ENTRY

Richard B. Garnett (1817–1863)

SUMMARY

Richard B. Garnett was a Confederate general in the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The first to take over the Stonewall Brigade after the promotion of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, Garnett was well-regarded by his men but ran afoul of Jackson after the Battle of Kernstown (1862), when he ordered an unauthorized retreat. Jackson placed him under arrest and eventually ordered, but never completed, a court-martial. Robert E. Lee reassigned Garnett to the command of George E. Pickett‘s former brigade, and he spent much of the following year worried about his reputation and looking for opportunities to demonstrate his courage. He found one on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg (1863), when he died while helping to lead the doomed assault known as Pickett’s Charge.

Richard Brooke Garnett was born on November 21, 1817, to a large family in Essex County. In 1841, he and his cousin, Robert Selden Garnett, both graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, with Richard finishing twenty-ninth out of fifty-two and Robert twenty-seventh. (Robert Garnett also went on to serve as a brigadier general in the Confederate army and was killed in action in 1861.) Commissioned a second lieutenant, Richard Garnett joined the 6th U.S. Infantry and served in that unit for the next twenty years, mostly at posts in the West, including Texas, the Dakotas, and California. Although he did not fight in the Mexican War (1846–1848), he saw combat against the Sioux Indians. When Virginia seceded in April 1861, Garnett, by then a captain and a strong Unionist, reluctantly resigned his commission.

Awaiting him in Richmond in mid-September were two commissions in the Confederate army—one as a major of artillery and the second as a first lieutenant in Cobb’s Georgia Legion. Garnett accepted the lieutenancy and served as second in command of the legion for two months. On November 14, 1861, he was appointed brigadier general and assigned early in December to lead “Virginia’s First Brigade,” or what had come to be known as the Stonewall Brigade after its first commander, Stonewall Jackson, who had been promoted to major general and placed in charge of Confederate troops in the Shenandoah Valley.

Playing Card of Brigadier General Richard B. Garnett

Upon his arrival in the Valley, one soldier described Garnett as having been “said to be a competent officer” who had “light hair[,] blue eyes & light complexion, & … rather a pleasant face.” Garnett quickly became popular with the brigade, in part by offering a leadership style that contrasted with the notoriously strict discipline of Jackson; he made a point of listening to his soldiers’ requests and providing for their comfort through the winter months.

Garnett immediately saw action in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862, during which Jackson’s forces brilliantly diverted Union troops from reinforcing the Army of the Potomac under George B. McClellan, then targeting Richmond. On March 23, Jackson, relying on flawed intelligence, attacked a larger force at Kernstown. Toward the end of the fight, with his brigade running low on ammunition and facing serious threats to its front and flanks, Garnett ordered his men to pull back. Jackson was furious at him for withdrawing without orders and on April 1 placed the general under arrest and charged him with neglect of duty. Garnett requested a court-martial so that he might clear his name, but one was not convened until August 6. After one day, however, the court was suspended, never to convene again, when Jackson ordered his command to begin a march that, three days later, resulted in the Battle of Cedar Mountain.

On September 5, Lee ordered Garnett released and returned to active service in temporary command of Pickett’s brigade while Pickett recuperated from wounds received at the Battle of Gaines’s Mill (1862). Garnett led the brigade in action during the Maryland Campaign that autumn, and a colonel under his command later wrote that “while [Garnett] was not a man of much mental force, he was one of the noblest and bravest men I ever knew.” When Lee reorganized the army in October 1862, Pickett was promoted to lead the division that included his old brigade, which was now permanently commanded by Garnett. For the next eight months, however, Garnett did not take part in any fighting. At the Battle of Fredericksburg (1862), his brigade was held in reserve, and during the Chancellorsville Campaign (1863), Lee sent Pickett’s and John B. Gordon‘s divisions to Southside Virginia on a foraging expedition.

