Buford's Route from Middletown, Maryland to Fountain Dale, Pennsylvania June 29, 1863

On June 29, 1863, between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., after spending the previous day getting his mounts re-shod, Brigadier General John Buford, commanding the First Cavalry Division, Army of the Potomac left Middletown, Maryland with his First and Second Brigades and Battery A, 2nd U.S. artillery. His objective was to cross to the western side of South Mountain and to proceed north to Chewsville, at which point he was to turn east and pass over the mountain again. He would continue east to Emmitsburg before turning north toward Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His orders directed him to arrive in Gettysburg by dark, June 30. He had 36 hours to cover 55 miles, a daunting task to say the least.

The purpose of this entry is to trace his probable route from Middletown, Maryland to his bivouac on the evening of June 29 at Fountain Dale, Pennsylvania. To accomplish this I have found four contemporary maps which show the roads the column would have taken in 1863. Thank goodness the men who traveled the route noted the towns through which they passed: in Maryland - Boonsboro, Mount Pleasant (Mapleville), Chewsville, Cavetown, and Smithsburg: in Pennsylvania - Monterey Pass, and Fountain Dale. In the process of reconstructing the route, I also included: in Maryland - Ringgold, and in, Pennsylvania - Waterloo (Rouzerville). As I explain the route, bear in mind that Buford allowed no straggling. At no point in the accounts does anyone mention stopping at anytime during the march to dismount and walk their horses or to halt to rest themselves and their horses. Based on the distance covered in the first day, the brigades averaged about 3 miles/ hour- about the speed of a horse when at "the Walk." 

Going east on the National Pike (alternate Route 40) from Middletown, the column crossed South Mountain at Turner's Gap, a climb and descent of about 1200 feet on each side on macadamized but twisting highway. Boonsboro, lay at the base of the mountain. Five roads intersected the pike in the vicinity of the town - Pleasant Valley Road to Harpers Ferry, the Boonsboro Pike, which ran south through Keedysville to Sharpsburg, and an unnamed road which branched of the National Pike just west of the town. Unnamed at the time, this road, now known as the Mapleville Road ran through Mount Pleasant past the Chewsville Road, about seven or so miles north of Boonsboro.  These roads, though modernized and straightened, either parallel or follow the original road tracks.

(1859 Thomas Taggert Washington County Plat Map)

Buford's brigades took the Mapleville Road north toward the Chewsville Road, it being the only straight route to Chewsville. from Chewsville, Buford would have turned east on the Cavetown Road for another two miles.

(1859 Thomas Taggert Washington County Plat Map)

Cavetown Road runs about another two mile into Smithsburg (Smith Town in 1859) where it picks up the Smithsburg Pike. (Bear in mind that pikes, as opposed to roads, were paved with crushed limestone, called macadam.) From Smithsburg, the pike continued another 4.29 miles north into Ringgold where it intersects the Ringold Pike northeast into Pennsylvania. Buford was traveling the best roads on the most direct roads toward his objective.

(1868 Map of Washington Township, Franklin County, PA)

The bottom left of the map shows where the Ringgold Pike intersects the modern Harbaugh Church Road which wends east then north into Waterloo (Rouzerville).  Where you see the buildings, the road today becomes the Waterloo Road. Follow the Waterloo Road to the "E" in Pikesville. Where it makes the 90 degree turn to the right (east) that is now the Old Route 16 State. The road from the "W" in Waterloo to the "E" at the turn is a steep climb, even today with a very steep drop off on the left into the valley below. I believe at the time of the War this was the Waynesboro Road, Waynesboro being several miles to the left. In 1863 it was not much more than a country road. Once the road turns east it winds and twists over a series of of ridges and ravines.

Buford did not get into Waterloo until around 4:00 p.m.. He had only 4 hours until dark and needed to get across Monterey Gap, some 4 miles away. Ascending a hill on horseback on a narrow road can be a challenge, particularly if the horse is already tired and easily spooked. Climbing the hill took time and had to be done very carefully. 

