“Were the two men ‘almost brothers,’ as the novel and movie contend? Hardly.”

By Tom McMillan

ONE OF THE enduring legends of the Civil War is the friendship of Lewis Armistead and Winfield Scott Hancock, long-time friends who fought against one another in the most famous attack of the war, Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. Armistead was a brigadier general in the Confederate army; Hancock commanded the Union’s Second Corps.

Given little notice for more than 100 years, the story burst into Americans’ consciousness in 1974 in the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Killer Angels. The friendship came alive to a new generation in 1993, in the epic four-hour movie, Gettysburg, which was based on the novel. But how much of a legend built on historical fiction can be true? I wanted to find out.

One scene from the movie was particularly impactful for viewers and battlefield visitors. It came on the eve of the clash at Gettysburg, with Armistead (played by Richard Jordan) speaking emotionally to Confederate general, James Longstreet (Tom Berenger), about his decades-long friendship with Hancock.

Recalling a misty-eyed farewell in California before the two men set off for war, Armistead quoted himself as saying, “[Winfield], so help me, if I ever raise my hand against you, may God strike me dead.”  Tears flowed profusely.

Only one problem: That chat between Armistead and Longstreet never happened. It was a scene created by novelist Michael Shaara to make a point and set up the rest of the narrative. Hancock’s wife however once reported that an emotional event did occur in California before the two friends went off to fight one another, but she said Armistead’s statement to her husband was far more mundane. In a book on Hancock’s life published in 1887, she quoted him as saying: “I hope God may strike me dead if I am ever induced to leave my native soil, should worse come to worst.”

None of this is meant to criticize Shaara, who was an astonishingly-brilliant writer with a deep understanding of the Battle of Gettysburg. He never said he was writing a scholarly history. The word “novel” is even in the subtitle of his book – The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War – and he was cleverly enhancing scenes to draw readers into his story. Such is the method of historical fiction (and, frankly, why it’s so popular).

Similarly, the producers of Gettysburg never set out to make documentary and instead came out with a big-screen adaptation of the novel. Over the years, it became enormously influential on the Civil War community, further blurring the lines between fact and fiction.

The licensed Gettysburg battlefield guides Wayne Motts and James Hessler addressed the issue several years ago, writing that “the novel and the film are heavily fictionalized but have successfully reached larger audiences than any other Gettysburg works. As a result, some historians are often frustrated by their tremendous influence on many visitors and students of the battle.”

My book idea stemmed from this conundrum. My interest in mining the Armistead-Hancock friendship led to Armistead and Hancock: Behind the Gettysburg Legend of Two Friends at the Turning Point of the Civil War (Stackpole Books).

What I found was a unique and fascinating story, one that reflects the impact of the war on a very personal level – but it was different in many ways from the novel and movie. “I was disappointed when I first heard about this,” one person told me after I’d given a tour on the book at Gettysburg, “but I think the true story is actually better than the one we’d been led to believe.”

Were Armistead and Hancock friends? Of course. Armistead was the older man by seven years, so their paths never crossed at West Point, but army records show they met for the first time while serving on the frontier in 1844. After working together for 16 months in the remote outposts of modern-day Oklahoma, they fought in the same regiment and experienced some of the same battles in the Mexican War, where both were breveted for gallantry. Then, for a brief period after the war, as the U.S. Army occupied Mexico, Armistead commanded a small company and Hancock was one of his lieutenants.

“Armistead, Hancock and I were messmates,” wrote another soldier, Henry Heth, who also went on to serve in the Civil War, “and never was there a happier mess.”

But were the two men “almost brothers,” as the novel and movie contend? Hardly. They weren’t even “best friends” in the modern sense, in that they spent very little time together in the 13-year period between the Mexican War and the Civil War, 1848-1861. If there were any letters written between them, none have survived (there are no letters from Armistead that even mention Hancock), And yet they served together on the frontier, served in combat in the Mexican War, built a durable bond as battle-hardened soldiers – and that bond lasted for 19 years, until they faced one another in Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg.

They were present at some of the same battles in the first two years of the war – during the Seven Days, and at Antietam – but they never met in combat until the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

One question we always get is: “Did they know they were facing one another? The answer is … “probably.” Army intelligence would have been reasonably good on the third day of a battle in the same place, what with battle flags and prisoners of war, and the Confederates certainly would have known that Hancock was commanding the Second Corps. But the cogent point is that the friends weren’t talking about it in advance of the battle, and weren’t pining to see each other one last time (as the novel and movie contend). There is no evidence of that.

As fate would have it, Armistead’s brigade achieved the deepest penetration of any Confederate unit against Hancock’s troops during Pickett’s Charge. The general reached the portion of the Union line known as “The Angle” when he was gunned down by Pennsylvania soldiers, suffering two wounds and slumping near a cannon.

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Hancock was wounded at about the same time, just a few hundred yards south on Cemetery Ridge. Armistead died two days later, while Hancock survived and served through the rest of the war, and even ran for president on the Democratic ticket in 1880.

One of the poignant incidents at the height of the battle came when Union Captain Henry Bingham, an officer on Hancock’s staff, attended to the fallen Armistead on Cemetery Ridge. When Armistead learned of the connection, he identified Hancock as an “old and valued friend.”

The Bingham-Armistead image is depicted today in the “Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial” at the entrance to the cemetery annex at Gettysburg. There also are small monuments to identify the wounding sites of both Armistead and Hancock, and another marker near the site of a Union field hospital that details their personal history.

The Armistead-Hancock friendship is, by any measure, one of the remarkable stories of the Civil War. The novel and movie brought it out of the shadows, and now this book can put it in proper context for a new generation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tom McMillan is the author of Armistead and Hancock: Behind the Gettysburg Legend of Two Friends at the Turning Point of the Civil War (Stackpole Books). A lifelong student of the Civil War, has served on the board of trustees of Pittsburgh’s Heinz History Center, the board of directors of the Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial, and the marketing committee of the Gettysburg Foundation. His previous books are Flight 93: The Story, The Aftermath and The Legacy of American Courage on 9/11 (2014) and Gettysburg Rebels: Five Native Sons Who Came Home to Fight as Confederate Soldiers (2017), which won the Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award. He retired after a 43-year career in sports media and communications. McMillan lives in Pittsburgh.