Richard Brooke Garnett (November 21, 1817 – July 3, 1863) was a career United States Army officer and a Confederate general in the American Civil War.

[1] Garnett was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 6th U.S. Infantry and he served in a variety of posts in Florida, fighting the Seminoles, and then in the West, where he commanded Fort Laramie, rode with the Utah Expedition, and was a noted Indian fighter.

On March 23, Jackson's cavalry commander, Col. Turner Ashby, brought faulty intelligence that the retreating Union division of Brig.

However the trial was suspended due to the start of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Northern Virginia Campaign and the Second Battle of Bull Run that August.

Lee ordered Jackson to release Garnett from arrest and he was assigned to command the injured George Pickett's brigade in Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's First Corps in the Army of Northern Virginia.

Despite his professional disagreement with Jackson, Garnett set aside any ill will against him and served as a pall bearer[2] along with Longstreet, Richard S. Ewell, and others at his funeral.

Despite protestations from other officers, Garnett insisted on leading his soldiers into battle on horseback, becoming a conspicuous target for Union riflemen.

"[3] Garnett got within 20 yards of the "Angle" on Cemetery Ridge before he was killed, a bullet striking him in the head as he waved his hat to urge his men forward.

There are conflicting stories about whether Garnett's horse, a bay gelding named Red Eye, returned to the Confederate lines.

[10] Garnett was portrayed by American actor Andrew Prine in the 1993 film Gettysburg, based on Michael Shaara's novel, The Killer Angels.

In the movie, Garnett is killed by a cannon shot and his horse returns to the southern lines riderless, perhaps to reflect how his body was never found.

A letter to the editor of America's Civil War magazine claims that the Library of Congress possesses a photograph of Richard B. Garnett that has been mislabeled as "Franklin Gardner, CSA, Born N.Y.C.