(1858 Map of Hamiltonban Township, Adams County, PA)

The column reached the gap a few hours later, probably near dark. At the top of South Mountain the Old Route 16 State intersects the current Route 16 (Sunshine Trail). At this point (Monterey Pass) the road becomes what is now called the Charmian Road. It continues northeast to become the "Old" Waynesboro Road. The column descended the eastern side of the mountain on a road more tortuous, winding, and rolling than the one outside of Waterloo. They reached Fountain Dale around 10:00 p.m. The men said they covered somewhere between 30 - 40 miles that day. It turned out to be 38 miles. Buford had achieved his objective. A march of several hours awaited he and his men the following morning.

The great thing about this study is that a person can still drive those roads or ones paralleling the original roads and retrace the route of one of the hardest cavalry marches in history.

Primary Sources on the Internet

I use the Internet a great deal to find hard to obtain historical resources.  I have listed below those to which I refer.

http://dmna.ny.gov/historic/reghist/civil/CWN.htm

This is an excellent source to find regimental rosters, and war related primary sources on every New York unit, which served during the Civil War. I have found it invaluable in identifying obscure documents  relating to the regiments about which I have written. Some photos are available of individual soldiers and regimental flags.

http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-soldiers.htm

The Soldier and Sailor System consists of a searchable database for nearly every Union and Confederate regiment which was involved in the war.  It is a great way to identify men by state, company, and regiment and to find thumbnail regimental histories. This provides the researcher with only the individual’s company and ranks held throughout the war but does not indicate when he transferred or got promoted. It is a great place to start.  The U.S. Regular Army citations are the most incomplete.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=confedvet

Confederate Veteran is self-explanatory. For about 30 years the aging Confederate soldiers contributed memoirs and recollections to this serial magazine. A great deal of the material is devoted to perpetuating the “Lost Cause”, and meticulously recording the  obituaries of its members. Nevertheless, it does contain a great deal of good war time material. Check out the sources carefully.  As they got older the veterans tended to promote themselves to ranks they never attained during the conflict. This is also a great genealogical source.

http://suvcw.org/mollus/war/warpapers.htm

The War Papers of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, with the exception of the Pennsylvania Commandery, are mostly downloadable. Part of the site also contain transcriptions of some of the articles which were cited in the index but not available through other sources. It contains a complete index for every volume.

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016187/issues/

The National Tribune, which later evolved into Stars and Stripes, began as the voice for Union veterans’ to press the government to pay them pensions. This index only covers this weekly veterans’ paper from 1871 through 1911, but the information within its pages are invaluable. The editors dedicated at least one page in every issue under the caption “Fighting Them Over”, for the old soldiers to record their recollections of the War and to argue over points of accuracy. It was the early version of  Facebook and ran into the 1930’s by which time the information became harder to find and less reliable.

http://books.google.com/

If the reader wants to find downloadable published recollections, memoirs, and regimental histories this is the go to site. It is a great way to build up a research library of hard to find material. http://archives.org is another great site.

http://www.pacivilwar.com/

Exclusively dedicated to Pennsylvania’s regiments, a person can look up regimental rosters, diaries, published materials, prison records, in some cases, photos of soldiers.  It is a real gem.

http://www.nps.gov/gett/historyculture/research-center.htm

For anyone studying Gettysburg who wants to go to the library in the battlefield Visitor Center, this is the source to use to identify particular regimental and biographical sources. I cannot recommend this too highly. The battlefield library also has a tremendous collection of hard copy regimental histories. Call in advance to make an appointment to use the library. The librarian is a tremendous individual to work with. You can bring a camera to photograph pictures and you may bring in a laptop computer.

“Only”

In a recent web discussion about Gettysburg, a small controversy sprang up over the word “only.” The following does not minimize or denigrate any of the contributors’ comments. Rather, it prompted me to evaluate about how often the word appears in historical interpretation.

            As an interpreter/guide at Antietam, for instance, I have often used it to compare the casualties inflicted in the four major battlefield sites – the Cornfield, the West Woods, the Bloody Lane, and the Burnside Bridge. Approximately 8,000 casualties occurred in and near the Miller Cornfield in about two hours and twenty minutes. The West Woods claimed an estimated 5,000 in twenty minutes. Around 5,500 fell during the three and a half hour struggle over the Bloody Lane and the three and a half hour struggle for Burnside Bridge accounted for around 600 more. Ironically, the largest number of visitors visit the bridge, followed by the Bloody Lane, the Cornfield, and rarely, the West Woods. 

