"Yes, gentlemen good day. And we shall see you on da BattleField!"
Posted on 09/23/2004 11:55:07 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- Gen. John Buford's bravery at the battle of Gettysburg was little noted nor long remembered in his native Kentucky.
"He is one of those all but forgotten heroes," said John Trowbridge, director of the Kentucky Military Museum in Frankfort. "But we would never have won the battle without Buford's quick thinking and quick action on the first day."
Rebel infantry outnumbered and outgunned Buford's Yankee cavalry. Even so, the horsemen in blue stalled the Confederates long enough for Gen. George G. Meade's Union Army of the Potomac to organize a defense and ultimately to win the Civil War's bloodiest battle.
A bronze statue at Gettysburg National Military Park commemorates Buford's stand. "There are no monuments to John Buford in Kentucky that I know of," Trowbridge said.
Buford was born near Versailles, Ky., the Woodford County seat, in 1826. A state historic marker in Versailles names Buford and five other county natives who were Civil War generals. "It is amazing that six could come from one small county," Trowbridge said.
A pair of generals on the marker were Buford kin. His half brother, Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, also fought for the Union. Their cousin, Gen. Abraham Buford, donned Rebel gray.
John Buford moved with his parents to Rock Island, Ill., in the 1840s. He graduated from West Point in 1848.
The mustachioed, pipe-puffing Buford had little use for fancy uniforms and military spit and polish. "He don't put on so much style as most officers," one of his men said.
Though popular with his own troops, Buford was tough on the enemy. He hanged a Confederate guerrilla to a tree with a sign that warned, "This man to hang three days; he who cuts him down before shall hang the remaining time."
At Gettysburg, Buford's 2,700 horse soldiers were the first Yankees to make contact with Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. They galloped into town on the evening of June 30 in time to skirmish with some of Lee's advance units. Buford correctly figured the whole Southern army would attack the next day.
On the morning of July 1, Buford deployed his men on high ground west of Gettysburg. More than 7,000 Rebels assaulted Buford's dismounted troopers around 9 a.m. "The two lines became hotly engaged, we having the advantage of position, he of numbers," the general reported.
His soldiers held on until Gen. John F. Reynolds' infantry arrived around midmorning. The Union troops fell back through Gettysburg to higher ground, including Cemetery Ridge, where the Yankees stopped Gen. George Pickett's storied charge on July 3 and won the battle.
Buford, who was badly wounded and left for dead after the 1862 battle of Second Bull Run, Va., did not survive the Civil War. The general succumbed to typhoid fever on December 16, 1863, and was buried at West Point.
Buford, described by a Yankee colonel as "decidedly the best cavalry general" in the Army of the Potomac, was featured in "Gettysburg," the 1994 movie and TV miniseries. Sam Elliott sported a Buford-style mustache in portraying the Kentucky general who, according to the colonel, could "always be relied on in any emergency."
FRmail coming your way.
Let's close the shop and leave this for another day.
PLEASE!
"Yes, gentlemen good day. And we shall see you on da BattleField!"
I read a biography, don't remember any threats, although that could be my memory. However, Mosby was not easily cowed.
He did well in Hong Kong, however, cleaning up graft and corruption within the American bureaucracy there.
The friendship between Grant and Mosby is a small bright spot in a miserable historical period, IMO.
"Artillery lends dignity to an otherwise vulgar brawl"
My military 'bias' runs towards artillery.
I admit that my first love is artillery and the sound of the howitzer's thunder.
It disheartened me a few years back when generals in charge, like Eric Shinseki, declared artillery dead.
Afghanistan showed a need for light towed artillery, and there were articles recently about how they were scrambling to get as many light towed tubes as they could.
My prediction at the time was that the generals would eventually be shown to be not just wrong but dead wrong.
The only part of my prediction that was wrong was that it would be at the cost of soldier's lives.
We saw that those declaring artillery dead were wrong before it cost lives.
Done. I got IRL things to resolve, too. See y'all ont the boards.
Do I get the other half?
I recall a cavalry instructor in the US Army interviewed recently. He was discussing the agility of horses and how they can still be useful today. The Afghanis heavily relied on horses - probably still do.
... mobile aircraft/artillery spotters, I think.
Depending on the terrain and the mission, I don't see why not.
Forrest and a few contemporaries, as others pointed out, used them more like dragoons than traditional cavalry, and some make the analogy that his tactics were a prototype for later air cavalry and paratroopers.
Yeah, I recall that pic of the Spc Ops and the Afghans chasing Taliban while on horseback.
And, there are some places you just cannot take even a tank.
A British Revolutionary War general said that "Anywhere a goat can go, a man can go, and anywhere a man can go, artillery can go."
I'd hate to see someone try that these days with the several thousand pound howitzers.
Even the light towed system I served on, the M119A1, weighs in at 4000 pounds.
But with horses...
I'll see if I have it bookmarked.
For starters, how about Old Sarge using the term "sheethead" in his post? I don't have a dog in this fight, my ancestors fought on both sides of that war. But it doesn't take a genius to know that calling a man "sheethead" is equivalent to calling him a Klansman.
My grandfather was accused of being a "niggerlover" by the Klan in the rural 1920's south, and he was forced to physically defend himself from 2 carloads of halfwitted troglodytes with his 12 gauge Winchester to avoid being horsewhipped.
I assure you that I would take it as a personal and very offensive insult if I were called a sheethead on the basis of an innocuous post such as the one that started that exchange.
The Germans did not lose WWII due to their skill with armor; nor did the Confederacy lose due to its horsemanship. You should be glad that they did not posses equal skill in other aspects of the art of war or the outcome of those wars may have been vastly different.
Sure, the guy was a white hot racist and helped to start the KKK---which, admittedly, has nothing to do with his skills as a calvary commander---but for a man with no formal military training, Forrest was spectacular.
Love the story of how he disengaged from the last skirmish of Shiloh: scooping up a Union soldier and using him as a shield against a hail of Union bullets as he galloped away.
A lot of good as well as misery came out of that war.
Few nations ever have such a defining moment.
It sounds like something General Wolfe would have said when insisting that his forces could ascend the cliffs to the Plains of Abraham above Quebec during the French-and-Indian War.
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