M.A. Kleen

After three bloody days of fighting around Gettysburg, both sides spent a rainy Independence Day licking their wounds. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee sent wagons filled with supplies and thousands of wounded soldiers southwest in preparation for retreat. That morning, wagons from Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell’s Second Corps joined the miles-long supply train being funneled through Monterey Pass in South Mountain. Union army commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade assigned his cavalry to harass the Confederate retreat.

Brig. Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick, acting on intelligence from a Union signal station, rode for Monterey Pass and what he thought was Lee’s main supply convoy. He ran into Ewell’s wagons and three Confederate cavalry regiments and a battery of artillery under the overall command of Brig. Gens. Beverly H. Robertson and William E. “Grumble” Jones. After hours of tenacious fighting that lasted until well after midnight, Kilpatrick’s troopers finally scattered the Confederate cavalry and fell on Ewell’s lightly-defended wagon train. Although they only disrupted part of the 20-mile-long caravan, it’s hard to call it anything but a disaster for the Confederates. Union forces captured hundreds of wagons, took approximately 1,300 prisoners, plus mules and supplies. These were losses the battered Army of Northern Virginia could ill afford.