Isaac Ridgeway Trimble (May 15, 1802 – January 2, 1888) was a United States Army officer, a civil engineer, a prominent railroad construction superintendent and executive, and a Confederate general in the American Civil War. He was born in Virginia, lived in Maryland for much of his adult life, and returned to Virginia in 1861 after Maryland did not secede. Trimble is most famous for his role as a division commander in the assault known as Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. He was wounded severely in the leg during that battle, and was left on the field. He spent most of the remainder of the war as a prisoner, and was finally paroled on April 16, 1865, one week after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia following the Battle of Appomattox Court House.
Youth, education, building railroads
Trimble was born in Frederick County, Virginia, to John and Rachel Ridgeway Trimble, and his family moved to Culpeper County, Virginia shortly thereafter. As a young boy, Trimble's mother and father both died of fever within a short period of time, and he was sent to live with his half-brother in Kentucky. He was nominated by U.S. Representative Henry Clay to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, from which he graduated in 1822, 17th in a class of 42. Although he excelled academically in engineering, he was commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant of artillery. He served for ten years as a lieutenant in the 3rd and 1st U.S. Artillery regiments, and left the U.S. Army in May 1832, along with five of his West Point classmates, to pursue the emerging business of railroad construction.
Trimble was married twice: first, in 1831 to Maria Cattell Presstman of Charleston, South Carolina, who died in 1855; second, to her sister, Ann Ferguson Presstman. By his first marriage he had two sons, David Churchill Trimble and William Presstman Trimble, who survived him. Soon after leaving the Army, Trimble moved to Maryland at the urging of his wife, and he subsequently considered it his home state.
He helped survey the route of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He was a construction engineer for the Boston and Providence Railroad. He was chief engineer for Pennsylvania Railroad predecessors Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad; Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (serving under famous American Civil War era president Samuel Morse Felton Sr.), where he was responsible for constructing the President Street Station, the line's southern terminal in east downtown waterfront Baltimore in 1849–1850, now the oldest big city train depot left in America. Later then Trimble went to the Philadelphia and Baltimore Central Railroad. From 1859 to 1861, he was superintendent of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad.
Following the firing on the Federal installation of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor in South Carolina in early April 1861, he led a contingent of Maryland state militia to burn the railroad bridges around Baltimore to prevent the entry of any more Federal regular army or Northern state militia from passing through the divided riotous city following the bloodshed conflict of the Pratt Street Riots on April 19, 1861, on the orders of the Mayor of Baltimore George William Brown and Governor of Maryland Hicks.
Civil War
At the start of the Civil War, Trimble participated in efforts to restrict the movement of Union troops to Washington, D.C., by burning bridges north of Baltimore. When he realized that Maryland would not secede from the Union, he returned to Virginia and joined the Provisional Army of the state of Virginia as a colonel of engineers in May 1861. He was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army on August 9, 1861, and was assigned to construct artillery batteries along the Potomac River and later the defenses of Norfolk, Virginia. He was given command in the Army of the Potomac (the predecessor of the Army of Northern Virginia), of a brigade that consisted of regiments from four different states, effectively merging them into a single fighting unit.
Trimble first saw combat as part of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's spring 1862 campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. He distinguished himself in the Battle of Cross Keys by fighting off an attack from Union troops under Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont, and then seizing the initiative to counterattack and rout them. During the Seven Days Battles under Jackson outside of Richmond, Virginia, his brigade had few engagements, but they fought hard at Gaines' Mill and he sought to follow up the unsuccessful Confederate assault on Malvern Hill by making a night attack, but his request was refused.