The First Day Chapter Fourteen

I suppose one reason the 1,600 residents of Hanover, Pennsylvania suffered such trauma on the last day of June, 1863 was because just five miles south were the white stone Mason Dixon line markers (above), the official divide, since 1781, between slave and free. But what happened in Hanover on that Tuesday, was mostly the result of the hubris of a 31 year old southern "cavalier", trying to recapture a glory gone a year - which is a long time in a war.


It began at about 8:00 on that Tuesday morning, 30 June, 1863, when the 1st and 7th regiments of Michigan volunteer cavalry cantered up the Baltimore turnpike into Hanover (above).

The Wolverines halted in the city square (above) to rest their horses. Their newly promoted commander, General George Armstrong Custer, ordered most his men to dismount and posted sentries on all the roads into town. It was standard military procedure, learned after two years of bloody war, and was followed even when moving through the solid union blue state of Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, the newly appointed commander of the 3rd Federal Cavalry Division, Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick (above), greeted the townsfolk and asked for information. They told him that three days ago rebel infantry and cavalry had brushed aside state militia 20 miles to the west, in the town of Gettysburg. But no rebels had been seen or heard of since. Kilpatrick thanked them, but he suspected there were still rebel sympathizers s in the area.

Like a well oiled machine, before 8:30, the pickets on the Baltimore Pike reported the arrival of the 1st West Virginia Union Cavalry, under the newly promoted Union General Elon John Farnsworth (above). 
The Michigan men now remounted and continued to up the road (above) to the northeast, toward the Pigeon Hills and Abbottstown beyond. They left just as the West Virginians entered the town square, who replaced the Michigan pickets on all roads leading out of Hanover. This accordion march, leading units not advancing until the following units had closed up, had been practiced since the Romans had advanced against the Carthaginians, 2,000 years before. And it was now preformed smoothly and machine like. The Union Army had learned its value, after three years of war.

In their turn the West Virginians were replaced in the central square of Hanover by the 5th New York Cavalry Regiment (above). And about 11 A.M, bringing up the rear of the division, the 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment rode into Hanover. As they did, the main body of the New Yorkers mounted up and, in their turn, began to head north, toward Abbottstown.

Pennsylvanian Captain Henry C. Potter, commanding companies L and M - about 40 men - relieved the New York pickets southwest of Hanover, out on the road to Fredrick (lower left, above) at a spot known locally as Mudtown . The New York officer informed Captain Potter they had just seen a handful of suspicious acting men lurking at the edge of a wood just down the road. And when the New York boys left, Captain Potter decided to investigate. Being the tail of the division, it was Potter's duty to protect the 3rd Division's supply trains. And performing that duty, Potter took ten men and rode down the road, to see what they could see. 

Three miles down the Fredrick road, at the small farm owned by the Butts family (above), Potter and his men were suddenly cutoff by 60 mounted men in grey who appeared behind him. They were members of the 2nd North Carolina cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Fitzhugh Payne. These rebels demanded that Potter surrender. Instead, Potter ordered his men to draw their pistols and they charged back up the road, bursting through the startled Rebel line, killing one Confederate trooper and wounding several others.


Four of the Pennsylvania men were also killed,. the first to fall probably being 24 year old Corporal John Hoffacker (above). John had two brothers, the eldest being William who had joined the 3rd Maryland Infantry regiment in mid-1862. In September that same year John quit his job at a York, Pennsylvania paper mill and signed up with the 18th Pennsylvania. And now he was the first trooper to die in the "Battle of Hanover", not many miles west of York. Despite these losses, the remaining six men under Captain Potter raced back up the Fredrick Road.. The rebels gave chase. It was just about 10:15 in the morning.

It became a three mile gallop across the countryside, both sides firing wildly. As the pursuit neared Hanover it uncovered the men Potter had left behind.

Their seven shot carbines forced the Confederates to pause. But as more rebel horsemen from the 2nd North Carolina and battalion commander Colonel John R. Chambliss's 13th Virginia regiment, arrived, they charged the federal skirmish line. Fortuitously, rebel artillery appeared, and added their fire to the assault. The blast of those rebel cannon caught the attention of General Pleasanton, who happened to riding with the tail end of the West Virginians. Pleasanton immediately sent word to Custer to bring his Michigan men back to Hanover at once, and then drove his horse at a gallop back to town, followed by the West Virginians.

