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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THE FIRST DAY Chapter Three

 

I know the few men of Company A, 6^th Virginia cavalry, were shocked when,  at about 4:30 that Tuesday morning, 9 June, 1863, Federal cavalry appeared without warning out of a pea soup fog.  In the shrouded anonymity there was no mercy except that provided by sheer chance. 

Some of the rebel pickets were paralyzed with fear when the madmen in blue came bursting toward their dugouts in the tree line, sabers slashing. Others panicked and went scampering to the rear on foot. Behind the blue attackers Federal cavalry formations galloped through the muddy water of Bevery's Ford  (above), crossing the Rappahannock, the infamous “Dare You Yankees to Attack Line”,  intending to clear a path 10 miles south to Culpeper, where they expected to find J.E.B. Stuart's 7,000 man rebel cavalry corps gathered for a raid. But Stuart was far closer than that. And soon it would the Yankees turn to be surprised.

The Federals at Beverly's Ford - named for early landowner Robert Beverly – were the 5,000 man division under 37 year old General John Buford (above), a West Pointer, who had been superseded as over all commander of the Army of the Potomac cavalry corps.  

But Buford was a cautious commander before a battle.  He had scouted the approaches to the river days earlier, and the enemy picket positions. According to General Pleasanton's plan, Buford's troopers were right on time and expected to reach Culpeper by 9:00 a.m. that morning.

What the plan had not allowed for was the determination of Captain Bruce Gibson's company, camped in the wooded hillocks above the river (above).  Despite having left their horses loose to graze overnight, about 100 of Gibson's men managed to get mounted – a few bareback – and delay the 2 regiments of federal cavalry under Colonel Benjamin “Grimes” Davis. And as the Beverly's Ford Road gained altitude above the Rappahannock,  the fog thinned along with Confederate confusion.

Within half an hour, the entire 6^th Virginia regiment was throwing itself against the Union troopers, and dozens of fierce battles involving half a dozen men at a time sparked along both sides of the road. It was, to borrow the title of a favored Army of the Potomac march, “Hell Along the Rappahannock”. 

But when the Federal cavalry broke out of the woods, they found themselves facing a low hill,  atop which was line of cannons around Saint Jame's Church (above). As was his nature, Colonel Davis immediately lead a charge straight up the slope against the rebel cannon. The grapeshot cut down horses and men of the 6^th Pennsylvania and 6^th regular cavalry, as well as Colonel Davis. But the guns were overrun.

However, without a commander, the Federals could not organize a defense, and a new rebel cavalry regiment charged to retake the guns and drive the Federals back. By now Buford had joined his spearhead, and rather then launch another frontal assault, he moved his troopers around the rebel left at Yew ridge, only to find dismounted rebel cavalry behind a stone wall. Removing them would take some time.

Meanwhile, 4 miles to the southeast, General David Gregg (above) was 90 minutes late crossing the Rappahannock at the little 19^th century industrial park called Kellysville. 

Two regiments of Federal cavalry and a brigade of infantry crossed Kelly's Ford (above), also looking to reach Culpeper by 9:00 a.m..  But they found their chosen road already blocked by alerted rebel cavalry. Rather than fighting his way through, General Gregg decided to look for another route.

By the time Buford's men finally carried the stone wall – well after 9:00 a.m. - and pried the rebels out of their position around St. James Church, he had realized Stuart's cavalry corps was not 8 miles to the south, but right in front of him, and gathering. Buford was smart enough to still wonder about the location of the rebel infantry. He knew A.P. Hill's corps of 21,000 rebels were still 35 miles to the east at Fredricks Crossing. But that left 2/3rds of the rebel army missing - where were Longstreet and “Old Baldy” Ewell's 42,000 men?  About 11:00 a.m. Buford decided to push 2 regiments ahead, hoping to uncover rebel infantry. 

