War Horse
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American Cavalry In Battle: the Gettysburg Campaign
Cavalry in the Gettysburg campaign represents most, if not all, of the major characteristics of cavalry employment in the American Civil War. In the summer of 1863 General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, determined that he could only change the strategic situation by embarking on a bold offensive into Union territory. His intent was to move his army into Pennsylvania and bring the war home to the Union’s civilian population.32
Lee’s first problem in the campaign was to get his army on the move and into Pennsylvania without alerting the Army of the Potomac. This required that he march his army unobserved. Lee assigned the task of preventing the Union army from observing the march of Lee’s corps into Pennsylvania to his cavalry under the command of General Stuart. General Alfred Pleasonton and the Army of Potomac Cavalry Corps had the task of ensuring that the Northern army was aware of Lee’s location at all times. Thus, from the initial opening of the campaign, the relative performance of the two cavalry corps was critical to the success of their armies.
Lee’s army was initially positioned around Culpeper, Virginia, south of Brandy Station. Hooker positioned the Union army near Fredericksburg between Lee and Washington, D. C. Lee began moving his army on June 10, the day after the inconclusive cavalry battle at Brandy Station. The II Corps, under General Richard Ewell, was the first to move. This move was completely undetected by Union cavalry. The Confederate plan called for the army to move northwest into the Shenandoah Valley, and then north across the Potomac River, through Maryland, and into Pennsylvania. On June 14, two of Ewell’s divisions captured Winchester and cleared Union forces from the valley. The next day, June 15, Ewell’s lead division, led by the corps’ attached cavalry brigade under General Albert Jenkins, crossed the Potomac into Maryland.
General Hooker realized almost immediately that Lee was moving but did not know where or for what purpose. On June 17, Hooker gave specific orders to General Pleasonton to move the Union Cavalry Corps across the Blue Ridge Mountains and into the Shenandoah Valley to locate Lee’s army: “[The] commanding general relies upon you with your cavalry force to give him information of where the enemy is, his force and his movements. You have sufficient cavalry force to do this. Drive in . . . [his] pickets, if necessary, and get us information. It is better that we should lose men than to be without knowledge of the enemy, as we now seem to be . . . the general directs that you leave nothing undone to give him the fullest information.”33 On that same day, Stuart’s cavalry began to occupy blocking positions in the towns and villages approaching the gaps across the Blue Ridge. Stuart’s mission was to prevent the Union cavalry from observing into the valley. Pleasonton’s cavalry would have to fight through Stuart to get the information Hooker needed.
Over the four days, June 17 to 21, Pleasonton’s two divisions, numbering over 6,500 troopers, and Stuart’s five brigades of cavalry fought a running battle all along the approaches to the Blue Ridge. Pleasonton’s two divisions were commanded by General John Buford (1st Division) and General David Gregg (2nd Division). Stuart’s cavalry division consisted of six brigades named after their brigade commanders: Wade Hampton, Fitzhugh Lee, Albert Jenkins, John Chambliss, Beverly Robertson, and William E. Jones.
The first encounter took place on the afternoon of June 17, at the town of Aldie, between Judson Kilpatrick’s Brigade of Gregg’s Division, and Fitzhugh Lee’s Brigade temporary commanded by Colonel Thomas Munford. Advancing Union cavalry came upon Southern pickets and immediately charged and drove them through the town. With the town in the possession of Kilpatrick’s force, the Federals realized that Munford’s five regiments outnumbered their four regiments. Munford’s troopers set up a position west of the town that controlled the road leading from it. They then charged with two regiments and drove back Kilpatrick’s right flank regiment, the 1st Massachusetts. Kilpatrick ordered the 4th New York Cavalry to countercharge but the unit routed before the charge had barely begun and streamed to the rear. To restore the situation, Kilpatrick borrowed the 1st Maine Cavalry from J. Irwin Gregg’s brigade, which was following his, and led them in a countercharge. Kilpatrick’s horse was shot out from under him, but the 1st Maine pushed the two Confederate regiments back and reestablished the position. Kilpatrick then took the offensive and led the 1st Maine and the 1st Massachusetts in a charge against the Confederate left. However, the Southern cavalry prepared for the attack by hiding sharpshooters in a ditch just off the turnpike that the Union cavalry charged down. The sharpshooters waited until most of the lead regiment, the 1st Massachusetts, passed and then rose up and raked the rear and flank of the regiment with point-blank rifle fire. The rifle fire decimated the regiment, causing 167 casualties in the 300-man unit. However, the 1st Maine was far enough back to avoid the fire and proceeded to capture the Confederate position and most of the sharpshooters.