The center square of Hanover was already jammed with the federal cavalry division’s supply train and ambulances, as well as the rear guard of the 5th New York, which had yet to leave town. General Farnsworth was trying to disentangle the one from the other, when he was overrun by his own retreating New Yorkers, with the rebels pressing closely behind.

Also riding to the sound of the guns was the Confederate cavalry commander, Brigadier General James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart (above) . The son of a Virginia planter, he had earned the nickname "Beauty" at West Point despite a chin " so short and retiring" he later grew a full beard to hide it. He had earned fame the year before when his 1,200 rebel troopers rode completely around the Union Army. Critics would grouse that the effort had been more publicity stunt than effective operation, just a "Big horse raid". But Union pride was so bruised, the federals reorganized their cavalry, determined to find men who could fight Stuart to a stop.

At Brandy Station, Virginia, on Tuesday, 9 June, 1863, (above) Stuart's 9,000 troopers had been surprised by the 8,000 federal troopers under General Pleasanton. The blue coats had shown skill and audacity. And although Stuart held the field, he had been embarrassed. General Lee's advance into Pennsylvania would be his chance at redemption.

But the dashing Stuart (above) was now hampered, forced to leave half his strength behind by the reality of the war. General Robert E. Lee ordered Stuart to "feel the right of General Ewell's troops" on his advance and "collect all the supplies you can for the army." The march into Pennsylvania would have to show a profit to prove worth the effort and risk. The advance of every corps in Lee's army would be slowed by empty wagons, which they expected to fill with flour and corn, coffee and beans. And Stuart's 3 brigades - 6,000 men - would be burdened by some 100 wagons filled with supplies - like oats for his horses - he had just captured in Maryland , and which had to be protected by Fitzhugh Lee's battalion. This burden sapped a third of Stuart's offensive strength and limited his freedom of movement. And he was even further restricted by the new level of Federal competence

When Stuart had crossed the Potomac River and captured Rockville, Maryland on 28 June, 1863, he thought he was between General Ewell's corps and the federal flank. As was standard with Lee, his commanders set their own tactical objectives, and Stuart planned to capture Hanover just about the time Ewell was taking Carlisle. After looting Hanover - to unbalance the federal politicians - Stuart planned to move up the road to Carlisle and meet General Ewell's corps on 29 June. But he was already 24 hours late.

Stuart was slowed by a few hours during 29 June by rain, muddy roads, and those captured wagons. That allowed Kilpatrick's division to reach Hanover before the rebels. But with the fight already started, and which he was winning, Stuart's naturally aggressiveness convinced him to push forward. He needed that road to Carlisle. So he ordered Colonel Chambliss, in charge of the leading battalion, to take the town. Which is why Chambliss and Payne charged into Hanover, driving the federals right out.

But in a field east of Hanover, Farnsworth dismounted his Pennsylvania troopers, and sent his men on foot back into the narrow side streets and alleys of Hanover. Lt. Colonel Payne and Col. Chambliss were trying to reorganize their rebels when every alley and street around the square erupted in gunfire. The rebel horsemen tried to chase the shooters down but found themselves trapped in streets too narrow to swing a saber or maneuver a horse.


And just at the right moment the New York rear guard charged into the town on horseback. Captain Potter was shot from his horse and killed. But his troopers drove the disorganized rebels right back out of town. Chambliss' Virginians were forced to retreat to the west, into the open rolling fields. By now it was just after noon, Tuesday 30 June.


Payne's North Carolinians now concentrated to southwest, trying to use the cover of the Winebrenner Tannery (above) on Fredrick Street, as a rallying point.

It was there that Lt Colonel Payne (above) came to grief. When his horse was shot, the dying creature threw his rider, head first, into an open vat of horse urine, curing outside the tannery. A quick thinking Yankee Private, Abraham Folger, of H company 5th New York Cavalry - who had gotten mixed up with the 18th Pennsylvania in the charge - was able to drag the blinded, sputtering Colonel Payne out of the foul smelling liquid, saving his life and taking him prisoner. Nor was he the only southern gentleman to suffer an indignity in the federal counter attack.

