The Battle of Fairfield was a cavalry engagement during the Gettysburg campaign of the American Civil War. It was fought July 3, 1863, near Fairfield, Pennsylvania, concurrently with the Battle of Gettysburg, although it was not a formal part of that battle. While a minor fight by the small number of troops deployed, strategically, the Confederate victory secured the important Hagerstown Road, which Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia would use on July 5 to return to Maryland and then on to safety in Virginia.
Fairfield had been the site of combat on June 21, when the 14th Virginia Cavalry of Brig. Gen. Albert Jenkins's mounted infantry brigade had used Monterey Pass to conduct a raid near Fairfield. Following an engagement with the First Troop, Philadelphia City Cavalry, the Confederates withdrew into the Cumberland Valley.
Much of the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia accompanied Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart on his ride around the Union Army of the Potomac through Maryland and south-central Pennsylvania. Lee had retained several brigades to guard the mountain passes as he advanced through the Shenandoah and Cumberland Valleys and to scout Federal positions. Among the latter brigades was that of Brig. Gen. William E. "Grumble" Jones, the celebrated "Laurel Brigade" that had once been commanded by Turner Ashby. Jones had detached one of his best commands, the 35th Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, to accompany the infantry of Jubal Early, but retained the bulk of his command. Jones's Brigade had been raiding the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in West Virginia and Maryland before being recalled by Lee.
They hastened to Pennsylvania, crossing the Potomac River on July 1, where Jones detached the 12th Virginia Cavalry to guard the ford, and camped at Chambersburg the following night. Jones's force had been reduced to the 6th, 7th, and 11th Virginia Cavalry and Preston Chew's Battery of horse artillery. Jones reached Fairfield on July 3 in response to Lee's orders to secure the vital Hagerstown Road.
Reports of a slow moving Confederate wagon train in the vicinity had attracted the attention of newly commissioned Union Brig. Gen. Wesley Merritt, who ordered the 6th U.S. Cavalry under Maj. Samuel H. Starr to scout Fairfield and locate the wagons. Once in Fairfield, Major Starr learned that a wagon train had just rolled out of town and was heading to Cashtown. He divided his 400 men into three detachments and began to search for the wagons.
One party soon encountered the pickets of Jones's 7th Virginia Cavalry and withdrew when additional Confederates rode up. Informed of the presence of the enemy, Starr rode to a small ridge and dismounted his men in fields and an orchard on both sides of the road. He threw back a mounted charge of the 7th Virginia, just as Chew's Battery unlimbered and opened fire on the Federal cavalrymen. Supported by the 6th Virginia, the 7th Virginia charged again, clearing Starr's force off the ridge and inflicting heavy losses. Jones pursued the retreating Federals for three miles to the Fairfield Gap, but was unable to catch his quarry.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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