The 1st Maine then took over the attack, supported by the 2nd New York Cavalry, and advanced another half mile to find the Confederate reserves dismounted and protected by a stone wall. The two regiments charged the wall and, while sustaining heavy casualties, drove the Confederates off. Darkness ended the battle, and the Union cavalry retained control of the town. However, the Southern brigade had not been defeated and had merely withdrawn to a new position. Casualties on both sides were heavy.
This action typifies the push of Pleasonton’s corps to the Blue Ridge. The cavalry fighting was mounted and dismounted, charge and countercharge, and in the small towns, street to street. As the towns exchanged hands several times, the bodies of horses and riders piled up in the streets. A trooper from Maine recounted, “The road where we charged was literally covered with blood and to see the dead piled up was perfectly horrid.”34 Finally, on the evening of June 21, Buford’s cavalry secured a ridge where they could look over the top of Confederate forces holding Ashby’s gap, and into the valley beyond. Buford’s scouts could see the camp fires of Longstreet and Hill’s corps far away in the valley and, with this knowledge, accomplished the mission. Buford reported the information, and with it Hooker deduced that Lee’s army was moving to invade the North.
Having accomplished his mission, Pleasonton disengaged his cavalry in order to refit. Since Brandy Station on June 10, the corps had been in almost continuous combat and had sustained over 1,700 casualties. He assumed that with the Southern army moving north through the Shenandoah, Stuart’s cavalry could not leave the defensive positions in the Blue Ridge, but Stuart had other plans. On June 23, Stuart got General Lee’s approval to conduct a raid into Pennsylvania separate from the army’s offensive. He proposed moving his cavalry to the other side of Hooker’s army and then crossing the Potomac and raiding through Maryland and into Pennsylvania, where he would link up with Lee again. The advantages of the raid were numerous: It would confuse the enemy as to the intentions of Lee; it could harass Hooker’s rear and flanks; provide exact intelligence about the enemy movements; reduce the logistics burden on the Southern army’s march route; and it would secure for the army much needed supplies. Neither commander mentioned the fact that the raid would place the entire Union army between Lee and his cavalry support as his army made the dangerous and decisive invasion of the North. Lee agreed to the proposal, and on June 25, Stuart began his movement first east and then north. He left two of his five brigades behind to cover Lee’s march through the valley.
With the Southern forces on the move, Hooker kept his army in place. Finally on June 25, after a pause of six days, Hooker started the Army of the Potomac north across the Potomac with General John Reynolds Corps leading and Reynolds in command of the advance units. On the same day, A. P. Hill’s Confederate corps completed crossing the river and Longstreet, the last major element of Lee’s army, began to cross further upstream. Neither cavalry force was in contact with the enemy. Pleasonton’s cavalry corps covered the army’s crossing of the Potomac with Buford’s division protecting the northern side and Gregg’s division protecting
the south side. Stuart’s cavalry encountered the Union II Corps as it moved north, but the report never reached Lee, and Stuart bypassed the Federals and continued to move east to get around Hooker’s army.
On June 26, both armies completed moving north of the Potomac. On June 27, Hooker and General in Chief of the Army, General Henry Halleck, argued over the disposition of the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry. In anger Hooker offered to resign his command, and Halleck and President Lincoln, unhappy with Hooker’s lack of aggressiveness, accepted. On June 28, the president appointed General George Meade as the new army commander. Because of this major command change in the middle of the campaign, the Union Army paused around Frederick, Maryland, for the day. As part of the shake-up, Meade gave Pleasonton permission to reorganize the cavalry corps and attached a new division under General Stahel to the corps, bringing the corps to a strength of 12,700 troopers—four times the strength of Stuart’s force. Pleasonton, in turn, immediately relieved Stahel and both of his brigade commanders. Judson Kilpatrick, a Pleasonton protégé, became the new commander of the 3rd Division.
