CDV of Confederate General George E. Pickett with Lynchburg, VA Backmark

CDV of Confederate General George E. Pickett with Lynchburg, VA Backmark.
 
George E. Pickett was a Confederate general during the American Civil War (1861–1865) and one of the most controversial leaders in the Army of Northern Virginia. Described by his admirers as swashbuckling, he was famous for his tailored uniforms, gold spurs, and shoulder-length brown hair. (His contemporary admirers were relatively few in number, however, and this image of Pickett is likely more myth than fact.) Confederate general James Longstreetcommented on his friend’s “wondrous pulchritude and magnetic presence” and is said to have mentored Pickett, who was last in his class at West Point. At Gettysburg (1863), Pickett’s name became permanently linked, in both fact and myth, with Pickett’s Charge, the doomed frontal assault on the battle’s third day. He had little responsibility for the attack’s planning or its failure, and the loss of his division, which he partly blamed on Robert E. Lee, devastated him. Accused of war crimes for executing twenty-two Union prisoners in 1864, Pickett ended the war broken and in bad health.