Picketts charge on the Union centre at the grove of trees about 3 PM

Still, the lingering stain of Garnett’s unfinished court-martial remained, and a fellow officer in Pickett’s division was moved to observe that “He was thereafter anxious to expose himself, even unnecessarily, and to wipe out effectually by some great distinction in action, what he felt to be an unmerited slur upon his military reputation.” After Jackson died following the Battle of Chancellorsville, however, Garnett was able to set aside any ill will when he served as a pallbearer at the general’s funeral.

Late in June, Pickett’s division served as the Army of Northern Virginia’s rear guard as Lee began his second invasion of the North. Consequently, Garnett’s brigade did not reach the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, until the afternoon of July 2, the battle’s second day. On July 3, the general’s final moments began as his brigade, which occupied the left front of the division’s formation, crossed the open fields south of town in the doomed frontal assault known as Pickett’s Charge. Garnett, unable to walk because he had been kicked in the leg by a horse, led his brigade mounted on his black charger. As the attack reached the Union line, he was last seen in the chaos, encouraging his men in a manner that was “totally devoid of excitement or rashness,” according to Major C. S. Peyton, the division’s only field officer not killed or wounded. Moments later, amid the close and confused combat, Garnett was struck and killed, probably by grape shot. His body was never recovered.

Late in the nineteenth century, the unidentified Confederate dead from Gettysburg, which presumably included the general’s remains, were reburied at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Years later Garnett’s sword turned up in a pawnshop in Baltimore, Maryland, and was returned to relatives. No known photograph of Garnett exists.

RELATED CONTENT
MAP
TIMELINE
November 21, 1817
Richard B. Garnett is born in Essex County.
1836
Richard B. Garnett enters the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and graduates twenty-ninth in the class of 1841.
1841
Richard B. Garnett is commissioned as second lieutenant in the 6th U.S. Infantry.
1841—1861
Richard B. Garnett serves in the U.S. Army at posts in the West.
1861
Richard B. Garnett resigns his commission in the U.S. Army and returns to Virginia to serve in the Confederate army.
September 14, 1861
Richard B. Garnett receives a commission as first lieutenant in the Confederate army.
November 14, 1861
Richard B. Garnett is promoted to brigadier general and given command of the Stonewall Brigade.
March 23, 1862
Confederate general Richard B. Garnett commands the Stonewall Brigade at the Battle of Kernstown. During the battle he orders his men to withdraw without orders from his commander, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and subsequently is placed under arrest and charged with neglect of duty.
August 6, 1862
A court-martial is convened to hear charges brought by Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson against Richard B. Garnett for his conduct at the Battle of Kernstown. The court proceedings are suspended when Jackson orders his command to begin a march that, three days later, will result in the Battle of Cedar Mountain.
September 5, 1862
Confederate general Richard B. Garnett is released from arrest and returns to active service as temporary commander of George E. Pickett's brigade.
July 3, 1863
Confederate general Richard B. Garnett leads his brigade in the attack known as Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. Garnett is killed and his body is buried in a mass grave with other Confederate dead and presumably relocated to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond later in the nineteenth century.
FURTHER READING
  • Krick, Robert K. “Armistead and Garnett: The Parallel Lives of Two Virginia Soldiers,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
  • Krick, Robert K. “Has General Garnett been Found?” America’s Civil War (May 2009): 60–62.
  • Krick, Robert K. “The Army of Northern Virginia’s Most Notorious Court-Martial: Jackson vs. Garnett,” in Robert K. Krick, The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy: The Death of Stonewall Jackson and Other Chapters on the Army of Northern Virginia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.
  • Peters, Winfield. “The Lost Sword of Gen. Richard B. Garnett, Who Fell at Gettysburg, Returned to His Niece, Mrs. John B. Purcell, Richmond, Va.” Southern Historical Society Papers 33 (1905): 26–31.
  • Robertson, James I., Jr. The Stonewall Brigade. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963.
CITE THIS ENTRY
APA Citation:
Dozier, Graham. Richard B. Garnett (1817–1863). (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/garnett-richard-b-1817-1863.
MLA Citation:
Dozier, Graham. "Richard B. Garnett (1817–1863)" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 29 Nov. 2023
Last updated: 2021, December 22
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