While the Union army focused on reorganizing its command, Stuart moved his cavalry across the Potomac behind the Federal army. On June 28 he was marching north between the Army of the Potomac and Washington, D.C., and stumbled across a huge Union supply wagon train in Rockville, Maryland. The Confederate cavalry swooped down on the hapless teamsters and captured 125 loaded supply wagons. Several wagons escaped back to Washington, and in chasing them, Stuart’s troopers came to within four miles of the almost defenseless capital. His troopers could see the unfinished dome of the capital building. There may have been an opportunity for a raid on Washington, but those were not Stuart’s orders and he resumed his march north, now slowed by the huge wagon train in his possession.
While the rest of the army rested, the Union cavalry moved out on June 28 with the mission of locating Lee’s army. It was Meade’s intention to find Lee’s army and fight it. The Army of the Potomac marched north with Buford’s 1st Division screening the left flank and reconnoitering to the west and northwest; Kilpatrick’s 3rd Division moved forward of main body of the army, and Gregg’s 2nd Division was responsible for the right flank and the rear.
The pace of operations to this point had been rapid. In keeping pace with Lee’s army, the Army of the Potomac had moved more often, further, and faster than it had at any point prior in the war. The cavalry of both armies were almost continuously in the field, and fatigue was a factor. A Pennsylvanian cavalryman described the strain of operations:
[The men] had previously been in the saddle on an average for twenty hours out of the twenty-four for three days, without sleep and with scarcely anything to eat for man or horse. The intense heat at times was almost unbearable, the dust almost impenetrable. Horses by the scores fell from exhaustion along the road. . . . Officers and men, begrimed past recognition, trampled along on foot, leading their worn-out horses to save their strength. . . . Dismounted cavalrymen, who horses had fallen dead or dying, struggled along, some carrying their saddles and bridles in hopes of being able to beg, borrow, buy or help themselves to fresh mounts, others without anything but their arms.35
Still, morale of both cavalry forces was high. The Southern cavalry were enthusiastic about being on the offensive in enemy territory; and the Union troopers were encouraged by the friendly civilian population.
By the evening of June 29, Buford’s division had crossed into Pennsylvania while the bulk of the Army of the Potomac was poised on the Maryland border ready to cross into the Pennsylvania the next day. Buford bivouacked for the night at Fairfield, ten miles southwest of Gettysburg.
Gregg’s 2nd Division moved east of the army on June 28 to locate Stuart’s cavalry. Gregg’s division moved down the rail line of the Baltimore and Ohio line expecting to find Stuart’s force destroying track. Not locating the enemy, but knowing they were close, the division turned north on June 29 and continued to follow the trail toward Winchester. After an all-night march, they arrived at Westminster, Maryland, at dawn on June 30, in time to catch stragglers from Stuart’s force, but having missed the main body by a few hours. The pursuit continued throughout the day, finally the command stopped at Manchester, Maryland, on the night of the thirtieth for much needed rest, about 3 miles south of the Pennsylvania border. Gregg’s division crossed into Pennsylvania early on the morning of July 1, about 20 miles southwest of Gettysburg.
Moving in the center of the cavalry fan, Kilpatrick’s 3rd Division had the mission of locating the northern Confederate forces, reported to be in the vicinity of York, Pennsylvania. In the late evening of June 29, Kilpatrick’s troopers stopped at Littlestown, Pennsylvania, just across the border from Maryland. On June 30, the division continued to Hanover with a portion of George Custer’s Michigan brigade in the lead. Reaching Hanover early in the morning the division paused briefly, dispatched reconnaissance patrols into the surrounding countryside, and then continued north. After most of the division had passed out of the town, patrols discovered Southern cavalry east of the town. Skirmishing between patrols quickly developed into a full-scale battle, and Confederate cavalry attempted to enter the town.
Stuart’s scouts had made contact with the Union forces on June 28, and he realized that he was well south of the Union army positions. What Stuart didn’t know was the location of Lee’s main body; he didn’t realize that Lee didn’t know where he was, and also that the two brigades that he had left on the Blue Ridge had not moved north with Lee. So, while the Union cavalry corps of seven brigades spread out reconnoitering forward and to the flanks of the Union army, only Jenkins’s single cavalry brigade attached to Ewell’s corps supported Lee’s entire army. The information he had was enough for Stuart to understand that he needed to link up with Ewell’s corps near York as soon as possible, but his movement toward Ewell put him on a collision course with Kilpatrick’s division. It was Stuart’s advance guard that ran into the tail of Kilpatrick’s column in Hanover on the morning of June 30.
