Henry Heth

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Henry Heth bigraphy, stories - Confederate Army general

Henry Heth : biography

December 16, 1825 – September 27, 1899

Henry "Harry" Heth ( not ; December 16, 1825 – September 27, 1899) was a career United States Army officer and a Confederate general in the American Civil War. He is best remembered for inadvertently precipitating the Battle of Gettysburg, when he sent some of his troops of the Army of Northern Virginia to the small Pennsylvania village, according to his memoirs, to get some shoes.

Early life

Heth was born at Black Heath in Chesterfield County, Virginia, son of United States Navy Captain John Heth, and Margaret L. Pickett. He was a cousin of George Pickett. He usually went by "Harry," the name also preferred by his grandfather, American Revolutionary War Colonel Henry Heth, who had established the Heth family in the coal business in the Virginia Colony after emigrating from England about 1759.

He was one of the few generals whom Robert E. Lee called by his first name. Heth graduated from the United States Military Academy at the bottom of his class in 1847; he was wounded at West Point in 1846 with a bayonet stab to his leg. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant and assigned to the 1st Infantry Regiment. His antebellum career was served primarily in western posts, some as a quartermaster. He was serving as a first lieutenant in the 6th Infantry when John C. Symmes III refused a captaincy in the new 10th Infantry on March 3, 1855, and Heth was appointed in his place. He played a prominent role in the 1855 Battle of Ash Hollow leading a company of mounted infantry against the Lakota. In 1858, he created the first marksmanship manual for the Army.

In popular media

Heth was portrayed by Warren Burton in the 1993 film Gettysburg, based on Michael Shaara’s novel, The Killer Angels.

Postbellum years

After the war, Heth worked in the insurance business and later served the government as a surveyor and in the Office of Indian Affairs. He died in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. Heth served as the first Commander of the Centennial Legion of Historic Military Commands when it was founded in 1876.. Retrieved October 3, 2012.

Civil War

After the war began at Fort Sumter, Heth resigned from the U.S. Army and joined the Confederate States Army. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and served for a brief time as Robert E. Lee’s quartermaster in the Virginia Provisional Army, but that time was influential for his career, because Lee looked out for Harry for the rest of the war. He spent the remainder of 1861 in the Kanawha Valley in western Virginia in the 5th and 45th Virginia Infantry regiments. He was promoted to brigadier general on January 6, 1862, and sent west to the Department of East Tennessee, to serve under Kirby Smith. During the Kentucky Campaign, he was sent by Smith to take a division north from Lexington, Kentucky, to make a demonstration on Cincinnati; although this caused a great commotion in the city’s defenses, only a few skirmishes occurred.Noe, pp. 86-87.

In March 1863, Lee brought Heth back into his command, the Army of Northern Virginia, as a brigade commander in Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill’s division. He fought in the Battle of Chancellorsville, showing aggressive, but misguided, qualities in his first large-scale combat, attacking without reserves against a Union force emerging from the Wilderness. He assumed temporary command of the division when Hill was wounded. Following the death of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, Lee reorganized his army into three corps, promoting Hill to the Third Corps. Heth retained his division command and was promoted to major general on May 24, 1863.

Heth’s division made history by inadvertently starting the Battle of Gettysburg. Marching east from Cashtown on July 1, 1863, Heth sent two brigades ahead in a reconnaissance in force. His memoirs referred to sending them in a search of shoes in Gettysburg, but some historians consider this an apocryphal story; they say Heth knew that Jubal A. Early had been in Gettysburg a few days earlier and any available shoes would have been taken at that time. They also consider sending two brigades on such a mission would have been wasteful. The brigades made contact with Union cavalry under Brig. Gen. John Buford and spread out into battle formation.