Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies: General John Bufords Reports of the Battle of Gettysburg

John Buford, Jr. (1826 1863) was one of the Unions toughest cavalry officers during the Civil War, and hes remembered today for his vital role in the Battle of Gettysburg, beginning that battle with his cavalry forces skirmishing against the advancing Army of Northern Virginia just outside of town on the morning of July 1, 1863. Bufords actions allowed the I Corps of the Army of the Potomac to reach Gettysburg and engage the Confederates, eventually setting the stage for the biggest and most well known battle of the war. Buford wrote a series of dispatches and accounts to his superiors during and about the lead up to the Battle of Gettysburg and his role in it, and they were preserved in The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Since Buford died later in 1863, these were his only writings about the battle that has made him famous.