When explaining this phenomenon to guests, I find myself apologizing for using the word “only” when referring to the number of souls struck down per hour in the most frequented spots on the field. I tell them about the 6th Alabama losing three sets of brothers in the Lane and of the dying father who cradled his deceased son in his arms until death overtook him. I mention the unfortunate Colonel Francis Barlow who received a serious groin wound in the final assault on the Lane. I emphasize how easy it is to reduce battles to numbers and statistics to evaluate which side won, and which side did not. I remind them that the battlefield monuments are tombstones for those comrades who did not return home and not to the survivors.

Referring to the first paragraph, one contributor used “only” to refer to the length of time two brigades stayed in action in the Wheatfield and the low percentage of losses which they incurred. I did not take offense nor do I chastise the individual who punctuated the statement with “only.” From a general's perspective those two brigades might have suffered unacceptably low casualties. In most Civil War actions, the average brigade or regiment, if it was not resupplied with ammunition, would have exhausted most of its rounds in that time. In places like the Wheatfield and the Cornfield, where the opposing forces, because of the limited visibility from the powder smoke, fired into each other at very close ranges, regiments incurred very serious casualties, each one of whom had a name.

These casualty returns come from Tilton’s and Sweitzer’s Brigades, Barnes’s Division, V Corps in the Wheatfield. Bear in mind that Sweitzer went into the field twice. In all three actions, those units spent about 15 – 20 minutes in action. Tilton’s Brigade of four regiments, numbering 655 officers and men lost 19% (125 casualties): 6.25 men/minute. Switzer’s Brigade went into the fray with 1011 officers and men and after an estimated 40 minutes in action lost 420 men (42%): 10.5 men/minute. By Civil War standards, those were not high casualties as compared to our “modern” acceptable casualty rate. Nevertheless, they are just numbers. I write from the soldiers’ perspectives because they were and are not “only” numbers. 

The Importance of Thanksgiving

On October  3, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln signed the document which officially designated the fourth Thursday in November as the national day of Thanksgiving. 

Following the victories at Gettysburg and more importantly at Vicksburg, the people of Union, despite the horrific suffering created by the Civil War, had reason to give thanks. 

After Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia would never again muster as large an army as it had at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and with the fall of Vicksburg, the Federal army could execute the final phase of Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan. 

Lincoln still had to face re-election during the war, but militarily, the Confederacy had paid too heavy a price to ever regain its military superiority.

What have we citizens of the United States have to be grateful for during this fast approaching Thanksgiving Day. I cannot speak for anyone other than myself. I am thankful, in no particular order, for:

1.       My lovely wife and our family, for their love, their support, and their patience.

2.       My personal faith, and its promises, which sustain me when my life seems the darkest.

3.       The few close friends in my life.

4.       My counselor, and my doctors whose skills and compassion have guided me along a rather turbulent route to a better life style.

5.       My publisher and his excellent staff who had faith in my work. 

6.       Answered prayers for those who needed it more than I.

7.       A free country and its Constitution and an abiding belief in a government of laws, legally created by a legislative body.

8.       Being alive and viable, warm, and well fed.

9.       The thousands of individuals, who have touched my life, read my books, sat patiently through my classes and have tolerated some very, very bad jokes.

10.    Too many blessings to count and the relegation of so many bad experiences to the past, which has enabled me to emerged as a victor rather than needlessly allow myself wallow in self-pity as a victim.

Like the Confederate’s  prayer which I recounted in an earlier bog, “I am among all men so richly blessed.” Have a great holiday!

     

Playing “Catch Up”

My apologies for not writing for so long but a lot has happened since I last penned anything. As a soldier in the Civil War would write, “I set down, pen in hand to inform you that I am still in the land of the living.”

1.      Stand to It and Give Them Hell has already gone into its second printing, which is genuinely amazing. At this rate it will outsell Antietam: The Soldiers” Battle.

2.       I have been very busy selling books in Gettysburg.

3.      I have just reviewed Eric J. Wittenberg’s “The Devil’s to Pay” John Buford at Gettysburg: A History and Walking Tour (Savas Beatie, 2014) and George Kimball, A Corporal’s Story, Civil War Reflections of the Twelfth Massachusetts (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014). I highly recommend both to anyone interested in new and refreshing information about the Union cavalry at Gettysburg and the best recollections of the 12th Massachusetts I have yet seen.

4.      I look forward to the talks, which I am giving this winter in Cleveland, OH and Houston, TX and the book signings in Gettysburg during the Remembrance Day celebrations.

5.      I am also engaging in a new research and writing project on a series of Civil War battles in the East.

            When things calm down after November, I will devote more time to the blog.

             Rather than continue babbling I will bid you adieu until I really have something more earth-shaking to share. 

Number Crunching: Antietam, the Bloodiest Single Day in U.S. History

As Americans, we are often obsessed with terms like “the most,” “the best,” “the least,” and “the worst” in nearly everything we do. In years books individuals are rated as the “most likely to succeed.” We have BFF – “best friends forever.” We discuss sports teams as the “least likely to win a championship. A lot of this obsession is rooted in our innate competitiveness, despite the Herculean efforts of the politically correct crowd to eliminate it lest we offend someone by labeling them.  

The same applies to military history as well. Trivia like, the “General with the longest beard,” the “tallest man in the Union army,” and “The Bloodiest Day in U.S. History” appeal to many individuals. In this case, I have chosen to discuss the casualties at Antietam. Why? I wanted to explore the veracity of that title. Here are the results:

1.      The editors of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume II examined the reports of Confederate corps and division commanders, which included the losses from September 14, 1862 through September 20, 1862 in their casualty returns.

Those tabulations also excluded the numbers for Jones’ and Rodes’ brigades and A. P. Hill’s entire division.

a.       The officers recorded 1,800 killed, 9,770 wounded, and 2,304 missing in action, which totaled 13,694 casualties.

2.      The editors arbitrarily multiplied those numbers by 80% based upon the assumption that only 20% losses occurred before and after September 18 – 18, 1862.

a.       In turn, they reported 1,512 killed, 7,816 wounded, and 1844 missing which equaled 11,172 casualties.

3.      The Union losses, as tabulated in the Official Records, was 12, 410 which included September 16 – 18, 1862.

4.      When added together, the editors arrived at 23,582, thereby making Antietam the bloodiest single day battle in U.S. history, “fact” which so many historians, myself included, accepted as fact, until now.

a.       We neglected to take into account the editors’ admonition that, at best, the calculations were not necessarily accurate.

5.      The Ezra Carman manuscript, until very recently, hundreds of historians have cited without necessarily using his casualty calculations to check the veracity of the Battle and Leaders estimates. I had consulted his casualty returns when working on Antietam: The Soldiers’ Battle and Before Antietam: The Battle for South Mountain, but never attempted to re-evaluate the returns. Savas Beatie’s release of Thomas G. Clemens’ expertly edited and annotated two-volume edition of the Carman manuscript - The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 – changed everything. With Carman’s charts readily available, I could easily account for the combat losses before and after September 15. Thomas A. McGrath, Shepherdstown: Last Clash of the Antietam Campaign, September 19-20, 1862 contained detailed regimental losses for the Confederates in that action.

a.       Using those two sources, I calculated the following casualties, exclusive of September 17, 1862:

461 killed, 1,838 wounded, 1,523 missing, plus 16 unspecified casualties. Total: 3,838

b.      By deducting those numbers from the original reports in Battles and Leaders, I arrived at the following losses for September 17:

1,339 killed, 7,932 wounded, 781 captured, totaling 10,052 Confederate casualties.

c.       For the Federal losses, I deducted 30 killed and 65 wounded for the skirmishing on September and 4 or 5 miscellaneous casualties in skirmishing on September 18.

This resulted in 2,078 killed, 9,484 wounded, 753 missing, and 5 miscellaneous for a number of 12,310 casualties.

d.       Adding 12,310 to 10,052, the total losses for September 17 are 22,362 casualties in a single day.

6.      Carman concluded that the armies lost 22,726 officers and men.

7.      The National Park Service at Antietam reports approximately 22,720 lost.

Why does this matter?

It clearly illustrates how recent scholarship contributes to a clearer understanding of the past.

It is a reminder not to get overly concerned about whether or not a battle’s fame depends upon its horrible casualty returns, although Antietam still remains the bloodiest single day in U.S. history.

The numbers will always change and authors will continually use them to prove that their calculations are more accurate than someone else’s.

It admonishes me to remember that behind every number is a person with a name, a family, an identity, and a soul. Their humanity takes precedence over statistics.

 

 

 

  

 

A Heartfelt "Thank You"

 When I was writing my first book, Antietam: The Soldiers' Battle (White Mane, 1989), a colleague and friend of mine at South Hagerstown High School told me that I could write a book with all of the best information available but if no one could read it, it was all in vain.  I took his advice.  I have written all of my battle books from the front line soldiers' perspectives because they intimately experienced the horrors of combat and it changed their lives forever. It changed this country forever, also.

My newest book, Stand to It and Give Them Hell, looks like it is going to surpass all of my other books, which I find rewarding and humbling. I wanted to thank everyone who has obtained a copy of the book and have read it or are intending to read it, because, in doing so, you will personally meet the men who, whether they wanted to or not, sacrificed so much for generations yet unborn. When I receive reviews, like the newest one, which I am posting below, with the author's permission, it encourages me to keep on writing. It means I have accomplished what I have intended to do - to bring home to the public the lives of the Civil War soldiers as Ernie Pyle did for the men and women in World War II and Erich Maria Remarque accomplished for the veterans of the Great War. They experienced war. I have only done so vicariously by being raised around veterans who brought the war home with them and passed their sorrows on to me.

I have not written about them yet and probably will not because I probably will never visit the field upon which they fought and lost their friends and their youth. I have stayed with the Civil War because it was literally fought in my own back yard and I want to preserve the soldiers' memories before a society which does not generally value history shovels them aside.

To my readers "Thank you."  The those who came before, "Thank you." "Lest We Forget."

"When I first heard about the premise of Stand To It and Give Them Hell I was intrigued.  Throughout all of the works about the Battle of Gettysburg I have read, there are only a select few which rely heavily on the primary sources to tell the story.  What John Michael Priest has done in this work has given us the story of the Second Day of Gettysburg from the Round Tops to Cemetery Ridge with over ninety percent of primary sources.  Even before I go into the analysis on the book, I can only say good things about this book.  Priest has given us something which I hope will become a classic in the years to come.

                John Michael Priest is a retired high school history teacher and has always been interested in the American Civil War.  He is a graduate from the Loyola College in Baltimore and Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.  He has written many works on the Civil War including Into the Fight: Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, and  Nowhere to Run: The Wilderness, May 4th & 5th, 1864.  He has also been considered the “Ernie Pyle” of the Civil War soldier by the legendary Ed Bearrs.  Priest is also one of the historical consultants for the upcoming television miniseries To Appomattox.

                Stand To It and Give Them Hell lives up to the hype of a narrative of the second day of Gettysburg as seen through the eyes of the soldier.  The main characters in the book are the soldiers themselves, but there are some accounts of the commanders as well in order to set up the action which takes place later on the day.  The greatest thing which I think Priest does in his work is set up the action by hours instead of by location.   There have been many other works in the second day at Gettysburg which have been chronicled by location, but Priest does this by hour.  Not only does this help the reader understand the action of the battle and the waves in which Longstreet attacked, but even the set up, which takes the first hundred pages of the text, are well read.  Without that background, the reader could be lost in the text without any aid as to the reasons for the attacks.  Also, there are a few sources which Priest mentions which may give the reader a different look on the stressed Robert E. Lee.  Some of the stories throughout the action are heartbreaking as to the sacrifice which these soldiers made on the fields of Gettysburg.  Some of these stories even make the reader proud to be American given the sacrifices made for the freedom of the country.

                I cannot recommend this book enough, highly highly recommended.  There was a lot of hype behind this work in the realm of Civil War academia, and it is well deserved.  This is a work which delivers time and time again only making the reader want more and more.  When the end of the book comes, the stories of the soldier are inspiring.  Thank you, John Michael Priest, for bringing us this work on the Battle of Gettysburg.  Highly Recommended."

  

From “The Gettysburg Chronicle" by Matthew Bartlett