General Humphreys and Staff

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Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, a native of Philadelphia, was born November 2, 1810. Both his father and grandfather were naval architects and constructors, the latter having drawn the plans for Old Ironsides and her five sister frigates. Young Humphreys graduated from the Military Academy in 1831, and from that time until the beginning of the Civil War he was continuously on duty, most of the time engaged in hydrographical surveys of the Mississippi Delta. Humphreys became an aide to General George B. McClellan in 1861, was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteers in April, 1862, and during the Peninsular campaign served as chief topographical engineer of the Army of the Potomac. In September 1862, he assumed command of a division of new troops in the V Corps, which he led with distinction in the Maryland campaign, in the bloody assault on Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg, and at Chancellorsville. He was then transferred to a division of Daniel E. Sickles' III Corps; and for his services at Gettysburg, where he fought grimly in resisting the shattering assaults of John B. Hood and Lafayette McLaws in an effort to redeem Sickles' ill-advised order pushing forward the line of the corps, was made a Major General of Volunteers and a Brigadier by brevet in the regular army.