Battle of Hanover

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In the meantime, Custer was ordered to hold the right flank of the Union line, while Farnsworth held the center and left flank. After a lull in the action, Hampton finally arrived around 2 p.m. and positioned himself to the right of Chambliss, near the Mount Olivet Cemetery. His artillery opened up and managed to keep Farnsworth in the town. Custer, who was extremely eager in his first fight as a brigadier general, moved his 6th Michigan troopers to within 300 yards of the Confederate artillery, and they opened up with their seven-shot Spencer repeaters. That shooting rattled the Confederate gunners, who broke for the rear, leaving behind several wounded and all their artillery. Lee managed to send up reinforcements, however, and forced the Wolverines back to their original line.

Kilpatrick, meanwhile, was busy sending a message to Pleasonton, who was at Taneytown, 10 miles away in Maryland. It was apparent that Kilpatrick knew nothing of the captured wagon train. Had the Union commander known and tried to recapture it, Stuart certainly would have put the torch to the wagons. As it was, Stuart feared that Kilpatrick had gained the edge on him. He spent the rest of the afternoon listening for the arrival of Maj. Gen. Henry Slocum’s XII Corps, which was back at Littlestown. Believing that parts of Slocum’s force might be moving toward his rear, and unsure about the location of other Union corps, Stuart had no choice but to withdraw. At nightfall, he began to send his tired troopers in the direction of York.

The Battle of Hanover was over. Kilpatrick let Stuart go, choosing not to pursue him. He should have attempted to keep in close contact with the Rebels–the patrols he did send out learned nothing. For some strange reason, Kilpatrick felt that a large part of Lee’s army was only about 10 miles away, near East Berlin. Stuart’s raid was nearly over–but the controversy surrounding it was about to begin.

Casualty figures for the engagement listed the Union losses at more than 200. The 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry, in its first encounter, suffered 86 casualties–the most suffered by any regiment in the confrontation. This figure was followed closely by Hammond’s 5th New York, which reported 42 casualties. Stuart, in his report to Lee, never mentioned his losses at Hanover. The 2nd North Carolina Cavalry suffered the heaviest loss of any Confederate regiment in the campaign, a total of 55.

After a long all-night ride, Stuart arrived in Dover, where he paroled a few hundred prisoners and sent the wagon train south. He then went to Carlisle, where he burned some barracks belonging to the U.S. Army’s cavalry school and fired a few artillery rounds into the town. It was at Carlisle that Stuart finally learned that Lee and his army were at Gettysburg. He left immediately to join Lee, arriving late in the day on July 2. When Stuart called on Lee at his headquarters, Lee said coldly, ‘Well, General Stuart, here you are at last.’ (Another version has Lee saying, even more coldly, ‘General Stuart, where have you been?’) It was clear that Lee felt his young protégé had let him down.

There is no question that Stuart’s absence during the Confederate approach to Gettysburg lessened Lee’s chances of success. Without his ‘eyes and ears,’ Lee was advancing blindly into enemy territory. Mosby’s outdated information about the Army of the Potomac’s being inactive certainly did not help Stuart, but the captured wagon train proved to be his Achilles’ heel. In his official report, Stuart admitted that the wagon train ‘was now a subject of serious embarrassment.’ Some of Stuart’s own men condemned the entire expedition as a misguided attempt to ‘do some great thing.’

But all the blame cannot be placed on Stuart alone. Early’s men had been as close as five miles from Hanover and even heard the guns, but they apparently did not realize that Stuart was involved. Since Early was supposed to rendezvous with Stuart at York, he should have left some scouts near the area to let Stuart know his whereabouts. Also, some blame has to be put on the commanding general himself. It could be argued that Stuart was just following orders. In two separate dispatches to Stuart on June 22 and 23, Lee had told him to ‘collect information, provisions, etc.’ Well, Stuart had captured a wagon train full of supplies and provisions.

Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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