General Stuart and his staff were forced to retreat so quickly their horses had to jump the unexpected 15 foot wide Plum Creek. Not all made it. As an historian for the New Yorkers wrote, "In less than fifteen minutes from the time the rebels charged the town, they were driven from it, and were sulking in the wheat fields and among the hills in the vicinity."


A lull now set over the battlefield until about 2:00 pm, when Colonel Fitzhugh Lee's battalion of 400 men arrived on the field. They had been guarding the captured supply wagons. But hearing the firing, the Colonel had the left the wagons and rushed to the sound of the guns. Stuart ordered his Virginians and the Tar Heels to outflank the town to the south, spreading out from a ridge overlooking the town (above) on a farm owned by a family named Keller, and reaching to the Mount Olive Cemetery.

Earlier General Kilpatrick had arrived back in Hanover, having ridden his horse so hard that it immediately broke down and died in the town square. The General thus lived up to his nickname of General “Kill Cavalry” As the rest of the West Virginian, New York and Michigan regiments arrived, Pleasanton dismounted them and spread his battle line within the town, barricading the streets and fortifying houses, to match the rebel positions. He was daring Stuart to attack him.

The two sides now began an artillery duel. It looked for a couple of hours as if there was going to be a great cavalry battle in Hanover, dwarfing the melee at Brandy Station. Kilpatrick telegraphed army headquarters that he had Stuart's entire cavalry corps pinned on the hills south of Hanover. With some infantry reinforcement, perhaps from General Slocum's nearby Federal XII corps, he could crush Jeb Stuart for ever.

Jeb Stuart was too smart to attack the town. He outnumbered Killpatick's troopers in Hanover, but the buildings cancelled his numerical advantage. An attack would wreck his force. And that left him with a problem. He was already late for his appointment with General Ewall's corps in Carlisle. And the northwest road to Carlisle (above) branched off in Hanover. Stuart had to either take the town or miss the appointment. Sitting where he was he was burning gun powder and horse flesh. And the rest of the Federal army could be anywhere, perhaps coming up right behind him..

That night, Stuart slipped away from the Union horsemen, dragging the captured wagons with him. In a sleepless, grueling all night march, his exhausted men slipped around the federal right.

Lucky Hanover, Pennsylvania. The combination of human blindness and ambition, and accidents of terrain and of timing produced a battle that left 28 dead, 123 wounded and 180 missing or captured. A small price compared to what the smaller town of Gettysburg was about to suffer.

By mid-morning Stuart and his three battalions managed to reach York. But he he did not approach Carlisle until 6:00 pm on 1 July - a full day behind schedule. He found the town held by Pennsylvania militia, who held off the exhausted rebel cavalry. It was not until after midnight that General Stuart learned of Lee's orders for the entire army to concentrate. At 3:00 am, 2 July, after just an hour's sleep, Stuart put his men back in the saddle, moving around Carlisle and on the road to Gettysburg, where he would be reunited with General Lee.

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FIRST DAY Chapter Thirteen

 

I believe the story because I believe the man. The story goes that on the evening of Sunday, 29 June 1863, 34 year old Federal Brigadier General John Buford (above) and some of this staff climbed Jack's Mountain, just northeast of  Fountain Dale, Pennsylvania, in the eastern mouth of Monterey Pass, and saw dust rising in the masked Cumberland Valley beyond. 

And being who he was – born in Kentucky, raised in Illinois, disowned by his slave owning family after he chose to defend the union - Buford could sense the brawl that was about to break out, he could smell the testosterone and adrenaline of 160, 000 approaching men. The General turned to his aides and told them, “Within 48 hours the concentration of both armies will take place on a field within view and a great battle will be fought.”

But while the view from 1,775 feet above the Juniata River was and is magnificent, there were  no dust clouds in view.  A little further back down the road, near Emmitsburg, Maryland, marching with the 6^th Wisconsin Infantry, Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Dawes remembered “I don't think I ever before saw...such a long continued, misty, drizzling storm as we have been marching through since we crossed the Potomac.”  And two days before he had written to his wife of  "...trudging along all day in soaking rain, getting as wet as a drowned rat...and then wrapping up in a wet woolen blanket and lying down for a sleep.." There was plenty of mud in southern Pennsylvania this week , but there was little dust.