The initial action at Hanover developed in a manner similar to the cavalry fights two weeks previously along the Blue Ridge. The Confederate advance guard, the 2nd North Carolina Cavalry, charged and routed the Union 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry. The Union brigade commander, Elon J. Farnsworth, immediately counterattacked leading a charge of the 5th New York that pushed the Southerners out of the town. Both Stuart and Kilpatrick moved their troops to the scene of the action as quickly as they could. Farnsworth’s brigade ultimately occupied the northwestern and western approaches to the town, while Custer’s Michigan brigade defended the southern approaches. Stuart positioned his three brigades from left to right, Lee, Chambliss, and Hampton. Both sides exchanged artillery and carbine fire throughout the day. Custer personally led several dismounted attacks against Lee’s brigade, and, though they caused problems, both were eventually repulsed. Stuart, as he realized the strength of the Union position and worried about Gregg’s division who might come up on his rear, determined to wait for darkness, break contact, bypass Hanover, and continue to York. As soon as darkness descended, Stuart moved his command off to the east, and Kilpatrick was content to not pursue.
As Kilpatrick engaged Stuart, Buford’s 1st Division advanced to Gettysburg. As he moved northeast from Fairfield on the morning of the thirtieth he encountered two infantry regiments of Heth’s division of A. P. Hill’s corps. Buford decided to avoid decisive engagement, skirmished with the infantry as he bypassed them, and continued his movement to Gettysburg. He understood that contact with infantry indicated that the main body of Lee’s army was nearby. En route to Gettysburg he met with Reynolds at his headquarters in Emmitsburg and briefed him on his assessment of the situation. By the evening of the thirtieth Buford’s division was in Gettysburg. Buford’s assessment was that the road network that met at Gettysburg would attract Southern forces from almost all points of the compass. Reading reports from scouts, and considering his contact with Heth’s regiments that morning,
Buford concluded that the greatest danger was to the west. He therefore deployed his two brigades oriented to the northwest along both sides of the Chambersburg Pike. He determined to hold Gettysburg until ordered to withdraw or relieved by Reynolds’ infantry. William Gamble’s brigade deployed on the south side of the road and Thomas Devin’s brigade on the north. His third brigade, Merritt’s brigade, had been detached with the division supply train the previous day and was not at Gettysburg.
As Buford occupied his positions in Gettysburg on the evening of June 30, Confederate brigade commander General James J. Pettigrew, whose regiments had skirmished with Buford that afternoon, reported that veteran Union cavalry held Gettysburg. Pettigrew’s superiors, both Heth and A. P. Hill, discounted the reports. The Southern commanders, with no cavalry of their own to confirm the reports, determined that the Army of the Potomac was far to their south. They decided that the cavalry Pettigrew encountered had to be Pennsylvania mounted militia. General Lee also disagreed with Pettigrew’s report. He was certain that if Union cavalry were so far north in force he would have received a report from Stuart. Therefore, early in the morning of July 1 Heth led his entire division toward Gettysburg, with both Hill’s and Lee’s permission, to obtain supplies from Federal warehouses located near the town. Hill prepared his other divisions to join Heth, as Lee sent orders to Ewell to also begin movement to Gettysburg. Lee had decided that Gettysburg was a good location to concentrate his forces before striking against the Army of the Potomac.
Buford had prepared a strong picket line of skirmishers along Herr Ridge, about 1,000 yards forward of his main positions on McPherson’s Ridge. At about 5:00 a.m. Buford’s skirmishes on Herr Ridge began to exchange fire with the skirmishers of General James Archer’s brigade, leading Heth’s division. The Confederate skirmishers, who initially assumed Union infantry opposed them, could not penetrate Buford’s strong picket line. Once they realized it was cavalry, they assumed by the volume of fire that the cavalry were using repeating carbines. In fact, most of Buford’s men were firing single-shot Sharps carbines, though the flank companies of Gamble’s brigade had recently received Spencer repeaters. In the face of the cavalry firepower, Heth deployed his division. It took two hours to form the division for battle and then attack. The cavalry held their position until the infantry charged. Then, as the infantry moved forward with a shout, the skirmish line retreated off Herr Ridge covered by horse artillery and carbine fire from the main positions on McPherson’s Ridge.