June 30, 1863 …
Brigadier General John Buford, U.S.A.
That morning, John Buford’s First Cavalry Division rode into Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. No one knew where the Confederate Army was, and no one in the Confederate Army knew where the Army of the Potomac was. On the eve of the greatest battle ever witnessed on the North American continent, neither army knew where the other was.
That was about to change.
National Park Service map
The NPS Website explains the map as follows:
LEE INVADES PENNSYLVANIA, JUNE 3-JUNE 30, 1863
On June 3, 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia begins moving west to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains and gain the Shenandoah Valley. By the time General Hooker discerns Lee’s purpose the Confederate army has entered the valley and is moving north to cross the Potomac and invade Maryland and Pennsylvania. The Union Army of the Potomac withdraws from the line of the Rappahannock River and starts marching north to intercept Lee’s army.
The actual timeline of Gettysburg covers several months.
On the 30th, Buford finally locates the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. He sends this dispatch up the chain of command:
Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
(of which I am a member)
The modern successor to the
Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)
which remained a potent political force
in American politics until Teddy Roosevelt
HEADQUARTERS FIRST CAVALRY DIVISION,
Gettysburg, June 30, 1863.I entered this place to-day at 11 a.m. Found everybody in a terrible state of excitement on account of the enemy’s advance upon this place. He had approached to within half a mile of the town when the head of my column entered. His force was terribly exaggerated by reasonable and truthful but inexperienced men. On pushing him back toward Cashtown, I learned from reliable men that [R. H]. Anderson’s division was marching from Chambersburg by Mummasburg, Hunterstown, Abbottstown, on toward York. I have sent parties to the two first-named places, toward Cashtown, and a strong force toward Littlestown. Colonel Gamble has just sent me word that Lee signed a pass for a citizen this morning at Chambersburg. I can’t do much just now. My men and horses are fagged out. I have not been able to get any grain yet. It is all in the country, and the people talk instead of working. Facilities for shoeing are nothing. Early’s people seized every shoe and nail they could find.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
JNO. BUFORD,
Brigadier-General of Volunteers.General Pleasonton.
[P. S]-The troops that are coming here were the same I found early this morning at Millesburg or Farfield. General Reynolds has been advised of all that I know.
USPS’ 150th Commemorative Stamp
Pleasonton, like the good Army of the Potomac bureaucrat he was, “indorses” Buford’s report, notes that another report contradicts this and sends it on with his CYA attached.
[Indorsment]
This information contradicts Kilpatrick’s, of Lee being in Berlin.
A. PLEASONTON,
Major-General, Commanding.
Fortunately for all, General John Reynolds, classmate of Confederate General Lewis Armistead and Union General Winfield Scott Hancock — who will face one another on Pickett’s charge three days hence — takes Buford’s report seriously.
Just two days earlier, “Fightin’ Joe” Hooker had been relieved of his command of the Army of the Potomac:
George Meade monument, Washington D.C.
General ORDERS, HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC,
Number 67, June 28, 1863.By direction of the President of the United States, I hereby assume command of the Army of the Potomac. As a soldier, in obeying this order-an order totally unexpected and unsolicited-I have no promises or pledges to make. The country looks to this army to relieve it from the devastation and disgrace of a hostile invasion. Whatever fatigues and sacrifices we may be called upon to undergo, let us have in view constantly the magnitude of the interests involved, and let each man determine to do his duty, leaving to an all-controlling Providence the decision of the contest. It is with just diffidence that I relieve in the command of this army an eminent and accomplished soldier, whose name must ever appear conspicuous in the history of its achievements; but I rely upon the hearty support of my companions in arms to assist me in the discharge of the duties of the important trust which has been confided to me.
GEO, G. MEADE,
Major-General, Commanding.
Meade would continue to command (at least in name) the Army of the Potomac for the remainder of the war.
Major General Joseph “Fightin’ Joe” Hooker,
relieved of command on June 28
This OUGHT to have been a fatal error, but the professionalism of the Army of the Potomac didn’t let the sudden change in command alter its morale or mission. Or, as the pr0tagonist in Grosse Pointe Blank notes: “Dumb. F***ing. Luck.”
