Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkerhoff's Ridge and East Cavalry Field, Battle of Gettysburg

by Eric J. Wittenberg, foreword by Edward G. Longacre. Released August 15, 2002.

Award-winning historian Eric J. Wittenberg has written a comprehensive study of the critical actions on Brinkerhoff's Ridge and East Cavalry Field, fought on July 2 and 3, 1863. In these actions, Union Brig. Gen. David M. Gregg's Second Cavalry Division fought two protracted and important actions along the Union right flank. The fight for Brinkerhoff's Ridge, although relatively small in numbers, prevented the legendary Stonewall Brigade from participating in the Confederate assaults on Culp's Hill, perhaps tipping the balance in the struggle for Culp's Hill. Wittenberg presents a new and controversial theory for why Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry appeared on Cress Ridge on East Cavalry Field on the afternoon of July 2, 1863. After a protracted and bloody dismounted fight, Brig. Gen. George A. Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade helped to repulse a massed mounted charge by three brigades of Southern horsemen, securing the Union right flank, and helping to clinch the Northern victory at Gettysburg.

Wittenberg weaves the stories of soldiers together with a keen understanding of the terrain and presents a compelling story that features six fine maps by John C. Heiser and forty illustrations. The book also includes a driving tour guide of the Brinkerhoff's Ridge and East Cavalry Field battlefields that includes an additional twenty photographs of modern-day views of these sites. The driving tour is designed to permit anyone to see and understand the ground where these critical actions took place.

This book is a must for all Gettysburg and cavalry buffs.

Volume One of the Discovering Civil War America series.

(softcover)