GDG- Buford at Fairfield

[Tom Ryan]

Mike,

Those are good points.  It seems that Heth had gotten himself into a box
concerning what happened that day.  I recall that Heth had argued that the
force he made contact with at Gettysburg consisted of cavalry, infantry and
artillery.  In this article he obviously ignored the cavalry part.

By the way, do you have any thoughts about why Lee and Hill's scouts, that
were searching for the Union army's location, missed running into Buford's
two brigades that were moving toward Fairfield on June 29 and 30, or why
they at least did not learn from local citiizens that Buford was marching
through the area?  It seems it would have been difficult for their paths not
to have crossed, since the scouts would have been moving southeast from
Chambersburg toward Frederick, and had to return along the same route.

Regards, Tom Ryan


<<For years after the war, Heth insisted that the force he faced on the
morning of July 1st consisted of Infantry, not Cavalry.  I believe there are
two reasons for this:

I think Heth was too stubborn to admit that he erred in dismissing
Pettigrew's report of Regular Army Cavalry in Gettysburg on June 30th.
Admitting that he fought Cavalry on July 1st would require admitting he was
wrong and that the self-taught Pettigrew was right.

Secondly, and most importantly, I think Heth's claims illustrate the job
that Buford's two brigades did fighting the July 1st covering force action.
One of the goals of Cavalry in a defensive posture is to deceive the enemy
as to the makeup of your force (fighting dismounted, horses well out of view
to the rear, etc.)  If the Confederates had known the true composition of
the force in front of them, they could have bulled their way right through
Buford's screen.  Believing they faced Infantry however, forced them into a
by-the-book deployment and slowed them down considerably.>>