe the newspapers when they tell you that we could have captured the rebel army ,” he wrote in a letter to a friend about the battle.  “Our best officers think everything was done for the best.”¹⁴

In the autumn of 1863, the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps were sent westward to aid in the fights against Braxton Bragg’s army.  In 1864 the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps were consolidated into the Twentieth Corps, under Slocum’s nemesis Joe Hooker.  Disgusted at the thought of serving with Hooker again, Slocum sent a telegram to Abraham Lincoln with his resignation.  “The public service cannot be promoted ,” he wrote, “by placing under his command an officer who has as little confidence in his abilities as I have.”  The President did not accept the resignation; instead he placed Slocum in Vicksburg to overlook the Union stronghold there.  Soon Hooker was again relieved of command, and Slocum later took over the Twentieth Corps, part of Sherman’s army.  They were the first Union troops to enter Atlanta, and later part of Sherman’s March to the Sea.  Once the army entered the Carolinas, Slocum served once again as a wing commander, with Oliver Howard, the former Eleventh Corps commander, serving as the other.  After their last battle at Bentonville, and after learning of Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Slocum and Howard witnessed Joe Johnston’s surrender to General Sherman in North Carolina.¹⁵

After the war, Henry Slocum continued with his law practice in Brooklyn.  He served three terms in Congress and was a member of the Monuments Commission for Gettysburg.  He also served as one of the commissioners for the erection of the Brooklyn Bridge.  While in Congress, Slocum fought for better pensions for Civil War veterans.  He attended reunions, but otherwise rarely spoke of the war, although he remained “an attentive student of war history ” for the rest of his life.¹⁶

In the early spring of 1894, the 66-year-old general made a trip to upstate New York to rent a lodge for a family vacation.  Once home, he complained of chest pains.  His doctor diagnosed him with congestive heart failure and an aggressive form of pneumonia.  For two weeks the general was bedridden with ill health.  On the night of April 13, he became severely ill, gasping for air.  The doctor worked feverishly to aid him, to little avail.  Slocum died early in the morning of April 14, 1894, with his wife, his four surviving children, and his doctor at his bedside.¹⁷

At the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, Slocum’s funeral was filled with an array of Union veterans.  His wife, however, was too overcome to attend.  Among Slocum’s pallbearers were Generals Howard, Butterfield, Sickles, Fitz John Porter, and the hero of Culp’s Hill, General George Greene, at age 93.  Slocum’s compatriot Oliver Howard delivered the eulogy.  After the burial in Green Wood Cemetery, on a hill overlooking Brooklyn, six artillery pieces fired a military salute.¹⁸

On September 19, 1902, the State of New York dedicated the equestrian memorial to General Slocum at Gettysburg.  The statue stands on the northern slope of the hill.  On the base is the quote, “Stay and fight it out” – the words Slocum said at the Gettysburg Council of War at Meade’s Headquarters.¹⁹

Methodical, studious, and philosophical, Henry Slocum would not appear at first glance as a man who would attain such a high military rank.  When his country needed him, however, he answered the call – like millions of others who fought in America’s worst war,  and in particular at that place called Gettysburg.