The Union’s General Buford was an old “Indian fighter” — from the West, cagey, trail-educated. And he was — as the movie “Gettysburg” makes a point of — quick to grasp the strategic and tactical implications of a clash in the hills and valleys around Gettysburg, then as now a natural crossroads that funneled roads from the surrounding countryside into its soon-to-be-fatal junction: a spider’s web of roads beckoning the unwary fly.
click to enlarge
And the North came in from the South while the South came in from the North. You might say that the two great armies literally bumbled into each other in the dark. Neither side chose Gettysburg, but, instead, the terrain chose them. National Park Service:
SITUATION JUNE 30, 1863, THE EVE OF BATTLE
The Army of Northern Virginia is attempting to concentrate near Cashtown to prepare for battle. Only four of the army’s nine divisions are on the eastern side of the mountains. The Army of the Potomac is moving north from Frederick along nearly a thirty-mile front. Buford’s Union cavalry division occupies Gettysburg during the afternoon, and Reynolds’s 1st Army Corps camps five miles south of the town. The remainder of the army is gradually moving in the direction of Gettysburg.
Here’s the situation one hundred and fifty years ago today:
click for .pdf map from NPS
NPS:
The troops seen near Gettysburg on June 30 were cavalrymen of Maj. Gen. John Buford’s division of the Army of the Potomac. As that army had moved north from the Frederick area, Buford’s troopers screened its left front, collecting information on Lee’s army for General Meade and for Maj. Gen. John E. Reynolds, commander of the Union First Corps. Buford, an excellent cavalry officer, had reached Gettysburg with two of his three brigades. He posted them in an arc west and north of the town covering the roads over which the Confederates might approach.
Gettysburg in 1863 was a town of about 2,400 people. It sat amid gently rolling farmland—a bucolic quilt of orchards, grain fields, pastures, and wood lots. Its landscape undulated between low north-south ridges sometimes connected to lone granite hills, and Rock Creek bordered the town on the east. Gettysburg was the county seat of Adams County, and it could boast having Pennsylvania College and a Lutheran seminary. In addition, it was the hub of a road network with turnpikes leading west to Chambersburg, east to York, and southeast to Baltimore. Eight other roads led to Harrisburg, Carlisle, Emmitsburg, Taneytown, Hagerstown, Hanover, and lesser places nearby. A railroad stretched east to Hanover Junction and to Baltimore beyond. A railroad bed had been constructed near the Chambersburg Pike west of the town, but it had no tracks….
OK: There was a desperation to Lee’s invasion. The South needed to grab hold of a war that was slipping away. They needed the supplies from the fat Pennsylvania farms, they needed to divert the Union’s attention from Vicksburg (which would split the Confederacy in half when surrendered on July 4, 1863) and Lee even hoped it would lure Grant from Vicksburg and some less competent Union general would be unable to hold the siege.
The South needed Gettysburg. The North did not, which was the disadvantage facing Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.
Luck had provided a change of commanders. Luck also had the two armies blunder into one another on ground of neither’s choosing.
The stage was set.
Back to the present day: Thousands swarmed the battlefield this weekend:
Reenactors swarm Gettysburg for tributes to Civil War’s turning point
By Michael E. Ruane, Sunday, June 30, 4:49 PM
The Washington Post… Husler, 61, a retired steelworker who has two artificial knees and a tattoo of the 69th Pennsylvania infantry regiment on his left hand, got up and headed to join his famous unit, and to seal his fate.
“I’m planning on taking a hit,” Husler said. “I always do anyway. I’m too old to fight a whole battle.”
Husler was one of an estimated 11,000 reenactors and 10,000 spectators who swarmed the hallowed area here Sunday to kick off the week’s commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.
The ceremonies also mark what is perhaps the high point of the nation’s four-year-long observance of the Sesquicentennial of the 1861-1865 Civil War era.
Thousands of visitors are expected to attend dozens of events throughout the week in and around this historic town marking the July 1-3, 1863, battle that was the turning point of the Civil War.
Sunday’s 12:30 p.m. reenactment, across a huge expanse of farmland outside Gettysburg, sought to recreate the climactic action on the battle’s third day, when Union forces smashed a huge Confederate attack….
Jumping the gun, of course, but jumping the gun was pretty much the story of Gettysburg the first time, after all.
But you will be happy to know that the USA, in typical traitorous fashion, never honoring the Union dead, but ever kissing the sanctified ass of the Confederacy has seen fit to ONLY include a photo of Confederate soldiers on their Gettysburg/Vicksburg memorial stamps.
Click to enlarge traitorous rebel scum
Zowie.
Courage.
=================
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.