Questioning Rebels pays off at Gettysburg

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Maj. Gen. George G. Meade called a conference with his commanders on the evening of July 2, 1863, after two days of fierce combat between the Union Army of the Potomac and Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Before the meeting, Meade's intelligence organization, the Bureau of Military Information (BMI), informed him that Lee had already committed all of his units in battle, with the exception of the brigades of Maj. Gen. George Pickett's division.

The BMI had acquired this information through interrogation of more than a thousand prisoners and deserters taken during the first two days of fighting at Gettysburg. It was accurate except for one other brigade it did not detect. From this Meade knew that his army was in much better condition than Lee's and that he would have a distinct advantage in available troop strength the following day.

Armed with this intelligence, Meade and his commanders decided to maintain their defensive position on Cemetery Ridge and await an attack. On July 3, that attack came as the Union Army held its ground and repulsed Pickett's Charge and, thereby, gained a critical victory.

Sharpe's unit

The BMI's performance at Gettysburg was an indication of its rapid development as an intelligence bureau. It had been in operation only since January 1863, when Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, the army commander at the time, established it, and selected Col. George H. Sharpe as its leader.

Sharpe, a lawyer and State Department diplomat before the war, was a native of Kingston, N.Y., and had been in charge of the 120th New York Regiment. The BMI's mission was to collect and analyze information gathered from a variety of sources and generate intelligence reports for the use of the Army of the Potomac commander.

During the months before Gettysburg, Sharpe's bureau had become adept at ascertaining the organization, disposition, intentions and morale of enemy forces through the interrogation of prisoners and deserters.

To entice these men to divulge the information it sought, the BMI held out the hope of avoiding prison as well as a speedy release for those who made, as Sharpe phrased it, a "full discovery of their knowledge of the enemy."

The problem