But this was the third year of a civil war, in which brother literately was killing brother. The vast majority of those 160,000 combat veterans knew what they were marching toward - knew it as sure as they knew it could not be stopped. As the great Historian Bruce Catton put it, The soldiers were, “...led together by the turns in the roads they followed. When they touched they began to fight, because the tension was so high that the first encounter snapped it, and once begun the fight was uncontrollable. What the generals intended ceased to matter; each man had to cope with what he got...” That was the reality I believe General Buford saw in the fading mist.

Perhaps the clearest glimpse of John Buford in this third year of the war was provided by what happened to a young civilian suspected of spying on the Federal cavalry near Frederick, Maryland. A quick “drum-head court martial” found the boy guilty, and he was promptly condemned, and left hanging by his neck from a roadside tree. When a committee of Frederick civilians demanded an explanation from Buford, the General explained he would have sent the boy back to Washington for trial, except he feared the bureaucrats and politicians there would make the spy a Brigadier General. That is what passed for a joke from John Buford, after 2 1/2 years of war.

Twenty miles to the south of Buford's cavalry  were the three leading corps of the Army of the Potomac. From south to north, they were the 13,000 men of the III Corps, under the 44 year old legally insane New Yorker and congressman, Major General Daniel Edgar Sickles (above)

They were following the 9,000 despised and disparaged “Damned Dutch” of the XI Corps under the 33 year old Puritanical nativist Major General Oliver Otis Howard, from Maine. 

But in the lead were the 12,200 men of the veteran First Crops, under the command of the 42 year old charismatic Pennsylvanian, Major General John Fulton Reynolds.

President Lincoln had wanted Reynolds to run the Army of the Potomac after the Chancellorsville debacle. But on Tuesday, 2 June, 1863, Reynolds made met the President one-on-one and told Lincoln he would take the job only if Lincoln kept politics out his decisions. Lincoln had his fill with Generals who decided which orders they would follow. He might even have explained to the niave General that all wars were as much political as martial. But whatever he told Reynolds, the top job had gone to Meade.

Meade immediately drew up plans to establish a 20 mile long defensive line facing north (above) - “roughly parallel to the Mason-Dixon line” - between Manchester and Middleburg, Maryland, along the south bank of Big Pipe Creek. It was an extraordinary defensive position. But perhaps still irritated at being passed over for the command, Reynolds expressed concern that Meade's cautious nature would allow the rebels to continue “ plundering the State of Pennsylvania”, referring to the Pipe Creek plans as “dilatory measures”. But Meade had already sent Reynolds west and north of that line.  First Crops and Howard's XI Corps made camp the night of 29 June, around Emmitsburg, Maryland. And as Meade explained in a post script to his orders issued that night, “Your present position was given more with a view to an advance on Gettysburg, than a defensive point.” And screening Reynolds 22,000 men by ten miles or so were the 2 battalions of John Buford's cavalry, just 6 miles outside of Gettysburg, that night.

The damp Sunday morning, 38 miles to the north, 37 year old rebel Brigadier General Henry Heth (above) had marched his infantry division down the eastern slope of South Mountain to occupy a small collection of houses and barns around a store and inn called Cashtown. They were the advance guard of Lieutenant General A.P. Hill's 22,000 man Third Corps, and Heath's task was to establish a defensive line to hold the pass. The next morning he would send a brigade 8 miles further down the Chambersburg Pike to the little town of Gettysburg, looking for supplies to feed and clothe his men. And looking for Federals.

Thirty miles north and east of Gettysburg on Sunday, 29 June, 1863, was Richard Ewell's 22,000 man Second Corps. Jubal Early's division was due east Gettysburg, at York, Pennsylvania, where they had cut the Baltimore and Harrisburg railroad. The day before a 1,200 man Georgia brigade under the often wounded General John Brown Gordon had even reached as far as Wrightsville, on the Susquehanna River. But after the Yankees burned the bridge, that Sunday Gordon's men returned to York.

