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Major General Buford

baltimoreorgan.com

Originally aired on March 15, 1996 - In part 81 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the life and exemplary career of Major General John Buford.

#81 – General John Buford

In the much ballyhooed, but often inaccurate movie, Gettysburg, two Union officers unintentionally emerged as stars. One was Joshua Chamberlain. The other, wonderfully portrayed by actor Sam Elliott, was John Buford. Chamberlain has received much attention, Buford almost none. The cavalryman deserves better, especially in this, his birthday month.

Buford was a native of Kentucky and an 1848 graduate of West Point. He spent thirteen years on frontier service with the dragoons before civil war beckoned him to the East. The conflict tore Buford’s family asunder. A half-brother became a Union brigadier general while a cousin held the same rank on the Confederate side.

Outstanding performance as an assistant inspector of the Washington defenses led to Buford’s elevation in July, 1862, to brigadier general of cavalry. He wasted no time converting the disorganized horseman of General John Pope’s army into a first-rate command. At the battle of Second Manassas, Buford was so badly wounded that he was reported killed in action. Buford continued as commander of reserve cavalry under Generals Burnside, Hooker, and Meade. His conduct was always exemplary.

His appearance was not. Buford was one of those plain-as-an-old-shoe soldiers so often conspicuous in Civil War history. A staff officer described Buford as “a compactly built man of medium height, with tawny mustache and a little, triangular gray eye, whose expression is determined, to say sinister. His ancient corduroys are tucked into a pair of ordinary cowhide boots and his blue blouse is ornamented with holes; from one pocket thereof peeps a huge pipe, while the other is fat with a tobacco pouch.”

Buford’s physical aspects may have been slovenly, and his disposition generally good-natured, but his stern demands of discipline were widely known throughout the Union army. His men once captured a Confederate spy. The general promptly ordered the culprit hanged from a nearby tree. An inscription overhead announced: “This man is to hang three days; he who cuts him down before shall hang the remaining time.”

Few officers were as beloved by their men as Buford. One cavalryman termed him a “model commander”; another asserted that Buford was “the best cavalry officer produced on this continent”. Whether he was all of that is not as important as the fact that his soldiers believed it to be so.

The high point of Buford’s career came in July, 1863, on the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg. Seeing the van of Lee’s army moving toward him, Buford dismounted and deployed his little brigade of horsemen. The Union soldiers went into battle position, each man a full three feet away from the next. It was this paper-thin line that, alone and defiant, confronted the advance of General A. P. Hill’s corps. At Buford’s urging, the relative handful of Federals held their position long enough for heavy Union reinforcements to get to the field and wage a three-day contest that altered the course of the Civil War for both sides.

After Gettysburg, commendations of Buford came from every quarter of the North. He seemed destined to be the supreme Federal cavalryman in the war. That autumn, however, while campaigning along the Rappahannock River, Buford contracted typhoid fever. On December 16, 1863, he received promotion to major general. An hour later, the 37-year old Kentuckian died.

A fellow officer heard the sad news and exclaimed: “The army and the country have met with a great loss… (Buford) was decidedly the best cavalry general we had… (He was) rough in the exterior, never looking after his own comfort, untiring on the march and in the supervision of…his command, quiet and unassuming in his manners.”

Buford lies today in the cemetery at West Point, appropriately amid a host of other American heroes.

Dr. James I. "Bud" Robertson, Jr., is a noted scholar on the American Civil War and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech.