- Joined
- Feb 23, 2013
- Location
- East Texas
One of the lesser-visited portions of the Gettysburg battlefield would have to be East Cavalry Battlefield, scene of the July 3, 1863, encounter between the Confederate cavalry division of James E. B. Stuart and Union troopers led by David M. Gregg. This area about two miles east of the town of Gettysburg and lying between the York Pike and Hanover Road is almost twice as big as it was when I visited it first, now fifty years ago in the 1960's. The northern edge of the battlefield contains a line of cannon representing Stuart's Battalion of Horse Artillery and also Jones' battery from Ewell's Second Corps, pictured here above and below.
At the battlefield's center stands the Rummel House and barn; in the fields around the Rummel farm swirled charge and countercharge by blue and gray horsemen beginning around the same time as Pickett's men stepped off on their own futile attack to the southwest of this place.
Unfortunately most accounts of the battle present this as a fight between Stuart's cavalry division and the lone Michigan Cavalry Brigade led by brand-new Brigadier General George A. Custer. This is likely because of Custer's ability to attract publicity to himself, plus his later fame and notoriety as an Indian fighter and his subsequent "heroic" death at the Little Big Horn. Most of the credit for stopping Stuart here should actually go to division commander Gregg, who along with his brother John I. Gregg commanding another brigade, was intent on making a stand here, with or without the help of the Michiganders. Custer should receive credit however, for disobeying the orders of his superior, Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick, and remaining to fight alongside the Greggs. Union monuments are placed on the south edge of the battlefield like the one above to the 3rd Pennsylvania above, one of Gregg's units; and to the Michigan Cavalry Brigade below, graced with a circular bronze portrait of the Boy General.
Last edited: