Wittenberg - Gettysburgs forgotten cavalry actions: Farnsworths Charge, South Cavalry Field, and the Battle of Fairfield, July 3, 1863

2011 by Eric J. Wittenberg

Originally printed as Gettysburgs Forgotten Cavalry Actions (Thomas Publications, 1998)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-61121-070-5 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-61121-108-5 (hard cover)
ISBN 978-1-61121-071-2 (digital edition)

15 14 13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1
First Savas Beatie edition, first printing

Completely revised and expanded edition

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This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of all those men, both Blue and Gray, who served in the cavalry, who heard the bugles call Charge, and who suffered and died for causes in which they believed, including a bold and fearless rider, Brig. Gen. Elon J. Farnsworth. It is also dedicated to my loving and patient wife, Susan Skilken Wittenberg, without whose support this project never would have been possible.

Contents

Chapter 1
The Strategic Situation
on the Afternoon of July 3, 1863

Chapter 2
Farnsworths Charge

Chapter 3
The Great Controversy:
Did Elon Farnsworth Shoot Himself?

Chapter 4
Merritts Regulars on South Cavalry Field

Chapter 5
The Battle of Fairfield, July 3, 1863

Appendix A
Orders of Battle

Appendix B
A Walking and Driving Tour of South Cavalry Field
and Farnsworths Charge

Appendix C
A Driving Tour of the Battle of Fairfield, July, 3, 1863

Appendix D
Where did Farnsworth Make his Charge?
A Rebuttal to an Erroneous Account

Special Insert:
One Continuous Fight: An Interview with Authors Eric J.
Wittenberg, J. David Petruzzi, and Michael F. Nugent

Maps and Photos have been placed throughout the text
for the convenience of the reader

Authors Preface to the Revised Edition

This book was first published in 1998. It was my first book. It won the Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award, given by the Robert E. Lee Civil War Roundtable of New Jersey, as the best new work interpreting the Battle of Gettysburg of 1998. It was universally well-received, and it sold steadily for a number of years until there were no copies left to sell in the publishers warehouse. However, the original publisher elected to allow it to go out of print instead of doing a second printing as I requested, and the publication rights then reverted to me.

The book has now been out of print for several years, something that has always greatly bothered me a great deal. I never wanted to see it go out of print in the first place, so I was constantly on the lookout for opportunities to bring it back into print. To my surprise, it remains the only published book specifically addressing these events, so it continues to be the sole occupant of a niche. I had a difficult choice to make: I could bring it back out in its original form, or I could do an updated edition that includes the large volume of new material that my friend and co-author J. David Petruzzi and I have uncovered over the years since the first edition of this book was published.

I ultimately decided that the opportunity to update this work was too good to pass up, and when Theodore P. Savas of Savas Beatie offered me the chance to bring out a completely new edition of the book, I jumped at it. This now makes the fourth book that we have done together, and I am grateful to Ted for giving me the opportunity to make this book available to a whole new generation and market of readers. The new edition features a completely re-worked account of Farnsworths Charge that incorporates many of the new sources that we found, a revised account of the Battle of Fairfield, a new map, an additional appendix that addresses the question of where Farnsworths Charge occurred once and for all (co-authored with my friend and writing partner J. David Petruzzi), a number of new illustrations, and a driving/walking tour of the sites described in this book that includes GPS coordinates. In addition, since the original edition was published in 1998, the Gettysburg National Military Park embarked on a massive campaign of tree-cutting in order to restore the battlefield to its 1863 appearance, and the terrain and many of the locations described herein look very different today than they did in 1998. Consequently, I have replaced all of the modern-day views from the old book with all-new shots that show the difference that opening up the terrain has made in interpreting these events.

I am grateful to National Park Service historian John Heiser for agreeing to re-work the map of Farnsworths Charge, to Francis Tiny Guber for giving me permission to use a number of his many illustrations of members of the 1st Vermont Cavalry in this work, to Joseph D. Collea, Jr. for providing scarce and useful Vermont newspaper accounts of Farnsworths Charge, to Christina Moon for saving me a trip to Carlisle to obtain material on Farnsworths Charge, to Don Caughey for providing numerous useful items regarding the U.S. Regular cavalry and for commenting on my account of the Battle of Fairfield; to my good friends and co-authors J. David Petruzzi and Michael F. Nugent for sharing research materials with me that made their way into this book. I am likewise grateful to Ted Savas and his staff for giving me the opportunity to re-work this book and make it even better than it originally was, and I also appreciate their patience in working with me as we brought this project to a successful conclusion.

Last, but certainly not least, I remain grateful to my long-suffering and much-loved wife Susan Skilken Wittenberg for her seemingly endless patience with my obsessive need to tell the stories of Civil War cavalrymen. Without her love and support none of this would still be possible.

Eric J. Wittenberg
Columbus, Ohio

Authors Preface to 1998 Edition

I have studied Union cavalry activities in the Gettysburg Campaign for years. Thus, I knew of a number of major cavalry actions on the afternoon of July 3, 1863, including Farnsworths Charge, Wesley Merritts fight on the South Cavalry Field, and the debacle at Fairfield. I wanted to learn more about these little-known actions, but discovered that there simply is not much quality material available. I realized that these significant engagements deserved a detailed study. Consequently, I decided to tackle the project. It took several years to gather this material, and the task proved much more difficult than I originally imagined.