Return to Gettysburg Campaign Index    Gettysburg Shop

As Confederate Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Armistead lay mortally wound in the middle of "the angle" atop Cemetery Ridge he uttered a cry for help, adding the phrase "as the son of a widow". As the Rebel tide was ebbing by then, some men on the line received permission to go to his aid.

Tradition has it that one of them was 1st Sgt. Frederick Fuger, of Cushing's battery. Fuger had known Armistead in the prewar army, when both had served in the 6th Infatnryand in Utah. According to one of Fuger's fellow gunners, Christopher Smith, Armistead said to Fuger, "I thought it was you sergeant. If I had known that you were in commmand of that battery I would never have led the charge against you." They carried the Armistead to the rear. A surgeon was summoned. When he arrived, Capt. Henry H. Bingham saw that he could do nothing for the dying man. He offered to see that his personal effects were sent to his family.

Meanwhile, a messanger came up. He explained that he was from Maj. Gen. Abner Doubleday, who had heard that a Confederate general - possibly Longstreet himself - had been captured. The messanger politely inquired as to Armistead's rank. Armistead responded by saying, "Tell General Doubleday in a few minutes I shall be where there is no rank." Bingham and Armistead engaged in some small talk, and Armistead learned that his old friend Hancock had been wounded at about the same time he had been shot. Armistead, whom Bingham described as being "seriously wounded, completely exhausted, and seemingly broken spirited" gave his watch for safekeeping to one of the onlooking officers. Then he said "Say to General Hancock for me, that I have done him, and you all, a grievous injury, which I shall regret the longest day I live." Then Armistead was carried to a field hospital, where he died on 5 July.

Although many observers have attempted to discredit or place sinister conotations on them, there seems no reason to doubt the authentiticity of any of the words attributed to Armistead in his last hours. The phrase "as the son of a widow", is, of course, a masonic password, but there is nothing mysterious in that, nor do we have to attribute Armistead's rescue to brother Masons, as he was obviously a high ranking officer. Given that grievously wounded men often utter strange phrases, the words are more likely to have been inspired by the pain from which Armistead was suffering at the time than any sinister conspiracy. The exchange of words with Sgt. Fuger is also probable, for by the end of the fighting in "The Angle" the gallant sergeant was apparently on the line with the 72nd Pennsylvania, whose troops it was that brought Armistead to the rear. Few have connected Armistead with Doubleday's account, yet it seems reasonable to do so, in as much as Armistead was the only Confederate general taken that day.

The greatest controversy has been inspired by Bingham's account, for to some the words attribtued to Armistead suggested that, in the hour of his death a Confederate general had denied the righteousness of the Southern cause. Northerners made much of this, sometimes embroidering upon it to make it sound stronger. Southerners, on the other hand, reacted to the statement by denying that Armistead had said any such thing. Despite this, Dr. Bingham's account has a ring of truth to it, and was reported rather casually. Indeed, after the war, when his veracity was under attack from unreconstructed Rebels, he wrote out a careful statement in which he described the circumstances and events in great detail, even noting that he was uncertain as to whether Armistead had said "regret" or "repent". This ought to have stilled all criticism, but the matter had passed beyond reason and become part of the myth of the "Just Cause". These words, and their clumsy construction, ought to be taken for what they were, the painful utterances of dying man who had no personal animosities towards those of his friends against whom he found himself fighting.

Return to Gettysburg Campaign Index    Gettysburg Shop