Waiting across the field, General J.E.B.  Stuart (above) was prepared to crush the charging Federals between his 6^th and 12^th Virginia regiments, and White's 35^th Virginian cavalry battalion.

Buford’s men were spared this fate because General Gregg had finally reached the rear of the rebel line at Brandy Station -  on the Orange and Alexandria railroad line -   and then turned west to the northern foot of Fleetwood Hill (above).  The view from this low ridge was so dominate that just days before General Stuart had used it as a viewing stand for a grand review of his entire cavalry corps. Had Gregg gained the crest of that hill, J.E.B. Stuart's entire command would have been crushed between the Federal wings. Stuart was saved that fate because of one odd little Confederate cannon.

Almost all of the guns lined up to defend St. James Church were standard cannons that fired 12 pound shot. 

But there was also at least one 1841 howitzer that fired a 6 pound shell (above). It's bronze barrel was less than 5 feet long,  the top of it's large wheels stood no more than 3 feet high and it weighed less than 800 pounds and could be pulled by a single mule. But it required a crew of 6, like a standard 12 pound Napoleon. The Federals had only 6, and the rebels only 23. This particular little gun was under the charge of Lieutenant John Carter. When his irregular ammunition had run low, Carter had been forced to withdraw his little howitzer and its crew to the rear. He wrote later, "As we came near Fleetwood Hill...the whole plateau east of the hill and beyond...was covered with Federal cavalry.”

There were no rebel troops on the hill except Major George Brinton McClellan – first cousin to the hesitant Federal General, and his staff. McClellan had already dispatched one warning to Stuart of the federal division a mile and a half in his rear. But Stuart had not responded. So McClellan now ordered Lieutenant Carter to drag his howitzer up the hill, and open fire. Without explaining that he had only one round of high explosive left, Carter's 6 man gun crew did just that.

And that one shot caused the advancing Federals to pause. They suspected there must be more rebel howitzers on the reverse slope, ready to lob explosives into their crowded ranks. So they waited while their own artillery could be brought forward. And that was just enough time for a second warning from McClellan to reach Stuart, punctuated by Carter's desperate single shot.

Without pausing a moment, Stuart wheeled around the force he had intended to crush Buford, and sent them galloping back to Fleetwood Hill to stop Gregg. The weary rebel troopers reached the summit just as the Federal troopers did. 

In the clash of colliding regiments rebel numbers drove the union cavalry back down the slope. But they quickly returned. In the words of one of the rebel gunners, over the next 4 hours, “The two forces met with a crash that could have been heard miles away...Back and forth they swayed across the slope of Fleetwood Hill."   It was a form of warfare that had more in common with WWII era fighter plane dog fights than Napoleonic cavalry charges. The battle devolved into individual combats, in which casualties were surprisingly low, and unit cohesion difficult to maintain.  About 5:00 p.m., General Pleasanton decided to pull his men back north of the Rappahannock, and the battle faded into the twilight and the river..

Some 17,000 troopers had fought over 70 square miles of Virginia countryside, in the largest single cavalry engagement on north American soil. The Federals had suffered causalities of just under 900, while Stuart reported under 600 dead, wounded and captured. General Stuart held the field of battle, a traditional talisman of victory. But as one of his subordinates said, “Brandy Station made the Federal Cavalry.” The Yankee professionalism and skills could no longer be doubted.  But the ultimate measure of the success in this particular battle went to Stuart. The Federal cavalry had detected no rebel infantry, anywhere.

The next morning Wednesday 10 June, 1863 the lead regiments of Richard “Baldy” Ewell's Corps began marching toward Chester Gap, gateway to the Shenandoah Valley. They were unimpeded, and Army of the Potomac commander, General Hooker was totally unaware they were on the march..  Five days later “Old Pete” Longstreet's Corp would cross the upstream fords of the Rappahannock, screened by Stuart's cavalrymen. The first day of the battle of Gettysburg was now less than 3 weeks away.

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GETT YSBURG 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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