Isaac R. Trimble
Isaac R. Trimble | |
---|---|
Major General (CSA) | |
Unit | 3rd U.S. Artillery 1st U.S. Artillery |
Commands held | Trimble's Brigade Jackson's (Old) Division |
Battles/wars |
|
Other work | Railroad executive |
Isaac Ridgeway Trimble (May 15, 1802 – January 2, 1888) was a United States Army officer, a civil engineer, a prominent railroad construction superintendent and executive, and a Confederate general in the American Civil War. He was born in Virginia, lived in Maryland for much of his adult life, and returned to Virginia in 1861 after Maryland did not secede. Trimble is most famous for his role as a division commander in the assault known as Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. He was wounded severely in the leg during that battle, and was left on the field. He spent most of the remainder of the war as a prisoner, and was finally paroled on April 16, 1865, one week after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia following the Battle of Appomattox Court House.
Youth, education, building railroads
Trimble was born in
Trimble was married twice: first, in 1831 to Maria Cattell Presstman of Charleston, South Carolina, who died in 1855; second, to her sister, Ann Ferguson Presstman. By his first marriage he had two sons, David Churchill Trimble and William Presstman Trimble, who survived him. Soon after leaving the Army, Trimble moved to Maryland at the urging of his wife, and he subsequently considered it his home state.
He helped survey the route of the
Following the firing on the Federal installation of
Civil War
At the start of the Civil War, Trimble participated in efforts to restrict the movement of
Trimble first saw combat as part of
In the
Although Trimble avoided the amputation of his wounded leg, his rehabilitation proceeded slowly. For months after, doctors periodically found bone fragments that had to be extracted. By November, he developed camp erysipelas and a probable case of osteomyelitis, and his ambitions for elevation to division command were on hold until he was well enough to return to active duty. He made his desire for promotion abundantly clear to his colleagues, and in one instance before the army moved north to Manassas, he was quoted as saying (probably humorously), "General Jackson, before this war is over, I intend to be a Major General or a corpse!"[6] Jackson wrote a strong letter of recommendation, although he tempered it by including the sentence "I do not regard him as a good disciplinarian." Trimble engaged in a letterwriting campaign from his sick bed to obtain his promotion and to challenge Jackson's claim. He wrote to Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, "If I am to have promotion I want it at once and I particularly request, that my date may be from 26 August, the date of the capture of Manassas." (During this period Trimble also feuded with Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart about their conflicting reports of the battle and who bore primary responsibility for the seizure of the Union supply depot.)[7]
Trimble was eventually promoted to
By June 1863, Gen.
At the Battle of Gettysburg, Ewell's Second Corps reached the battlefield in the early afternoon of the first day, July 1, 1863, smashing into the Union XI Corps and driving it south through the town to Cemetery Hill. Trimble wrote the following about his encounter with Ewell:
The battle was over and we had won it handsomely. General Ewell moved about uneasily, a good deal excited, and seemed to me to be undecided what to do next. I approached him and said: "Well, General, we have had a grand success; are you not going to follow it up and push our advantage?"
He replied that General Lee had instructed him not to bring on a general engagement without orders, and that he would wait for them.
I said, "That hardly applies to the present state of things, as we have fought a hard battle already, and should secure the advantage gained". He made no rejoinder, but was far from composure. I was deeply impressed with the conviction that it was a critical moment for us and made a remark to that effect.
As no movement seemed immediate, I rode off to our left, north of the town, to reconnoitre, and noticed conspicuously the wooded hill northeast of Gettysburg (Culp's), and a half mile distant, and of an elevation to command the country for miles each way, and overlooking Cemetery Hill above the town. Returning to see General Ewell, who was still under much embarrassment, I said, "General, There," pointing to Culp's Hill, "is an eminence of commanding position, and not now occupied, as it ought to be by us or the enemy soon. I advise you to send a brigade and hold it if we are to remain here." He said: "Are you sure it commands the town?" [I replied,] "Certainly it does, as you can see, and it ought to be held by us at once." General Ewell made some impatient reply, and the conversation dropped.
