George Pickett Facts
George Pickett Facts
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Interesting George Pickett Facts: |
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Although popular with his fellow cadets at West Point, Pickett was not known as a scholar, graduating at the bottom of his class. |
Pickett served as a lieutenant during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec in 1847 as he carried the American flag over the parapet. |
After the Mexican-American War, Pickett served on the western frontier, which is how he met his second wife. |
Picket was commanded to brigadier general in 1862 under general James Longstreet. |
He distinguished himself during the Peninsula Campaign from March to July 1862. |
During the Battle of Gaines' Mill/First Battle of Cold Harbor in Virginia on June 27, 1862, Pickett was shot in the shoulder: the injury kept him out of combat for several months. |
Pickett's Charge was part of a massive frontal assault ordered by General Lee intended to capture Cemetery Ridge from the Union forces on July 3, 1863. |
Although Pickett's charge was lauded by the Confederate press as a heroic act, it was a bloodbath and tragedy for the Confederate forces: of Pickett's division of 5,500 men, 224 were killed, 1,140 were wounded, and 1,500 were captured or had deserted. |
After losing the Battle of New Bern (February 1-3, 1864) in North Carolina, Pickett ordered the execution of twenty-two Union soldiers. Pickett claimed that they North Carolina natives were originally Confederate soldiers who switched, but many of them were probably in the Union army the entire war. |
Pickett fought at the Battle of Appomattox and surrendered with Lee to the Union Army on April 12, 1865. |
After the war, Pickett feared that he would be prosecuted for executing the prisoners in North Carolina so he fled with his family to Canada. |
President Grant personally assured Pickett that he wouldn't be prosecuted, so he returned to the United States and was officially pardoned by an act of Congress in 1874. |
After he returned to the United States in 1866, Pickett worked as an insurance agent in Virginia. |
George Pickett died on July 30, 1875 in Norfolk, Virginia at the age of fifty from a liver abscess. |
His remains were interred at the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. |
Pickett's third wife Sallie died in 1931. |
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