During the last melee, the brazen lips of the cannon were dumb. It was a hand-to-hand encounter between the Michigan men and the flower of the southern cavaliers, led by their favorite commanders.
Stuart retreated to his stronghold, leaving the union forces in possession of the field.
The rally sounded, the lines were reformed, the wounded were cared for, and everything was made ready for a renewal of the conflict. But the charge of the First Michigan ended the cavalry fighting on the right at Gettysburg. Military critics have pronounced it the finest cavalry charge made during that war.
Custer's brigade lost one officer (Major Ferry) and 28 men killed; 11 officers and 112 men wounded; 67 men missing; total loss, 219. Gregg's division lost one man killed; 7 officers and 19 men wounded; 8 men missing; total, 35. In other words, while Gregg's division, two brigades, lost 35, Custer's single brigade suffered a loss of 219. These figures apply to the fight on July 3, only. The official figures show that the brigade, during the three days, July 1, 2 and 3, lost 1 officer and 31 men killed; 13 officers and 134 men wounded; 78 men missing; total, 257.[14]
For more than twenty years after the close of the civil war, the part played by Gregg, Custer and McIntosh and their brave followers in the battle of Gettysburg received but scant recognition. Even the maps prepared by the corps of engineers stopped short of Cress's Ridge and Rummel's fields. "History" was practically silent upon the subject, and had not the survivors of those commands taken up the matter, there might have been no record of the invaluable services which the Second cavalry division and Custer's Michigan brigade rendered at the very moment when a slight thing would have turned the tide of victory the other way. In other words, the decisive charge of Colonel Town and his Michiganders coincided in point of time with the failure of Pickett's assault upon the center, and was a contributing cause in bringing about the latter result.
CHARLES H. TOWN
About the year 1884, a monument was dedicated on the Rummel farm which was intended to mark as nearly as possible the exact spot where Gregg and Custer crossed swords with Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee in the final clash of the cavalry fight. This monument was paid for by voluntary contributions of the survivors of the men who fought with Gregg and Custer. Colonel George Gray of the Sixth Michigan alone contributed four hundred dollars. Many others were equally liberal. On that day Colonel Brooke-Rawle, of Philadelphia, who served in the Third Pennsylvania cavalry, of Gregg's division, delivered an address upon the "Cavalry Fight on the Right Flank, at Gettysburg." It was an eloquent tribute to Gregg and his Second division and to the Michigan brigade though, like a loyal knight, he claimed the lion's share of the glory for his own, and placed chaplets of laurel upon the brow of his ideal hero of Pennsylvania rather than upon that of "Lancelot, or another." In other words, he did not estimate Custer's part at its full value, an omission for which he subsequently made graceful and honorable acknowledgment. In this affair there were honors enough to go around.
Subsequently General Luther S. Trowbridge, of Detroit, who was an officer in the Fifth Michigan cavalry, who like Colonel Brooke-Rawle fought most creditably in the cavalry fight on the right, wrote a paper on the same subject which was read before the Michigan commandery of the Loyal Legion. This very fitly supplemented Colonel Brooke-Rawle's polished oration. In the year 1889, another monument erected by the state of Michigan on the Rummel farm, and but a hundred yards or such a matter from the other, was dedicated. The writer of these "Recollections" was the orator of the occasion, and the points of his address are contained in the narrative which constitutes this chapter. Those three papers and others written since that time, notably one by General George B. Davis, judge advocate general, U.S.A., and one by Captain Miller, of the Third Pennsylvania cavalry, have brought the cavalry fight at Gettysburg into the limelight, so that there is no longer any pretext for the historian or student of the history of the civil war to profess ignorance of the events of that day which reflect so much luster on the cavalry arm of the service.