The remaining two divisions of Ewell's Second Corps – commanded by 34 year old Major General Robert Emmett Rodes and 37 year old Major General Edward "Allegheny" Johnson - were further north, in Carlisle, fulfilling General Ewell's 4 day old prediction, “We will get fat here.” Georgia private Gordon Bradwell recalled his 20 man company had been issued “two hindquarters of very fine beef, a barrel or two of flour, some buckets of wine, sugar, clothing, shoes, etc.” 

Further east, in Mechanicsburg, Brigadier General Albert Jenkins' (above)  troopers demanded 1,500 rations from the civilians. After that demand was met within 90 minutes, the rebels started looting, as they had done in Chambersburg. Noted one bitter journalist, “Some people, with . . . antiquated ideas of business, might call it stealing...but Jenkins calls it business...”

On that same Sunday, 29 June, other troopers from Jenkin's cavalry were trading shots with Pennsylvania militia at Oyster's point on the river, while Jenkins himself, along with 3 of General Ewell's engineers,  were looking over the defenses of the state capital of Harrisburg (above)  Nobody was impressed. 

Even the burning of the Cumberland Valley Railroad bridge over the Susquehanna (above)  failed to discourage these rebels. That evening, General Ewell ordered his infantry to move toward the river, determined to capture Harrisburg. This was the proof that Hooker's delay in matching Lee's movement across the Potomac, was leading to disaster.

Then an exhausted courier arrived at Ewell's (above) headquarters outside of Carlisle, with orders issued by General Lee just 12 hours earlier, in Chambersburg. 

In Lee's typical passive-aggressive fashion they read in part, “...if you have no good reason against it, I desire you to move in the direction of Gettysburg....you can thus join your other divisions to Early's...Your trains and heavy artillery you can send, if you think proper, on the road to Chambersburg. But if the roads which your troops take are good, they had better follow you.” 

Ewell, who had some experience with Lee's choice of language, realized the urgency hidden in the message. He immediately called off his attack on Harrisburg, and prepared to swing Johnson's  division and his supply trains back down the Cumberland Valley toward Chambersburg, and Rodes division due south toward Gettysburg – first thing in the morning.

The next morning, on the last day of June, 1863, while Major General J.E.B. Stuart was clashing with Major General Pleasanton's Federal cavalry at Hanover, and General Rodes' division was just beginning their 30 mile march south from Carlisle, John Buford was riding onto the high ground south of Gettysburg, at the head of 3,000 troopers. On the ridge opposite the town, known as Seminary Hill, he could see rebel infantry on the Chambersburg turnpike. These were the 2,000 man infantry brigade Heath had sent forward, looking for supplies. But seeing blue cavalry about to enter the town before them, and aware of Lee's orders  to avoid a fight, they reversed their march, returning to Cashtown.

Seeing them retreat, Buford immediately galloped into the town of Gettysburg and arraigned his defenses

. 

His first battalion of 1,500 men, under Colonel William Gamble, (above) were spread out on ridges west of town above Marsh Creek, near where the Pennsylvania volunteers had been overrun the week before. 

The Second Battalion under Colonel Tom Devin (above) was ordered to post pickets as far as 4 miles west and north, and entrench his men along the Mummasberg road. Devin confidently said he thought the command could handle whatever rebels threw at them, but Buford cut him off, saying, “No, you won’t. They will attack you in the morning and they will come booming – skirmishers three-deep. You will have to fight like the devil until supports arrive.”

At 10:30 that night Buford sent his report 10 miles back to Reynolds, now north of Emmitsburg.  It read in part, “...I am satisfied that A. P. Hill's corps is massed just back of Cashtown, about 9 miles from this place...One of my parties captured a courier of Lee's...He says Ewell's corps is crossing the mountains from Carlisle...”.

In short, Lee's entire 75,000 man army was converging on Buford's 3,000 man force in Gettysburg. To have added a cry for help would have been superfluous. After the messengers had left, Buford's signal officer, First Lieutenant Aaron Brainard Jerome, noted that his commander seemed more anxious, “than I ever saw him.”

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