— Isaac R. Trimble, Southern Historical Society Papers[10]
Observers have reported that the "impatient reply" was, "When I need advice from a junior officer I generally ask for it." They also stated that Trimble threw down his sword in disgust and stormed off. A more colorful version of this account has been immortalized in Michael Shaara's novel, The Killer Angels and in the film Gettysburg, where Trimble directly tells Robert E. Lee his feelings about Ewell not taking the hill. [11]
On July 3, 1863, Trimble was one of the three division commanders in Pickett's Charge. He stepped in to replace Maj. Gen. W. Dorsey Pender, of Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill's corps, who had been mortally wounded the previous day. Trimble was at a great disadvantage because he had never worked with these troops before. His division participated in the left section of the assault, advancing just behind the division led by Brig. Gen. J. Johnston Pettigrew (formerly by Maj. Gen. Henry Heth). Trimble rode his horse, Jinny, and was wounded in the left leg, the same leg hit at Second Bull Run. Despite feeling faint, the 61-year-old general was able to walk back to the Confederate line on Seminary ridge. His leg was amputated by Dr. Hunter McGuire, and Trimble could not be taken along with the retreating Confederates, because of fear of infection that would result from a long ambulance ride back to Virginia, so he was left under the care of a family in Gettysburg on July 6 as the army withdrew. Trimble complained bitterly that if his leg had been amputated at Second Bull Run, the bullet would have missed him on this occasion. He was treated in the Seminary Hospital at Gettysburg until August. Of the charge on the third day of Gettysburg, Trimble said: "If the men I had the honor to command that day could not take that position, all hell couldn't take it."[12]
Gettysburg marked the end of Trimble's active military career. He spent the next year and a half in Federal hands at
Postbellum life and heritage
After the war, Trimble, equipped with an artificial leg, returned to
In 1997, Baltimore's
In popular media
Isaac Trimble was played by actor W. Morgan Sheppard in the movies Gettysburg and Gods and Generals.
See also
Notes
- ^ The Pennocks of Primitive Hall website Archived August 17, 2018, at the Wayback Machine; Fiebeger, Dictionary of American Biography; Eicher, p. 536; Krick, p. 60. Krick states that there were 42 cadets graduating in 1822, Eicher states 40.
- ^ Fiebeger, Dictionary of American Biography; The Pennocks of Primitive Hall website Archived August 17, 2018, at the Wayback Machine; Eicher, p. 536; Krick, p. 60; Tagg, p. 328.
- ^ Eicher, p. 536; Krick, p. 60; Tagg, p. 328.
- ^ Krick, pp. 60–61; Tagg, pp. 328–29.
- ^ Krick, p. 61; Tagg, p. 329; Freeman, vol. II, p. 118, states that it was a "Belgian explosive bullet". Although Krick implies that Trimble resisted having his leg amputated, Long reports that the general insisted on it, but the doctor resisted.
- ^ Freeman, vol. II, pp. 273–74, 256–57; Long, p. 125.
- ^ Freeman, vol. II, p. 416, 502–03.
- ^ Krick, p. 61; Eicher, 536; Tagg, p. 329; Freeman, vol. II, pp. 416, 701; Long, p. 125. Eicher and Krick list his promotion date as January 17, Freeman and Tagg as January 19.
- ^ Tagg, p. 329.
- ^ Trimble, Southern Historical Society Papers.
- ^ Tagg, p. 329. Freeman, vol. 3, p. 95, gives a detailed account of what was probably said, and not said, in the unrecorded confrontation between Trimble and Ewell.
- ^ Long, p. 125; Krick, p. 61; Tagg, pp. 329–30; Gottfried, p. 650.
- ^ Long, pp. 126–28; Eicher, p. 536; Krick, p. 61; Tagg, p. 330.
- Baltimore Sun. Archived from the originalon October 20, 2012. Retrieved April 28, 2009.
References
- Eicher, John H., and ISBN 978-0-8047-3641-1.
- Fiebeger, Gustave Joseph. "Isaac Ridgeway Trimble." In Dictionary of American Biography, American Council of Learned Societies, edited by Dumas Malone. Vol. 18. New York: Scribner's, 1936. OCLC 796804.
- ISBN 978-0-684-85979-8.
- Gottfried, Bradley M. Brigades of Gettysburg. New York: Da Capo Press, 2002. ISBN 0-306-81175-8.
- Krick, Robert K. "Isaac Ridgeway Trimble." In The Confederate General, vol. 6, edited by ISBN 0-918678-68-4.
- Long, Roger. "Gen. Isaac R. Trimble in Captivity." The Gettysburg Magazine, Issue One, July 1989.
- Sifakis, Stewart. Who Was Who in the Civil War. New York: Facts On File, 1988. ISBN 978-0-8160-1055-4.
- Tagg, Larry. The Generals of Gettysburg. Campbell, CA: Savas Publishing, 1998. ISBN 1-882810-30-9.
- Trimble, Isaac R. "The Battle and Campaign of Gettysburg." Southern Historical Society Papers 26 (1898).
- ISBN 978-0-8071-0823-9.
Further reading
- Trimble, David C. Furious, Insatiable Fighter: A Biography of Maj. Gen. Isaac Ridgeway Trimble, C.S.A. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005. ISBN 0-7618-3251-3.
- Tucker, Leslie R. Major General Isaac Ridgeway Trimble: Biography of a Baltimore Confederate. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2005. ISBN 978-0-7864-2131-2.