John F. Reynolds was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1820, nominated to West Point by family friend James Buchanan, and commissioned into the artillery in 1841. At Buena Vista his guns helped stop a Mexican cavalry flank, earning him brevets. He was Commandant of Cadets at West Point by 1860, and before the war he was secretly engaged to Katherine Hewitt, a Catholic; they agreed she would enter a convent if he died. In the Seven Days Battles of 1862, after two days without sleep, he slept through his own unit’s retreat in Boatswain’s Swamp and woke a prisoner, brought before his old friend D.H. Hill.

Exchanged from Libby Prison, he led a rearguard stand on Henry House Hill at Second Bull Run. On June 2, 1863, Lincoln offered him command of the Army of the Potomac, and he declined unless freed from the interference of Edwin Stanton and Henry Halleck; the job went to George Meade. On July 1 he joined John Buford at Gettysburg, committed his infantry, and was shot near Herbst’s Woods. He was buried in Lancaster on July 4, and Katherine Hewitt entered a convent.

• Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin had him drilling militia during the Battle of Antietam.
• At Chancellorsville he cast a proxy vote to fight and woke to learn Joseph Hooker had retreated anyway.
• He grabbed the colors at Henry House Hill and ordered his men to give them the steel.
• His orderly, Sergeant Charles Henry Veil, gave changing accounts of the fatal shot.
• Theories on his death include a Tennessee volley, a sharpshooter and friendly fire.