On November 26, 1789, President George Washington issued a proclamation naming that Thursday a “Day of Publick Thanksgivin.” In 1863 this date was codified by President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation that Thanksgiving would be commemorated each year on the last Thursday of November. It was deemed a time to gather round the table and break bread with loved ones and chosen families.
It also set the scene for some rather uncomfortable — one would imagine — table discussions as the North and South were already two years into the broad, horrible tapestry that was the American Civil War. Brothers were fighting brothers, friends fighting friends and frenemies fighting (perhaps somewhat enthusiastically) frenemies.
Some of frenemies, in fact, controlled the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, and the battlefield was their terrible playground.
A.P. Hill + George B. McClellan
All’s fair in love and war, right?
A.P. Hill, trusted lieutenant of Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, was one-time friend with the future Commander of the Army of the Potomac, Gen. George B. McClellan.
A recurring bout of gonorrhea forced Hill to repeat his third year at West Point, putting him in the same 1847 graduating class as McClellan, where the two became friendly.
Nearly a decade later, Hill proposed to Mary Ellen Marcy, the daughter of McClellan’s commanding officer, Maj. Randolph Marcy. However, with rumors still swirling around Hill’s youthful indiscretion that led to a venereal disease, Maj. Marcy objected to the union and the engagement was called off.
Three years later, after repeated attempts from a persistent McClellan, Marcy accepted the future Commander of the Army of the Potomac’s marriage proposal, even though she allegedly still held a torch for Hill.
There was allegedly no “ill will” towards McClellan, and Hill even served as one of McClellan’s groomsmen. Hill resigned from the United States Army in March 1861 and became a colonel for the Confederacy, commanding a unit at the Battle of First Bull Run where he faced off against his friend. He would so again during the Peninsula Campaign, the Seven Days Battles and famously at the Battle of Antietam.
It remains unsubstantiated, but rumors swirled after the war that Hill always fought harder and longer when he knew he was facing his former paramour’s husband. A lover scorned strikes back.
James Longstreet + Ulysses S. Grant
One of the most controversial friendships of the Civil War, the general-in-chief of the Armies of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, was close friends with the second-in-command of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, James Longstreet.
The two became friends at West Point and then both assigned to the 4th U.S. Infantry in Missouri, before serving together in the Mexican-American War. Although there are conflicting sources detailing Longstreet’s role in Grant’s wedding to Julia Dent, he was, at the very least, a guest at their wedding in 1848.
During the Civil War, the two friends, who both quickly rose the ranks of their respective armies, did not encounter each other until May 1864 at the Battle of the Wilderness. Longstreet was accidentally shot in the shoulder and neck by his own troops and would not rejoin the fight until the fall.
Less than a year later, it was Longstreet’s decades-long friendship with Grant that finally persuaded Lee to surrender at Appomattox Court House, with Longstreet believing that Grant would offer generous terms — which he did.
The atmosphere was understandably stilted until Grant approached Longstreet and, grasping his hand, declared, “Pete, let us have another game of brag, to recall the days that were so pleasant.”
“Great God! I thought to myself, how my heart swells out to such a magnanimous touch of humanity! Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?” Longstreet later recalled.
While denied amnesty under President Andrew Johnson, upon Grant’s ascent to the presidency Longstreet was granted his pardon and dedicated his life to Grant’s reconstruction efforts in the South. He was deemed a “scalawag” and a traitor for his stance after the war.
William Averell + Fitzhugh Lee
“I wish you would put up your sword, leave my state, and go home. You ride a good horse, I ride a better. If you won’t go home, return my visit, and bring me a sack of coffee,” taunted Brig. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee to his old West Point buddy and Union cavalry officer, William Averell.
Averell and Confederate Brig. Gen Fitzhugh Lee — the nephew of Robert E. Lee — were close friends who directly fought each other at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford. Both graduates of West Point in 1855 and 1856 respectively, the two saw immediate action against Native Americans in the West and were both severely injured before the outbreak of the Civil War.
Lee’s note — left for Averell after he conducted a daring raid north of the Rappahannock River in February of 1863 — although tongue in cheek, was not without merit. Since the outbreak of the war in 1861, Confederate horsemen had routinely routed Union cavalry. At the sight of their horsemen on the roads, Northern soldiers would famously shout, “There’s going to be a fight! The cavalry’s coming back!”
That was about to change, thanks to Averell. Goaded by his old friend’s barb, Averell requested to cross the river to “’rout or destroy’” Fitzhugh Lee and his command as they sheltered south of the river near Culpepper Courthouse in Virginia. A furious Averell specifically made the choice to reintroduce the saber in his hunt for Lee, telling his men to “sharpen their sabers and expect to win.”
After Hooker granted his request, Averell took his force of 2,100 Union cavalrymen at daybreak on March 17 and crossed the Rappahannock at a low passage in the river dubbed Kelly’s Ford, 25 miles upstream from the city of Fredericksburg. But before crossing the river, Averell left a note and a sack of coffee for Lee reading, “Dear Fitz, here’s your coffee. Here’s your visit. How do you like it?”
Lewis Armistead + Winfield Scott Hancock
Depicted in in the novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara and in the 1993 movie, Gettysburg the friendship between Union Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock and Confederate Brig. Gen. Lewis Armistead is the stuff of legends.
While both the book and film admittedly took liberties with their bond, the two were undoubtedly close friends prior to the outbreak of the Civil War.
Serving under Armistead who was seven years Hancock’s senior, the two were posted worked together in an outpost in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) and fought alongside one another during the Mexican-American War.
After the war, Hancock still served under Armistead as one of his lieutenants, with future Confederate Maj. Gen. Henry Hethstating in his memoir, “Armistead, Hancock and I were messmates, and never was a mess happier than ours...”
When the war came, Armistead, Hancock and others had a gathering to say goodbye. In this, Shaara imagines a soldier’s farewell: “Goodbye, good luck, and see you in Hell.” With Armistead telling Hancock: “Win, so help me, if I ever lift a hand against you may God strike me dead.” In other sources, Armistead allegedly says: “Goodbye. You can never know what this has cost me.”
Armistead and Hancock would not meet again until the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg.
On July 3rd, while holding his position on Cemetery Ridge, Armistead’s brigade — part of the infamous Pickett’s Charge — smashed into his former lieutenant’s lines. Armistead was hit in the leg. Then again. And again.
As a Union officer approached Armistead asked the officer to give him a message: “Tell General Hancock that General Armistead sends his regrets.”
The officer apologized: Hancock had also been hit.
Armistead died in a Union hospital tent two days later. Hancock would survive.
